What your founder secretly wants from you

I climbed from doing marketing grunt work to GM of an $800 million business when I figured out one thing…

Founders and CEOs desperately want to promote you. They'd love nothing more than for you to run pieces of their business, if they believed you could do it well.

What I learned from watching "Alex"

Early in my career, I started working for a guy we’ll call Alex. He was 28 years old, and running the largest division of a publicly traded software company. I was 27, and I kept asking myself, "Why is he the VP, and I'm just a marketer?" I studied his every move.

In meetings with the CEO, Alex spoke like he owned the business. He talked about the projects we were doing, but then he took it 10% further and connected our work to shareholder outcomes – profit and growth.

Nothing fancy. He just connected everything to revenue, margins, and and growth.

So I did some digging to find out where Alex got his MBA. Turns out he didn't have one. He just had a Bachelor of Arts.

That's when it clicked: Alex wasn’t running a business because of some credential, he was running a business because he thought and spoke like a business owner. He saw every project through the lens of: "How does this grow our business?" Then he connected those dots.

How to be seen as strategic. 

So I started thinking (and talking) about my own work from an owner’s perspective.

Here's what I mean:

• Instead of "We increased engagement by 20%," I'd connect my work to business outcomes: "We're retaining 20% more customers in month 2, which, if it holds, will boost ARR by $2M over the next 24 months."

• Instead of sharing test results, I'd share insights: "This teaches us our customers aren't price sensitive if they understand our value. Therefore, we should..."

• Instead of optimizing each channel, I'd think in systems: "Meta customers have better retention than affiliates, so we should shift spend from affiliates to Meta, and dig into why affiliates are underperforming."

The shift wasn't in my tactics – it was in my perspective. I stopped thinking like someone who executed tactics and started thinking like someone who owned the business.

What happened next

It worked. Within six months, I was getting invited to strategy meetings. Finance people started asking for my advice on spending, and defending my work when I wasn't in the room. Responsibilities started coming my way. Eventually I worked my way up to that GM role – running a business.

I talk to founders all the time, and honestly, they would love to find people they could promote. They pay recruiters massive fees to find people who think like owners. You could be that person.

My advice: Don’t just report what you did, explain what it means for the business. Connect every project to revenue, costs, and growth, using language you’d hear in board meetings and earnings calls.

Think like an owner. Talk like and owner. Become an owner.

I hope this helps!