Do You Actually Think Like a CEO or Are You Just Busy Running Your Business?
Let me ask you something…
When was the last time you stopped like really stopped, and took a good, hard look at your business from the outside?
Not your to-do list. Not your content calendar. And, not even your email open rates or how many views you got on your reel.
I mean the big stuff. The stuff that actually moves the needle.
Because here’s what I’ve noticed, and I say this as someone who has been in this industry for nearly two decades.
So many business owners – even really talented and experienced ones – get lost in the weeds of running their business that completely miss the things that actually hold them back.
They’re tweaking button colors when they should be rethinking their offers…
They’re posting every day on social media trying to get as many followers as possible, when they should be getting HIGHLY specific about who they’re actually talking to and stop worrying about their follower count.
And they’re saying “yes” to everything when they should be saying no to most things.
Sound familiar? Today I’m going to walk you through 6 brutal questions I ask myself every 90 days to think like a CEO.
And I promise you, if you answer these honestly, at least one of them is going to hit. Let’s get into it.
QUESTION 1: Am I Tripping Over Pennies On The Way To Dollars?
This one is near and dear to my heart because I have been guilty of this more times than I care to admit.
Am I tripping over pennies on the way to dollars?
Here’s what I mean by that.
It is so easy – especially as a marketer or business owner – to spend enormous amounts of time optimizing the small stuff. I mean, we LIVE for optimization, right?
We’re testing button colors.
Subject lines.
Graphics.
Font choices.
We’re splitting pixels over here.
The kind of stuff that makes you feel productive because you’re technically working on “optimizing” your marketing.
But the cold hard reality is, none of that little stuff matters if the big stuff is not working.
If your offer is wrong. Or if you’re talking to the wrong audience. Or if your message is way off base. You gotta do some heavy lifting.
I had a client who once said something that really stuck with me.
He said: Test the forest, test the trees, test the branches. Then test the leaves.
The philosophy behind it is that most people spend all their time testing the leaves. The tiny stuff. When they should be zooming way out and asking bigger questions.
Like: is this the right offer? Is this the right market? Is this the right message for this audience right now?
Because yes, audiences and markets shift over time.
A message that worked for an audience 2 years ago might not work for that same audience today.
This is the big stuff. And it matters so much more than all of that “small stuff” combined.
At Copy Posse, we make sure we’re prioritizing the “big stuff” by setting quarterly goals or “rocks”. This is a concept from the Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS, created by Gino Wickman and outlined in his book Traction.
Our quarterly rocks are the 3-7ish most important priorities we need to accomplish over the next 90 days. These priorities represent the “big things” that move us closer to achieving our annual goals and long-term vision.
The idea is simple but powerful.
Imagine you have a jar, and you’ve been tasked to fill it with a certain amount of rocks, a certain amount of pebbles, and a certain amount of sand.
That jar represents your capacity: your time, your energy, your resources.
Now if you pour the sand in first, all the tiny tasks and tweaks. And then you pour in the pebbles – the medium stuff like sending emails, posting on social media.
By the time you get to the rocks – the big important projects, like say, developing a new funnel, ad strategy or offer, there’s no room left. You have no capacity.
But if you put the rocks in first? Then the pebbles. Then the sand. It all fits.
So the question I want you to sit with is this, where are you pouring sand when you should be placing rocks?
What are the big swings in your business that you keep putting off because you’re too busy optimizing the small stuff?
Alright, next up…
QUESTION 2: What Am I Willing To Do That Others In My Industry Aren’t?
This is really a question about differentiation.
I’ll answer from my own experience because it’ll hit differently than any generic advice I could give you.
Here’s what I’m willing to do that most people in my industry are not.
Show up. Consistently. In real time. And a lot of the time for free.
Since 2019, I have posted a new video on my YouTube channel and my blog almost every single week. That’s well over 300 free tutorials. On everything from copywriting, marketing, branding, mindset, business – and tons more in between all of it.
Free. Every week. For 7 years.
And I know what you might be thinking: Alex, doesn’t that give away too much? Shouldn’t you be saving all the good stuff for your paid programs?
