TEC-nically Speaking

By Rich Davis

I heard the voice in my head again.
I know. I know. When you tell people you’re hearing voices, they figure it’s only a matter of time before you’re plucked from your cozy corner office. You’re hauled away to the loony bin to spend your remaining days talking to ceiling fans about government conspiracies.

However, just about every CEO will tell you they hear a “voice” all the time. It’s our internal compass. It wonders if the critical decision we just made will lead our company to unprecedented growth or catastrophic demise. It’s the voice of our conscious telling us we’re off track. It’s that feeling in our guts telling us to choose one path over another. When I heard my internal voice a few months ago, it was starting to sound like a broken record. It kept saying, “Davis, you need help.”

I’d like to think I’d done a good job as the CEO of Spark Inc. up until that point. We’re an upstart advertising agency based in Jacksonville, Florida. My staff is happy, growth has been solid and our work has earned a lot of accolades. Getting there took a will to push forward when many an obstacle seemed insurmountable. A few years ago, I thought that success would make things easier. But the fact is, now that we’ve accomplished a few milestones, life is actually more challenging than ever.

There’s more riding on every move. Every decision carries greater weight. And while we all have people we trust for advice, it can still be overwhelming. After all, as CEOs we’re expected to solve problems, not have them. I had general concerns about growing the business and I was struggling with several specific questions with no consistent source to turn to for answers.

How come when I delegate something, it always seems like it would have been easier to do it myself and would have been done better?

How do I manage my cash flow now that there’s actually serious cash to manage?

Is our business plan actually holding us back rather than propelling us forward?

I was lost, felt alone and, you guessed it, that voice of mine started chattering away like a bad late night talk show host.

Luckily, I heard another voice. It was that of a colleague who told me about this group called TEC. He described something that, at the time, sounded almost too good to be true. “You team up with a small group of CEOs from all kinds of industries and together you act as one another’s board of directors, advising each other and helping each other grow. Plus there are exclusive speaking presentations, online resources…It should be mandatory for CEOs like us.”

I was somewhat hesitant, as you may be right now, but in the end, it sounded like a good idea to me.

It sounded like a great idea to the voice. So I applied for membership.

What happened at my first meeting was possibly the most vital four hours of my professional life. And it had immediate positive ramifications for my personal life, too.

But you’ll have to wait until next month for that.