CEO Focus Western Region

10/19/2026

🎃 HALLOWEEN OFFICE PERSONALITIES — DAY 1 🧛

THE MICROMANAGER: COUNT DRACULA

Every office has one.

They hover over your shoulder, question every decision, and somehow manage to drain the life out of a perfectly good project.

They don't trust anyone to work independently. Even the smallest task requires three approvals, two status reports, and a meeting that could have been an email.

Their favorite phrase? "Just checking in."

Their greatest fear? Delegation. 🦇

Costume idea: Black cape, plastic fangs, a clipboard, and a coffee mug that says "I Need an Update."

CEO Focus Management Tip: Good leaders provide direction and accountability without controlling every detail. Sometimes the best way to get results is to step aside and let talented people do their jobs.

👻 Your turn: Have you ever worked for Count Dracula? Or are you brave enough to admit you've occasionally been one?

Stay tuned tomorrow for another Halloween office personality!

10/16/2026

Here's a mistake I've seen businesses make more times than I can count.

They have a terrific salesperson. This person knows the products, knows the customers, consistently produces results, and makes a lot of money for the company.

So when the sales manager position opens up, who gets promoted?

The best salesperson, of course.

It seems perfectly logical until you consider that selling and managing salespeople are two very different jobs.

Now, instead of spending the day talking to customers, that former top producer is dealing with performance problems, coaching people who don't think the same way, and trying to figure out why everyone else can't sell the way they do.

Meanwhile, the company has lost its best salesperson and may have gained a mediocre manager.

Some excellent salespeople become excellent managers. But it doesn't happen automatically.

Before making that promotion, I'd want to know whether the person really wants to manage people and whether they've demonstrated any ability to help others succeed.

Being good at something doesn't necessarily mean you're good at teaching it.

Mike Struzik
CEO Focus

10/14/2026

I've always thought one of the biggest problems with being CEO is figuring out who's telling you the truth.

When you're new to the position, you may not notice it right away. But people begin treating you differently.

They agree with your suggestions a little more readily. They hesitate before questioning your decisions. And sometimes they tell you what they think you want to hear.

That's dangerous.

I've seen plenty of business decisions that might have turned out differently if someone had simply asked a few uncomfortable questions before the decision was made.

Every CEO needs someone who can say, "I don't think you're looking at this correctly," without worrying about the consequences.

It might be a trusted colleague, another business owner, or someone outside the company altogether.

The important thing is having a place where you can think out loud, challenge your own assumptions, and get an honest response.

You won't always like what you hear.

That's probably a good sign.

Mike Struzik
CEO Focus

10/12/2026

There's something interesting about watching someone become CEO for the first time.

They've worked hard to get there. They know the business, they've earned the respect of their colleagues, and they're excited about having the authority to make decisions.

Then they discover how many decisions there are to make.

People bring you problems they should probably be solving themselves. You're expected to know what's happening in every department, and somehow you're supposed to find time to think about where the company ought to be three years from now.

One of the hardest lessons for a new CEO is learning that you don't have to solve every problem that lands on your desk.

In fact, if you're solving all the problems, you may be creating a bigger one.

You're teaching everyone to depend on you.

The real challenge is building an organization that can function without your constant involvement.

That's not always easy, especially for someone who got to the top by being very good at getting things done.

Mike Struzik
CEO Focus

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10/09/2026

One Thing That Still Drives Me Crazy After 40+ Years in Sales

I’ve spent most of my career helping companies improve the way they sell, and there is one sentence that still makes me nervous:

**“Our salespeople all have their own way of doing things.”**

Individual personality is fine. Individual judgment is important.

But if five salespeople qualify opportunities five different ways, present value five different ways and decide when to follow up five different ways, you don’t really have a sales process.

You have five experiments running at the same time.

Then management wonders why the forecast is unreliable, why some opportunities sit in the pipeline forever and why the top salesperson seems to possess some mysterious talent nobody else can duplicate.