No. Absolutely not. And here’s why.
In a world where everyone is hiding behind automations, AI-generated content and templated email sequences, showing up as a real human being consistently, with genuine value. That is the differentiator.
But it goes beyond YouTube.
Inside my private communities, I show up live every single month for Q&As. Not a pre-recorded video. Not a chatbot. Me. Live. Answering questions in real time and coaching my community through their biggest roadblocks and problems.
If you’ve been a part of Copy Posse or taken literally any of my programs, you know that I don’t hold anything back.
I pride myself on overdelivering and giving way more than expected.
Because here’s what I believe: people don’t just want information. They want insights, they want access, and they want personalized feedback.
They want to feel seen. And they want to know that the person they’re learning from actually gives a damn about their success.
And that level of commitment, that willingness to show up live, consistently, for my Posse, year over year.
That is what builds the kind of trust that no funnel, no automation and no AI tool can replicate.
So the question for you is…
What are you willing to do that others in your space aren’t?
What commitment can you make (and actually keep) that signals to your audience that you are different?
Because that answer is your edge. And it’s the thing that will compound over time in ways that shortcuts never will.
Alright, question 3…
QUESTION 3: Am I Repelling The People I’m Not For?
Now I know that sounds counterintuitive. We’re marketers. We want to attract people, right? Why would we want to repel anyone?
Well the truth is you cannot attract without also repelling. It’s literally science.
Think of a magnet. It creates two opposing forces, right?
And the clearer and bolder you are about who you are and what you stand for, the more powerfully you attract the right people.
Let me give you a real example from my own business:
When I started my YouTube channel and launched the Copy Posse, I made a very deliberate decision to be hyper-specific. I was talking about copywriting. That’s it.
Not social media. Not blogging. And not general business tips. Copywriting.
And I had A ton of well-meaning people tell me, Alex, you’d probably grow faster if you talked about more things. Broaden your content. Appeal to a wider audience.
And I get why that advice sounds logical.
But I did the opposite. I got more specific. I got clearer on who I was talking to and who I was not talking to. And I made sure my values of “anti-bro marketing” were front and center.
And what happened? The people who were meant to find me found me. And they found me fast and became customers fast.
Because when you speak directly to someone, they feel it. They feel seen. They feel like you’re talking to them and only them.
So the question is…
Are you trying to appeal to everyone? Or are you playing it safe? Because if you are, you’re probably resonating with no one.
Get specific and repel the people who aren’t for you fast so you can truly attract the ones who are.
Moving on…
QUESTION 4: Am I Thinking Like A CEO?
This one is personal for me. And I want to be really honest with you about it.
For almost 10 years, I was a solo freelancer. Just me. No team. No one to delegate to. I was the writer, the strategist, the project manager, the customer service rep, all of it.
And I got really good at being the person who figured everything out.
But then I started the Copy Posse and my business grew, and then I hired a team, and my team grew.
And that skill of being “the person who figured everything out” became a liability.
What color should this graphic be? How should we respond to this email? What should we do about this tech issue?
When every single decision, big or small, flows through you, you become the bottleneck fast.
I realized pretty quickly that if I didn’t change the way I operated, I was going to slow everything down. Including my own growth. And burn out in the process.
So one of the biggest shifts I made, and honestly one I’m still working on, was learning to back off and truly empower my team to make decisions.
And not just make decisions, but make them fast. Because fast decisions are always better than slow decisions, even if they are the wrong decisions.
I know that sounds like super scary and counterintuitive, but the most successful people I know make decisions quickly, even if they’re imperfect.
They’re getting into action, getting feedback, and pivoting fast. Whereas the people who wait for all the information? They’re still waiting.
So a few years ago, I sat my team down, and we implemented the 1-3-1 rule.
When someone on my team has a problem that they can’t solve or make a final decision themselves.
instead of just bringing me the problem and waiting for me to solve it, they have to go through a 1-3-1 decision making framework.
They come to me with the (1) problem, along with (3) possible solutions, and their (1) recommendation for the best solution or path.
Nine times out of ten, I agree with their recommendation. And by the time it gets to me, all I have to do is say yes.
