What Is a Non-Traditional CEO? Signs of an Edgy or Taboo Business Enterprise
Hey boss, it’s 2023! And since we’re starting off fresh, I think it’s an appropriate time for me to kick things off this year by explaining what a non-traditional CEO is. Not everyone knows what one is or whether they fall into that category. So in this episode, I cover who this podcast is for and what you can expect over our time together this year.
2:21 - The first marker of a non-traditional CEO
4:09 - Three things all the non-traditional CEOs I work with have in common
6:34 - Why I started this podcast for non-traditional business owners
10:04 - What it looks like leading in an edgy or taboo space
12:55 - Why working with non-traditional CEOs is my thing and what to expect in 2023
Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.
As Mentioned In What Is a Non-Traditional CEO? Signs of an Edgy or Taboo Business Enterprise
Leave a 5-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Transcript of What Is a Non-Traditional CEO? Signs of an Edgy or Taboo Business Enterprise
Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.
Hey, party people. Happy new year! All the things, click in the glasses, we made it to 2023 by God's grace. I hope you guys have a great holiday, and that you're bringing in the new year with all the hopes, aspirations, and goals that God has put into your heart that this will be the year that you manifest those things. This will be the year that you walk truly in your purpose. This will be the year that will be better than any of the previous years you had. That is my wish, my prayer, and my hope for you.
Well, glad you're here. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. I thought I'd kick off this year by explaining who this podcast is for. I feel like in marketing, I always say clear beats clever. I'm not sure that people get what a nontraditional CEO is. You might be listening to this because you just think I'm so funny. You might think that I'm wise. But you're not sure if you're a nontraditional CEO, but I'm glad you're here regardless. But I thought what a way to kick off the year is by explaining who this podcast is for and what you can expect over our time together in 2023.
What is a nontraditional CEO? I'm so glad you asked. A nontraditional CEO is someone who leads a business that is in an edgy or taboo industry. That's the first marker. You know you're in an edgy or taboo industry when you tell someone what you do. They ask you what you do, you tell them what your business is, you tell them what you do and their response is, “Huh? What you say? Come again? What you're talking about?” It's like they heard you, but they weren't expecting for you to say what you said. Or they have a tough time envisioning what that business would look like.
It's one of those businesses where people are like, “Oh, oh my, okay.” Like a dispensary, maybe you own a dispensary or you're in the cannabis business, you're a grower. You might be someone who owns several tattoo shops throughout your city. You might be into permanent makeup. You might, like myself, own a pole dance studio, I have owned it for almost 17 years. You're in an industry where people are like, “Oh my. Okay, I see you.” It makes some people intrigued and it repels other folks because it's not your traditional “I work for people's gas.” “I work for a municipality.” “Oh, I'm a teacher.” “Oh, I'm a doctor.”
These are industries where people are like, “Okay, I wouldn't expect it that.” That's the first thing. The second thing is you will have all these things in common, the things I'm getting ready to name if you're a nontraditional CEO. Whether you're tattoo, cannabis, movement studios, what have you, you own a brick-and-mortar, and I think that's really important. Because I know that some people listen to me who are coaches, who are service providers.
While you're welcome, pull up a seat because I do believe we can learn some things and we can have some dialogue, however, there is a different level of burden that I have for those who own brick-and-mortar businesses. Those of us who have rent to pay, come hell or hot water, so not just the mortgage at your house, you got rent to pay in several locations. You also have staff, specifically a lot of hourly staff or nonexempt staff. You're dealing with people who are not full-time. You're dealing with people who are part-time or hell, even what I call micro-time. They work a few hours a week.
More importantly, you know you’re a nontraditional CEO when you probably didn't come from a traditional corporate background. Not coming from a traditional corporate background, you don't have a lot of the training that someone would get if you were a middle manager or a C-suite executive in a traditional company. You don't have a lot of the layers of management that you have in traditional corporations. You don't have 15 middle managers, 4 people in HR. You don't have a place to escalate employee problems and concerns to. You don't have EAPs, you don't have any of that.
You are, like I said, number one, brick-and-mortar. Number two, you have a team, and 9 times out of 10, the majority of that staff is hourly and part-time. Then third, you don't come from a traditional corporate background. You have learned a lot about leadership management on your own through the school of hard knocks. That is what makes up a nontraditional CEO. If you find yourself in those spaces, you already know that some of the traditional corporate methods don't work well in our environment.
That's why I started this podcast. That's why I started coaching was because even though pole, for example, is considered a boutique fitness business, even though my studio and many studios around the world don't consider ourselves fitness, we consider ourselves more in the wellness realm of things but we wouldn't call ourselves traditional fitness studios, but some do. I know when I started looking for information though years ago about how I could get more students, how I could grow my revenue, more importantly, how I could grow my profit and start paying myself six figures, a lot of the information that I found was geared towards traditional fitness businesses.
