How to run your small business like a CEO (as a solopreneur)

Small Business

Aug 17

If you grew up in the #girlboss era like I did, the role CEO prompts images of a woman in a bright pink pant suit, a millennial pink notebook and opportunity. If only we could have known how many of us would have gone on to leave corporate and start our own businesses, just not necessarily of the “raise VC funding, hypergrowth at all costs” variety.

And let’s be clear, anyone who took the risk to go off on their own, and built a roster of clients who pay them to do what they're good at, deserves real credit. There's a lot of glamorizing of small business ownership right now, build something on the internet, work 20 hours a week from a villa in Bali, and while that's a real outcome for some people, it's not what it looks like for most business owners.

But the reality is that having the LLC set up, being busy with clients or even being booked out, doesn’t mean that you’re actually operating like a CEO.

If you…

feel like you traded a 9-5 (or an 8-8, depending on where you came from) for 24/7
always feel behind on something
are a little embarassed by the amount that slips through the cracks behind the scenes
or feel a bit overwhelmed with how to handle the interest you’re getting from potential clients

There's a real chance that you’re actually operating way closer to a well-paid independent contributor than an actual CEO.

Here’s the problem: at some point, you can't work more hours, charge more per hour, or bring in more clients without something breaking, either your systems or you. This the ceiling where the independent contributor approach, basically your glorified "employee earning” potential tops out. And unlike an actual job, you don't have a boss to ask for a raise or a competitor to counteroffer against.

Prefer to watch? Here's the video!

What it takes to be a solopreneur CEO mindset

When this happens, the solution isn't just to work harder. It's also not necessarily to build a scalable product, and it's not always to hire an employee. Because it doesn’t matter how many teammembers your bring on, if you don’t address the fundamental way you’re approaching your business, the extra hands won’t help.

Before we get into how to shift, it helps to know where you're starting from.

The employee vs. CEO framework, side by side

Employees and CEOs approach the same day-to-day work with a different lens. Here's the breakdown I’d use to figure out where you are:

Employee

Executes individual tasks

Focused on hitting goals (sales numbers, views)

Identifies problems

Prioritizes short-term client satisfaction

Reacts to what other people say is important

Someone else evaluates their performance

Thinks in the next 3 to 12 months

Views time in hours or days

Judged by what they produce

Compensated for their time or output

CEO

Focuses on the ROI of a group or set of tasks

Focused on whether goals are returning results (revenue, bookings, calls)

Identifies problems and the solution

Prioritizes long-term growth, even at the cost of short-term dissatisfaction

Decides what's important, even if it's unpopular

Evaluates their own performance and spends real time evaluating other people’s

Thinks in the next 1 to 10 years

Views time in terms of return or leverage

Judged by their decision-making, not their output

Compensated for the results that time and output produce

Take a minute and go down that list. How many of the employee column feels true for how you're operating right now? That's roughly where you're landing on the spectrum today.

If all of that feels a little theoretical, here are two real-world examples.

Example one: A graphic designer had freelance clients on the side of a corporate job, and eventually had enough interest to go solo. They're now making multiple six figures, pitching projects at a flat rate based on scope. A client recently challenged their rate, so they took a 10% reduction because, in their words, it was only 10 deliverables. They're trying to post more consistently on social media because that's what everybody says is important, but it keeps falling behind client work.

Employee or CEO? I'd say employee. This person technically runs their own business, but a lot of the decision-making is based on other people's evaluation, short-term reactions, and doing what everyone says matters, rather than what's delivering results.

Example two: A mindset coach takes a maximum of four to six clients at a time on long-term packages, because that's what's led to the best client results and her own best quality of life. She promotes her business through email marketing because that's where she's seen the highest conversion rate, and she got off social media last year when the time it took stopped matching the results it produced. She spent a couple of weeks building automations and Claude skills to streamline bookkeeping and data capture, and now spends a couple of hours a week evaluating those numbers and making strategic calls about content, marketing tactics, and money. As a result, she's currently weighing whether to invest more in her VA over the next few months, so she can free up more of her own time for the email strategy work that's moving revenue.

On the other hand, this solopreneur is a CEO. Both of these people are solo entrepreneurs without major teams. But one is thinking short-term and being judged by output. The other is thinking long-term and valuing her own time and leverage.

Why shifting into CEO mode is worth the harder work

Being in CEO mode is harder. It asks you to think for the future, make educated guesses, and take strategic risks, like bringing in support to help you scale, or committing to one marketing platform and letting the others go. So if what you're doing right now is delivering decent client work and revenue, why bother?

A few reasons:

Greater earning potential. If you can 3x or 10x what you're making in the same amount of time, that buys you real flexibility in both your business and your life.

More time freedom. Thinking like a CEO can mean delivering the same revenue in fewer hours, which gives you back time for your family, your health, or whatever matters to you.

A better client experience. Same clients, but happier, because the experience is more professional or their deliverables come faster. A better client experience makes it easier to raise prices, land referrals, or land upsells.

More stability and predictability. Especially in "lumpy" businesses like consulting or coaching, where earning periods and slow periods are normal. CEO thinking gets you clearer on which levers move your revenue and expenses, so you get more confident making investments based on what they'll yield.

Where to start operating as the CEO of your small business

If you want to make this shift, here's where I'd start, in order.

Capture and document your tasks and processes. This is the unsexy first step, and it's the one people skip. Think about it the way a CEO of a thousand-person company would think about their departments: not "what does marketing do" generally but what are the actual initiatives someone's spending time on, and what's have been the results. This is the first step to understanding where your time, energy, and budget are going.

