I'm a textbook "Chief Everything Officer" deep in Founder Puberty - sales, distribution, finance, and hiring all route through me, and I'm on the road three weeks a month personally driving a mandated H-E-B rollout and a Chevron ExtraMile placement program to hard deadlines while raising $10M. My fear is that the scrappiness that got SUNBOY here is exactly what won't get it to $30M+: high-leverage work keeps losing to whatever's on fire, and I'm running out of myself to throw at the problem.
I have a coach and several strong advisors, but I'll own that I've pointed them at systems and operating questions rather than directing any of it at leveling myself up as a CEO. My main move has instead been hiring my way toward smoother scaling, with mixed success: I brought on an excellent Director of Distribution who took a real load off, I'm now recruiting a Director of National Accounts to own grocery and mass, and I structured an advisor-to-CMO engagement with a two-time exited operator. But hiring fast has meant building systems fast - they work, but they're rougher than they should be, and the gaps still route back to me.
Ninety days out, I want to walk into investor conversations as a CEO institutional capital backs, not a founder selling around his own bottleneck - because our sales, national accounts, and marketing are running on people and cadence that don't need me in the room. That's freedom: my time goes to the work only I can do - closing funding and spending time out in the market with our distributors and teams, turning what I learn there into long-term strategy.
I'm in a CPG space you know well. SUNBOY, as an FMB/malt-based RTD, is navigating terrain with a lot in common with what you scaled ZICO through - both in V1 and now in ZICO Rising's chapter with Chris at the helm. I'm about to embark on another raise while mid-execution on hard-deadline retail programs, with a few much bigger opportunities in the pipeline - so this isn't theoretical for me. The transition you teach is the wind in our sails right when we most need it. Timing could not be better.
Masterclass