There was nothing taboo about it. It was nothing difficult to market. A lot of the solutions they would give me, for example, this was my favorite, is partner with other local small businesses in your area and you guys can swap. We could do a coupon for a couple of free classes and we swap with the bakery down the street. Or maybe you can partner with the children's dance studio and get the moms to come to your pole dance classes. This was the type of advice I was getting.
What was crazy about it, and why I knew I had to figure out something different, was that while these marketers and coaches were well-meaning, they just didn't have the experience of having people not want to be bothered with you. Typically when you're nontraditional CEO in an edgy industry, people aren't quick to link up with you. The bakery didn't want to be affiliated with the stripper school. That was not a good look for them. The PTA probably ain’t going to hook up with a dispensary to give coupons and printed on the back of their pamphlets that they have, the little advertising that they do for the football team. Your dispensary is not going to be on the back of that.
Some of these traditional methods that grow traditional businesses fall flat with us. Another example is like running Facebook ads. A traditional business can run Facebook ads with nominal problems. You don't hear about their accounts getting shut down or people reporting their ads. That happens to nontraditional CEOs in these edgy industries. This happens to us on a regular. Not only will they shut your Facebook account ads down, they'll shut down your whole d*mn Instagram account. Who's been shadowbanned? I haven't heard of my bar studio being shadowbanned, or Instagram.
It's that type of stuff that has impacted nontraditional CEO in an edgy industry. So we've had to come up with different approaches to grow our businesses. The traditional ways of growing a business don't often apply to us. That's the first thing. So marketing and selling have to be done differently. That's what we're talking about on this podcast.
Now let's switch to leadership. What does it look like leading in a nontraditional space? Again, I've done podcasts before where I talk about the fact that people see us as family-oriented. We are often what I like to call, I've been calling this accidental leaders is what we are. Some of us tripped into leadership. What do you mean, Leslie, you tripped into leadership?
Let's use a tattoo artist as an example. You are bad artists like Cole. Everybody, you were probably working inside of a shop yourself at one point but your clientele got so big that you decided you want to go out on your own. So you got you a small little space. Your clientele was booming, and you looked up and you were so popular and so booked and busy that you were turning away money. You were turning away business and you were like, “Okay, wait a minute. We got people walking out the door.”
Or if you were a pole studio owner, you're like, “Man, I opened this business because I really enjoyed poling. I enjoy dance. I enjoy movement.” But the business necessitated that you grow because you were losing business because you couldn't accommodate all of the people because it was just you. What did you do? You started hiring people. When you started hiring people, you learn now you got to lead these people, you got to manage these people.
Many of us, and I know because I was there, many of us are like, “I didn't sign up for this people park.” Raise your hand if you didn't sign up for the people park. I tell my clients all the time, they initially come to me because they want to make more revenue. They want to pay themselves. They want to take a month off. They want to do those sorts of things, which is what my framework promotes and gives you the tools to provide that for you.
They come to me and they're just like, “I did not sign up for this people park. People be peopley and I just didn't want to do that. But I want to grow. I need to grow to make more money. I need to grow a business and not just own my job because I'm tired of working every holiday. I'm tired of not having weekends off. So I've had to hire some people but these people are peopley and I am not sure that I'm qualified or even have the desire to lead people.”
If that's you, raise your hand. I like to work with nontraditional CEOs because I not only understand the weight of that, more importantly, I understand the dynamics that are at play. We can't be putting solutions that were made for traditional businesses into our small micro businesses. It just doesn't work out well.
Everything that I'm going to be talking about this year is with you in mind. When I'm talking about marketing, when I'm talking about selling, know that I'm talking about I know how difficult it can be to market your controversial edgy taboo product. When I'm talking about leadership, I know how difficult and heavy it can be to manage people when you've never had the experience of doing that before. How difficult it is to manage part-time people, how difficult it is to attract talent, when people need full-time jobs, especially when we're going into a rocky economy. I see you. I'm there with you, and we’re going to get through this.
That is really what this podcast is going to be about this year. All about you, the nontraditional CEO. I'm super excited. We're going to have some guests this year. We're going to be doing some different things. I just can't wait to support you this year. I'm super curious what you might be interested in. What types of things would you like me to talk about?
What do you feel like you need support with that you haven't been able to find in the traditional leadership space, in a traditional marketing space? Let me know. Hit me up. You can always find me on IG @lesliedlyons, LinkedIn, Leslie D. Lyons, and of course, you can email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com. All right, my loves. Until next week. You be great, you keep walking in your purpose, and I will talk to you soon. Grace and peace.