Build the muscle of forecasting. This applies even if your business is lumpy, like consulting. Understanding where money comes from, where it goes, and what it leads to is what makes every other decision easier, hiring, investing in a new tool, launching a product, shifting your business model. If you're not sure which numbers matter here, this is where I'd start. This takes time and muscle memory to build, so the earlier you start, the better.

Put regular efficiency reviews on the calendar. Monthly or weekly, whatever cadence fits. These reviews are nearly impossible to run well if you haven't started step one, but once you have, they're where you'll spot opportunities: an automation, a Claude skill, or a task that's finally ready to hand off.

The exercise to get some time back (It’s not hiring)

If all of that sounds good in theory but you're thinking "I don't have time for any of it," this is where your first real move as a CEO comes in.

Look at everything you're currently doing, every project, every task on your daily or weekly list, and ask whether you can point to the return it's delivering. Revenue, growth, or even just your own sanity. If you can't, it might be time to fire that task.

I call this firing because when you’re a solopreneur, you’re every department. Accounting, marketing, strategy, HR. When everything falls to your to do list, it can be hard to take a step back and prioritize, which is what this exercise is about. If you were paying an emplooyee or a contractor, to own the project or tasks you’re thinking of and you were getting these results, would you keep paying them?

Some common ones to consider:

Are you investing in more than 2 marketing platforms are avenues? Consider which are delivering results and which might need to get fired?
Are there admin tasks you do because you’re supposed to but don’t actually make you feel more organized?
Is there a type of meeting or step in the process of deliver your service that you don’t actually think provides value to the client?

To be clear, firings can be reversible. If Instagram Stories aren't yielding clients and they're eating hours a week you'd rather spend elsewhere, take three months off and see what happens. This exercise is a lot harder if you haven't already started capturing and documenting what you're spending your time on, which is exactly why step one on the roadmap above comes first.

On the other hand, are there areas of your business that are driving the referrals or traffic or revenue that you wish you could invest more in. Firing gets easier when you realize that the energy can be quickly reallocated to the things that actually drive dollars.

The mistake that will set you back

Once you've identified where shifts need to happen, a CEO doesn’t immediately start interviewing candidates to do work. There’s important strategic step to make sure you don’t waste budget on personnel costs. This is a super common mistake solopreneurs make when they feel overwhelmed: they immediately jump to looking for VA referrals.

Based on my experience, and conversations with Exhale clients, if you don't have fairly refined systems built up first, the amount of immediate time you'll get back from that hire is almost always lower than people expect. It's easy to underestimate how much training and direction a new hire needs, and I hear from people all the time about getting burned by hiring support before they were ready for it.

In your new CEO approach, your job is to make sure that any new hire is set up for success before they start - the systems, documents and training should be ready. For many solopreneurs, this means that they should continue owning many of the processes for now, so they can continue to refine and prepare for an employee in the long run, not short.

But that doesn't mean you have to continue to hustle through this solo.

My final recommendation here is admittedly a biased one: bring in someone who specializes in building systems, someone who's done it for a lot of other business owners. I think this is the smartest investment for solopreneur CEO’s because it saves you the time of building the systems yourself, it also means you're less likely to trial-and-error your way into something that doesn't hold up. Compared to immediately bringing in junior support, this uplevels your ways-of-working with a one time investment, rather than an ongoing expense.

We commonly do these engagements at Exhale in a format we call Bottleneck Breakthrough, a short-term engagement built specifically to hand back to you once it's running. Once a system has a few reps under its belt, you can trust it's working the way it should, and it's usually built with enough instruction baked in that it can more reasonably go to a junior hire later, without relying heavily on that person's own decision-making.

One of the strongest skills a CEO has is knowing when it's time to invest in someone with skills you don't have. If you know that's you right now, you can book a call here to talk through what that could look like.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between an employee mindset and a CEO mindset in a small business?

An employee mindset focuses on executing individual tasks and hitting goals someone else set, while a CEO mindset focuses on whether those tasks and goals are producing results. Employees tend to react to what other people say is important and get evaluated by someone else. CEOs decide what's important themselves, even when it's unpopular, and spend real time evaluating their own performance and other people's. The clearest tell is compensation: employees are paid for their time or output, while CEOs are paid for the results that time and output produce for the business.

How do I know if I'm running my business like an employee?

Run through the employee vs. CEO framework above and be honest about how many boxes on the employee side feel true for you right now. Common signs include making pricing or scheduling decisions based on what a client pushes back on rather than what the numbers support, posting on social media because "everyone says you have to" rather than because it's converting, and measuring your week in hours worked instead of what those hours returned. If most of that sounds familiar, you're probably closer to employee mode than CEO mode, and that's a completely normal place to start from.

Should I hire a VA before or after I build systems?

After. If you bring in execution support before your systems are refined, the immediate time you get back is almost always lower than expected, because you're spending that time training and directing someone through a process that doesn't fully exist yet. Get your tasks and processes documented first, then hire. If you're not sure where the line is between a VA, a coach, and a consultant, this breakdown walks through how to tell which one fits your situation.

How often should I review my business for efficiency?

Monthly or weekly, depending on what fits your business, but the review only works if you've already started capturing what you're spending time on. Without that foundation, a review turns into guessing instead of a real audit. Once you have that baseline, a regular review is where you'll catch opportunities to automate something, build a system, or finally hand a task off.

What's the first thing I should do to start thinking like a CEO?

Start by documenting the tasks and processes you're already doing in your business. It's an unsexy first step, but it's the one that makes every decision after it easier, from forecasting to hiring to knowing what to fire. Skip it, and the hiring and firing exercise, the forecasting, and the efficiency reviews all get harder because you're working from memory instead of a real picture of where your time and money are going.