Do you dream of being your own boss? Running a fast-growing company? Becoming a sought-after public speaker and consultant?
How about being CEO before hitting age 30?
Sean Si pulled it off and shares how he did it his book CEO at 22: The Risks, Challenges, Success and Failures of Starting Up Young. He describes himself as a serial entrepreneur who has founded four companies. He established the first, SEO Hacker, while he was only 22 and the other three before he turned 29.
Because of Sean’s prowess in systems, solutions and leadership, he has done consulting work for numerous firms and often changed the way they worked. He also speaks on entrepreneurship, digital marketing, SEO, youth empowerment, lean start-up, team building, email marketing, and business management and development.
A great way of approaching CEO at 22 is to keep in mind that while the book offers a blueprint for warp-speed success, the real blueprint is Sean Si himself. If you have a self-limiting belief that to be a (scandalously) young CEO, you need to be born to a prestigious family, earn dazzling academic credentials, or cut your teeth in years of corporate service, Sean breaks the stereotype:
- Raised in a Chinese middle-class company
- Failed 28 units in college
- Hooked on a computer game named DOTA
- Got a dream job at Hewlett Packard… and resigned five months later
Sean left HP to start SEO Hacker, Inc., which has grown to be the premier SEO services company in the Philippines, catering to both Filipino and international clients. It was not a whimsical or bahala na decision. He tells how he had to work out a business plan and get the blessings of his elders. So if you are having cold feet to leave the comfort zone of a 9-to-5 job, as the millennials would say, Sean can relate.
The author crafts the book the same way he writes his highly searched blogs: conversational, authentic, story-based. While it dispenses explicit principles from time to time, much of the lessons are between the lines. Here are two of my personal reflections which I scribbled on some pages:
- Failure is not the opposite of success; it is part of success.
- Your job as a leader is not to be liked. Your job is to lead.
There is no sugar-coating in this book. Sean readily admits to his hiring boo-boos in the early, heady days of SEO Hacker. Among them, he hired people who then didn’t even show up at work. (And you thought you had recruitment problems!)
Another refreshing candor is how he went through harrowing periods when clients did not renew their contracts and he wondered where to get money for payroll. Check out an “edge of your seat” anecdote on how he was tempted to get a loan, which was against his principles (page 90-91).
One of Sean’s mantra is “Don’t work smart. Work hard.” This may surprise the multitude who believe the popular opposite. But his logic is that since everyone has access to basically the same technology, the arena is no longer knowledge, but grit.
Values is also a prominent topic in the book. Sean generously ascribes them to the Bible, among them honoring your parents and a humble dependence on God’s help. He also writes the show-not-tell version. In Chapter 6, he shares the core values of SEO Hacker and how he turns them into practice.
He adds that if you have established your principles early, you will save 75% of time in making decisions. That’s because you will be filtering opportunities and issues through these non-negotiables and save yourself a lot of second-guessing and hand-wringing.
The book is loaded with practical wisdom and thus serve as a friendly guide to the would-be entrepreneur, no matter what the age:
- Why staying put in a secure job is the riskiest thing you can ever do (page 50)
- Why you should serve your company first, then your customers (page 68-70)
- How Steve Jobs inspired Sean to do “whiteboard management” and ensure focus for the team (page 82-84)
- How to network to form business alliances and rich friendships (page 108-111)
- How to pursue personal growth (check out how he really learns from a book, page 114)
- How to recruit mentors (page 120-122)
- How to ensure low turnover rates (page 130, hint: know how to cast a vision)
- Why it doesn’t always pay to be on “hero mode” (page 143-144)
- Why everyone loves a leader, but why few people love managers (pages 150-151)
- Why one must subject himself to an anonymous 360… and have a thick skin (pages 152-154)
- How one can successfully manage a remote team (pages 155-160)
We usually visualize a CEO as this wizened dude finally landing on the C-suite after decades of slogging through Corporate. But that does not have to be you. As Sean Si would say, it’s not a matter of age. It’s a matter of guts, discipline, leadership, and most of all, a steadfast faith in God.
You will find CEO at 22 an instructive and inspiring read. It will ignite your dreams and forge your own path… way before you’re wizened.
