What is a Mediocre CEO?

I am a proud mediocre CEO. Let me explain a little bit. You see, I’ve been a business owner for over two decades now and in that time I’ve learned quite a few painful lessons just like anyone in the trenches of business ownership.

There are a lot of things about business that, just like you, I’m really pretty bad at or have no experience with. I don’t run Google or sit on the board of Berkshire Hathaway. Steve Jobs didn’t consult with me about iPhone designs, and I’m not a sub on Shark Tank for when Mark Cuban is out sick.

That last paragraph may seem kind of odd since you usually start with your qualifications, but I figured I’d get that out of the way upfront. I’m may not be the Oracle of Omaha, but whether I’m running a few short lived business that died a quick and painless death (thankfully!), building a 10-year old and kicking multi-million dollar specialty construction business with dozens of employees, or running my lean e-commerce and content creation business for DIYers, I have worked hard to learn the ins and outs of real world business.

According to the SBA there are 30.2 million small businesses in the US. Those employees account for 47.5% of the US work force or 58.9 million people. Most of those business are nothing like GE, Apple, Nike or another other mega brand that we all know and love. These are companies with fewer than 500 employees and most are not making a dent in the universe, but they are making a huge difference in the lives of their owners, the lives of their employees, and the communities they serve.

As I surveyed the space I noticed that most business books were focused on the people and systems that built these grand Fortune 50 companies. Along with the biographies of great leaders like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet I read these books voraciously. In 2019 I challenged myself to read a book a week and ended up reading 72 books! But in all these books something was missing.

What’s Missing

I could learn a lot from the best in the business, but I realized that if I followed their footsteps I would be building a huge empire. What if I didn’t want an empire? What if I didn’t want to build the next Google?

One of my businesses is a speciality contractor. We restore historic buildings and as a GC I can build a new home from the ground up if I want to, but I rarely do. I like the old stuff better. I saw a parallel between building a house with a set of architectural plans and building a business.

If you want to build a really nice single-family home you need a completely different set of plans than if you want to build Trump tower. And trying to build that home with the Trump tower plans is an exercise in futility. It will never work. Ever. (Can you hear my Trump impression in that last sentence?)

Where were the plans and business advice on how to build a business that would meet my needs? A business that would allow me to make the kind of money I want and still have time to spend with my three little kids. I couldn’t find it. It was about the biggest. The best. The most money. The 4-hour work week. Boatloads of passive income.

Don’t get me wrong, boatloads of passive income sounds great, but all this takes massive amounts of time that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice with my family and with my life outside of business. I wanted to have my business and have my family too.

The Solution

After studying all the advice from these great leaders and the examples of how they built their amazing businesses and talking to other small business owners I started tailoring that advice to fit the life I wanted.

That is what birthed The Mediocre CEO. Compared to Warren Buffet I’m just a mediocre CEO. But compared to the average business owner I’m a very successful CEO. It’s all about perspective and I wanted to have some fun with the name of this site. No one outside my family will likely remember my name 50 years after I’m gone and I’m fine with that. I really am.

In the meantime, I have a couple businesses that allow me to sit in a Foxtail Coffee on a Wednesday afternoon and write blog posts. They allow me to go camping with my kids and take a 3 day weekend whenever I want. I’m not a millionaire, but I have built a handful of business that make me around $150,000 a year and growing. That not gross revenues, that’s my personal salaries and benefits I get from my businesses.

My goal with The Mediocre CEO is to teach you how you can build your business (or businesses) so that you too can become a mediocre CEO in the way that works for the life you want to have just like I have built businesses that give me the life I want.

What’s in it For Me?

You’re being pretty selfish asking that aren’t you? Actually no! You should be wondering this and I’ll tell you why.

If you could work reasonable hours, let’s say 40-50 hrs a week, and create a business income that will buy you a nice house, feed your family high quality food, afford you all your needs and many of your wants would you be willing to do that?

What if you could take a few weeks (or months!) off every year to do the things that really inspire you and your business would keep on trucking without you? The sales would keep coming, the customers would be happy, the bills would be paid.

This is very doable for any mediocre CEO and I can teach you how to do it. This is not an overnight, diet pill type of result. It takes time and and lots of learning and refining your mediocre-ness to become the ultimate in mediocrity, but you can do it.

The best part is that if you get to the point where you are working a few days a week making six figures and you want to take it to the next level and build the next Google you can always graduate from my training to go follow Tony Robbins around the country to make it to the next level, but every business owner has to start somewhere and that’s what this website is all about.

If you’re ready to go from employee to business owner or to go from an owner who simply owns his job as Michael Gerber says in The E-Myth then this website is for you and the content we are gonna start creating is where you need to start.

Before you learn to run you need to learn to walk. Before you learn to be a great CEO you need to be a mediocre one. Yes, it’s self-deprecating to call ourselves mediocre, but the name just makes me laugh and I hope you get the real idea behind it. We don’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg to live a happy life.

Let me help you go from bad to mediocre and celebrate that mediocrity with you. Then we can both laugh all the way to the bank while we’re on vacation. Welcome to The Mediocre CEO!