Usually it isn’t magic.

The best salesperson has developed a process — even if nobody has bothered to identify it, document it or teach it to anyone else.

A good sales process doesn’t turn salespeople into robots. It gives them a common framework for figuring out what the customer actually needs, whether there is a real opportunity and what should happen next.

After more than four decades in sales and sales management, I still believe this:

**If your sales results depend on who happens to be doing the selling, you haven’t built a sales organization yet.**

You’ve built a collection of salespeople.

— Mike Struzik
CEO Focus Western Region

10/07/2026

Fictional scenario. Real leadership problem.

The Customer Who Was Never Profitable

A CEO I’ll call “Laura” had a customer everyone treated like royalty. It was a big account, they had been around for years, and nobody wanted to risk upsetting them.

The problem was that the customer also wanted special pricing, rush jobs, custom requests and exceptions to just about every rule.

Whenever someone raised a concern, the answer was always the same: “We can’t afford to lose them.”

Eventually, someone asked a better question:

“Are we sure we can afford to keep them?”

That was when Laura’s team finally sat down and looked at the whole relationship instead of just the revenue number.

They added up the discounts, overtime, rework, expedited shipping, extra service, billing problems and the amount of senior management time the account consumed.

The result was uncomfortable.

The customer who looked so impressive on the sales report was barely profitable. Some months, they weren’t profitable at all.

The problem wasn’t really the customer. The problem was that nobody had ever stopped to calculate the true cost of saying yes to them.

Revenue can make an account look important. Profit tells you whether it actually is.

Sometimes the customer you’re most afraid to lose is the one quietly draining the business.

Do you know which customers actually make you money?

— CEO Focus Western Region

10/05/2026

The $80,000 Chair

A CEO I’ll call “Mark” had a problem.

One of his senior managers had become nearly impossible to work with.

Talented? Yes.

Productive? Sometimes.

Toxic? Absolutely.

Everyone knew it.

Everyone complained about it.

And yet Mark kept saying:

“We can’t afford to lose him.”

So the company kept paying the price.

Good employees stopped speaking up.

Meetings became tense.

Two strong people left.

Projects slowed down because everyone worked around one person’s ego.

Finally, someone in the peer group asked Mark a simple question:

“How much is that chair costing you?”

Not his salary.

The chair.

The one occupied by the person everybody was afraid to confront.

Mark started adding up the turnover, lost productivity, delayed decisions, and management time.

The answer wasn’t $80,000.

It was probably much more.

Sometimes the most expensive person in the company isn’t the highest-paid employee.

It’s the one nobody has the courage to deal with.

Who challenges you when everyone inside the company has learned to stay quiet?

— CEO Focus Western Region
Fictional scenario. Real leadership problem.

10/02/2026

“Employees from hell.”

That subject line landed in my inbox today. I don’t like reducing people to a label, but I do understand the frustration behind it.

A CEO should explain the problem, set clear expectations, and give someone a fair opportunity to improve. Then comes the hard part: if the situation still isn’t working, you may have to let that person go.

Keeping your soul doesn’t mean postponing that decision forever. It means making it honestly, respectfully, and with the backbone to protect the rest of the team.

—Mike Struzik

09/30/2026

Would you rather be known as a **fair leader** or a **powerful one**?

Power can get people to follow a decision. Fairness can earn the trust that makes them want to.

If you had to choose which reputation mattered more, which would you choose—and why?

—Mike Struzik

09/28/2026

I saw a meme claiming it’s better to be a wolf everyone hates than a donkey everyone rides.

Why are those the only choices?

A CEO can set high standards, make hard decisions, and refuse to be taken advantage of while still treating people with kindness and respect. Being feared isn’t proof of strength. And being kind doesn’t mean saying yes to everything.

You can build an effective business and keep your soul. There shouldn’t be a trade-off.

—Mike Struzik