Sometimes, in those early months, I’d start making a meal and abandon it the minute I realized I’d have to clean a head

As I said in the beginning of this article, my CEO recently sold his company for $30 million. Following the announcement of the acquisition, it was made clear that he was not going anywhere. We were going to stay the same, just more secured financially, which is a blessing in such uncertain economic times.

I hear stories from friends complaining about the total lack of transparency at their work. They don’t know how good or how bad of a situation their company is in. They don’t know what kind of financial targets have to be reached. This creates a stressful environment by default, because everybody is always trying to be at 100%, without knowing the required level of productivity. Especially during these challenging economic times, this is not a very viable system.

Whether you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company with thousands of employees, or the CEO of a 50-people startup, you never have an excuse to not treat everyone the same way.

I couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly, I got so pissed off while chopping garlic for marinara, when at one time I found it a sensory joy to split open that pungent smell of a fresh clove as I minced away.

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you’re a key customer for data engineering, you’re probably not the only customer. Modern businesses use data to fuel operations, often in ways that can hum along nicely enough without your interference. When your contribution to the business is a nice-to-have (and not a matter of your company’s survival), it’s unwise to behave as if the world revolves around you and your team. A healthy balance is healthy.

We’re often told the lessons above are good principles to follow in life. Be honest (transparent), treat everyone the same way, acknowledge people… But how many of us actually care about all this? Witnessing firsthand those lessons being applied by my CEO has definitely had more impact on me than sheer theory.

It’s not a rule to not pay yourself when you start a company. This will depend on the financial health of your project, but in many cases, you won’t see a lot of money coming into your checking account during the launch phase. In the case of my CEO, he didn’t make a dime for the first 2 years at his job. He is the founder and CEO, he created his company from the ground up, and he had no option but to reinvest all the money made into further development, at least in the beginning.

Thanks a lot for reading! I interviewed 50 productivity experts and made a 150 page guide out of the project. This is road-tested advice from real people who get things done. Get it for free here.

My CEO reinvested a large amount of his personal profit into growing the company even more, and he will keep his responsibilities for at least the next few years. Why? Because he’s passionate, driven, and because he can’t sit still doing nothing for more than 2 minutes. That’s the power of entrepreneurship done right.

Except for a few times where things really went south and he lost his temper (which in a way is also a way to be transparent), I never saw him treat people a specific way based on who they were.

While I spent a lot of my energy trying to find ways sobriety would work best for me (meditation, yoga, reading, naps, puzzles, alone time), at the same time I started to avoid some of the activities I used to love when I was a drinker, like cooking, socializing, and going to spin class.

For some some confidential business meetings, he made sure to set the settings to not display the title of the meeting and/or the attendees. But again, you can never be 100% transparent, especially as the company keeps growing and you’re looking at a potential acquisition. Information can’t leak.

Whether it was the financial health of our small startup, having to let go of some people, or the targets each team had to reach to maintain the company afloat (especially at the peak of the corona pandemic), our CEO always did his best to tell us everything he was allowed to tell us. He didn’t hide behind corporate responsibility excuses to obstruct relevant information, and I’ll remember this lesson for the rest of my professional career.

The image above is a screenshot of my CEO’s calendar. It contains business as well as personal events. He always saves it all up under his company email, so everybody can see what he was up to on the general google calendar.

Thanks a lot for reading! I interviewed 50 productivity experts and made a 150 page guide out of the project. This is road-tested advice from real people who get things done. Get it for free here.