About the author: Aside from being a serial entrepreneur, Sean Si is an angel investor, podcast host (Leadership Stack), and business consultant. For more about him, check out https://www.linkedin.com/in/seansi/
Contact him via Linkedin or his website https://sean.si/
Ordering information: Buy the book via https://sean.si/book/
In the past 20 years while my mom still drew breath, I have learned to hug her, tell her how much she meant to me, and kiss her on the forehead. I grew up as an only child immersed in books and thus I was neither expressive nor social. (Marriage changed all that, but that is another story.)
I am grateful, because when I planted my last kiss on her forehead, she was already cold.
I felt surreal during the past four days. From the phone call I got last Monday at 1 a.m., telling me that my mom stopped breathing, to this morning, witnessing her remains entering the maw of the incinerator, I felt like I was floating through a black-and-white episode of the Twilight Zone.
I chose to be Stoic for the meantime: do what you can, accept what you cannot change. I refused to be paralyzed by grief. I had to keep mental clarity for the decisions to be made and problems to be solved. I will have plenty of time to mourn later.
Yet I must admit to dark musings. Is this all there is? Sure, while we are young and energetic, we carve a great life. We rack up awards, taste worldly pleasures, and enjoy community.
But what awaits some – sooner if not later – will be the uphill battle against a protracted, agonizing illness. For others, it will be the dark chamber: the dulling of mental faculties, the loss of executive functions. For many, it will be attending more and more funerals, until one reaches his own.
So what is the point of that great life, if it will all succumb to pain and tears?
Still, I am grateful:
- That my mom died peacefully in her sleep. It could have been much worse.
- That my wife Lucy and my cousins Eugene, Eric, and Ellen supported me in the administrative matters.
- That my first cousins flew in from Cebu to pay their respects. I have not seen them for 30 years and during the wake, they regaled me with stories about my mom’s kindness. While they studied in Manila, my mom cooked their baon, provided allowances, and even shouldered their taxi fare because she didn’t trust the buses. “Koko” was their second mom – and I didn’t know it then!
- That I have a good boss who covered for me and a solid team who didn’t bother me with work problems. (But I checked my work emails and Viber from time to time.)
- That the funeral, columbarium, and catering service-providers were efficient. (Hint: it helps to be process-oriented.)
- That Lucy and I had the energy to manage the wake. (Sustained by the Spirit, powered by coffee.)
So, yes. Life can seem futile in the end. “We were with child, we writhed in pain, but we gave birth to wind” (Isaiah 26:18).
But life carries its own gifts and glories, and for that we can be grateful amidst the grief. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4).
And what I am most grateful for? For those in Jesus Christ, Death does not have the final word. The Ravager will, one day, be himself ravaged. He is the defeated foe. In due time, God will make everything right.
Everything.
As I type this, I feel like I can sleep for a week. At last, I get the solitude I have been craving for (fellow introverts can relate). My mom is now at her final resting place. The flowers at the funeral chapel are being thrown away. The mourners have gone home.
Time to decompress. Time to reflect. The void is real. She really is gone. The enormity of being orphaned is now sinking in. The quiet heartache will finally get the attention it deserves.
For those who poured out their condolences to me and my family, thank you.
For those who took the time to pay their respects, thank you.
For my family, especially the cousins, both from Manila and Cebu, thank you.
Only in the darkest valleys can love shine the brightest.
Sooner or later, some (if not all) of our dreams won’t come true.
Take, for example, the ambitious yuppie out to make a big name for himself in the corporate world, only to toil in obscurity. Or the mid-life person who looks back at his life choices with bitter regret. Or a person entering retirement, wondering what he will do for the rest of his life.
When our cherished dreams go unfulfilled or suppressed, in one sense they have died. It is seasons like this that we need to reconnect with Easter.
The wonderful news is that death does not have the final word. Christians worldwide celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We believe that He died, was buried and rose from the dead. In this way, He validated His claims to be the Son of God, Lord and Savior of the world.
Let us embrace the world as it really is, not as how we want it to be. It is great to dream big and set goals. But goals that hinge on the behavior of other people or on favorable circumstances can be recipes for frustration.