So ask yourself…
Where are you the bottleneck in your own business?
And what would it look like to trust yourself — or your team — to move faster?
QUESTION 5: Where Am I Overdoing It?
Whew… yeah.
In 2024, I was doing everything. And I mean everything. I was spending more money on ads than I ever had before…
I was segmenting my list for the first time…
And I was building more complex funnels…
And I was posting on social media every day…
I was filming short-form content like crazy…
I was speaking at masterminds….
Plus, I was launching new memberships and mini-courses left and right.
I was doing all the things.
And you know what it felt like? It felt like swimming upstream through a river of mud.
More effort. More complexity. And more moving parts.
And despite all of this extra effort and literal non-stop work, my business wasn’t growing. In fact, I made less money that year.
Finally, the burnout got so bad that I was forced to ask myself – where am I overdoing it? Where have I made this so complicated that I’ve lost sight of what actually works?
Because here’s the truth about marketing that I think we all need to come back to sometimes…
Marketing is not about having the most complex funnel. It’s not about being on every platform. It’s not about having the most sophisticated automation sequence.
Marketing is about one thing.
Connecting people from where they are to where they want to be.
Problem. Solution. Bridge.
That’s it. That’s what it has always been.
And when I stripped everything back, when I made simplicity my north star, I remembered why I started this business in the first place.
And more importantly, I remembered what actually works.
Connection over content.
Trust over transactions.
Authenticity over automation.
Insights over information.
Solutions over sophistication.
As my friend Susie Moore says “Let it be easy.”
Marketing is not complicated.
So wherever you are right now, if things feel harder than they should, if you feel like you’re working more and getting less.
I want you to ask yourself this question:
Where have I overcomplicated something that can be simple?
Because sometimes the most powerful marketing move you can make is to go back to basics. Back to the problem. Back to the solution. And back to the human being on the other side of your message.
That’s where the magic has always been.
And next up…
QUESTION 6: Am I Being Specific Enough In My Messaging?
We live in an incredibly noisy world right now. Everyone is creating content. Everyone is running ads. And everyone is showing up online trying to get attention.
And the vast majority of it blurs together because it’s generic.
Generic hooks. Generic advice. And generic calls to action.
And the antidote to generic is specific.
I already talked about how being specific in my audience helped me build the Copy Posse from the ground up quickly.
But I want to give you a more tactical example of what this looks like in practice right now.
Some of our best performing ads — the ones with the highest click-through rates, the best conversion rates, the most qualified leads — are the ones that open with a direct callout to a specific person.
Copywriters…
Freelancers…
Marketers…
Business Owners…
Starting our ads off this way immediately signals to the right person, hey, this is for you. Pay attention.
And they immediately filter out everyone else – which is a good thing – because those people would never buy from you anyway.
Now here’s the thing about specificity that I want you to really understand.
It feels scary. It feels like you’re leaving people out. And it feels like you’re making your audience smaller. But the opposite is true.
You’ve heard it a thousand times, when you speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one.
Sounds easy on paper but it’s a lot harder to stick to your guns when push comes to shove.
You’ll be so tempted to make your messaging a little *less* specific, a little more broad. But I urge you not to.
So now the only question is who are you really talking to?
And are you being brave enough to say it out loud?
Are these questions sometimes uncomfortable? Yes.
But they have had such a massive impact on my business that I literally come back to them over and over again.
Am I tripping over pennies on the way to dollars?
What am I willing to do that others aren’t?
Am I repelling the people I’m not for?
Am I thinking like a CEO?
Where am I overdoing it?
And am I being specific enough in my messaging?
Of course, asking these questions is one thing.
But actually having the space, the community and the support to work through the answers — and implement real changes in your business — that’s a whole different level.
And that is exactly what REIGN is for…
REIGN is my mastermind for 6-figure marketers and business owners who are ready to stop playing small, get clear on their positioning, build their personal brand and become the reigning authority in their space.
We go deep. We get real. And we do the kind of work that actually moves the trees — not just the leaves.
Applications only open twice a year.
Until then. I’m Alex. Ciao for now.
