What I Wish I’d Known My First Few Years as a Startup CEO

By Heidi Zak, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ThirdLove. Originally published on Quora.

Plenty of people want to be a CEO, but not many know what the job actually entails.

I co-founded ThirdLove with my husband, Dave, back in 2013. And I’ll always remember going on Bloomberg in 2014 — my first live press interview — to talk about the company.

I was so nervous that I didn’t sleep the night before. I got to the studio, they did my hair and makeup, and I went on. But I don’t remember a thing. I was so nervous, I blacked out.

Later, I went back and watched the interview. Luckily, I nailed it.

In a way, that’s what being a CEO really is about. It’s about accepting the challenge, psyching yourself up for it, and going out and executing. Then moving onto the next thing.

Because there’s always a next thing.

There’s always another challenge ahead.

Here’s what I wish I’d known before those first few years:

CEOs are tactical operators and executors.

Before I started ThirdLove, I only had a generic idea of what a CEO did.

The image in my head was of a Fortune 500-style CEO. A person whose job is to set a vision, inspire the team, and get everyone to execute on the plan. I saw the CEO as someone at the top, holding the reins and setting the direction of the company.

The reality is much different at a startup. In the early days, it’s not as strategic as you’d imagine. You’re a tactical operator, the executor of literally every aspect of your business.

I spent two years of my life as an investment banking analyst, which means I’m decent in excel and analytics. So for the first few years of ThirdLove, I was our head of production and planning. I was pretty handy with pivot tables, but I had to learn everything else on the fly.

I also spent a good amount of time living in Mexico onboarding our first manufacturing partner. I knew nothing about manufacturing bras — that was something else I had to figure out. During that period, I also wrote copy for our emails and ads. And on top of that, I used to answer every comment on our Facebook ads.

I don’t do all of that now, but my life as CEO during the first few years of the business was nothing like most people imagine.

It’s a hands-on job.

I would say, on average, something goes wrong once a day.

And when that happens, it’s my responsibility to deal with it.

We might need to let someone go. Or maybe the manufacturing contract negotiation is stalling out, and we can’t break through. There might even be an irate customer who wrote in about a terrible experience. There could be one of a hundred different things going wrong at any time. I have to get involved and figure out what happened, why it happened, and how we’re going to address it.

When you’re the boss, you’re essentially working a dual role — CEO and firefighter. If there’s an emergency, you’re called in to identify the problem, to solve it as quickly as possible, and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

You don’t have the luxury of just sitting back and watching it all play out. You have to get your hands dirty.

You need to keep a positive perspective.

Sometimes the challenges associated with running a company can feel overwhelming.

In 2015, we were raising our Series A round, and we had an investment opportunity with Binary Capital. They presented us with a term sheet that had some unfair clauses in it that made us pause. But we also really needed the money, and we had put other firms on hold since we had received this term sheet.

You might remember Binary Capital as the VC firm whose co-founder, Justin Caldbeck, departed after being repeatedly accused of making unwanted advances toward women he worked with. So, looking back, it’s actually a relief we didn’t take their money.

But it was really hard not to accept the offer at the time. We were between a rock and a hard place. It felt like we had no good options, like we were backed into a corner.

There will be times when you feel beaten down and none of your choices look great. You have to keep a positive perspective. As you continue to battle through the tough times, those moments of doubt and frustration will begin to affect you less and less.

No amount of advice can make up for actual experience.

I’d love to tell you that you’ll be fine as long as you read enough articles full of advice and lessons to be learned.

But truthfully, everyone’s journey as a CEO is going to be different.

There’s no way of avoiding the hard parts of that journey. You can’t skip the bad and go right to the good, no matter how many books you read or podcasts you listen to. Just take the advice that works for you, learn how to apply it to your situation, and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

By Heidi Zak, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ThirdLove. Originally published on Quora.

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