It sounds like a big gamble, but sometimes we have to let go of cherished goals before we can discover loftier ones.
I know of a mid-life person kept complaining about his less-than-stellar career. After a while, he realized that he was crippling himself of the ability to improve his situation. He finally let go of his unrealized dreams.
He was at peace. He no longer sees his office as a dungeon, but as a divine appointment. “I am here because God put me here,” he told me, “Now I will be faithful to the task.”
Such is the power of Easter. Dreams have died, but new meaning sprouted to life.
Dr. Gordon Smith offers this sage advice: God will lead us every step of the way, but He leads us one step at a time. God knows the end from the beginning, but we in our finiteness can’t even see what lies around the corner.
We cook up great dreams for ourselves, but God has far more wonderful dreams for us. Since He is in full control of people and circumstances, we can be sure His goals for us will come true. We must believe this even if, for the meantime, the path is dark and difficult.
Remember, one cannot have Easter without the Cross. Even if our present life is the product of poor choices, God can use even that for our blessing.
As long as we entrust ourselves to Him, no failure is final or fatal. In due time, He will redeem even our heartaches and disappointments.
Death could have barred Jesus from being with us in our triumphs and tragedies. But the good news of Easter is that He overcame death so that indeed He can be by our side. Not only in this world, but with God for all eternity.
May God open doors of blessing for you, just as He opened the door of a tomb that fateful Sunday.
Thomas is us: we with a wounded soul, desperate to believe, but dreading to be hurt again. He loved Jesus so much that when he saw his beloved Master hanging naked and bleeding on the cross, his world collapsed.
When he heard the rumors that Jesus had risen again, it was more out of anguish than scorn when he spat, “Unless I put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”
If we long to be healed, what is it that we want Jesus to reveal to us? His presence? His compassion? His meekness?
The wonderful thing was that it was not Thomas who sought Jesus; Jesus was the one who sought Thomas.
All the remaining Apostles were in a locked room and Jesus came. There is no locked room in our hearts that Jesus cannot enter, if we are willing – but unable – to open that door.
Jesus does not barge in or kick the door open. But He does make His presence known when we least expect it, even when we are stewing in our own neurosis.
I find comfort that Jesus greeted everyone in the room, “Peace be with you!” and then He turned to Thomas. We may be in a crowd, we may be in a congregation, but the Good Shepherd intimately knows each of us.
In the story, He has singled out a sheep wandering in doubt. So, too, His eyes are always upon each of us.
Jesus did not scold or deride Thomas for his doubt. “After all these three years, how dare you?!” No, in tender grace, He offered Thomas to see and touch His hands and side.
We are never told if Thomas actually touched the hands and side. I get the impression that just one look at the Risen Savior was enough for him to fall on his knees and worship. Perhaps the antidote to anxiety and despair is not information, but incarnation.
Have you noticed that although Jesus had a resurrected body, He chose to keep the marks on His hands and sides? That is perhaps the most amazing lesson of all.
When we are tempted to worry about our finances, health, career or relationships, perhaps what we need is another hard look at those marks. In Jesus’ wounds, we find healing for our own.
Thomas lived on to be a staunch follower of the Risen Lord, forsaking all, even his own life. Tradition says that he has brought the Gospel all the way to India and was eventually martyred.
It won’t be long that we will be “back to reality”. We will once more slog through the valley, the forest, the wilderness. I wish we can carry the consolation of Holy Week every day.
But in one sense, we can. When we are tempted anew to despair, when we find ourselves again in a locked room, our magnificent Lord finds us and shows us His marks: “See? This is how much I love you. Do you think after what I have gone through, I will abandon you?”
Thank you, Thomas.
Jesus was betrayed by one of his “direct reports.”
He was hauled to a kangaroo court and sentenced to what is arguably the most monstrous means of execution even devised by man.
He was rejected, beaten up, flogged, stripped, spat at and mocked at.
Finally, brutal Roman soldiers hammered spikes through his wrists and feet, then raised Him up, stark naked, on a rough wooden cross like a piece of raw meat.
We all know that Jesus went through a horrible, excruciating crucifixion. What we don’t usually think about is where He is now. Anticipating Easter, God raised Him up not only from the dead, but to kingly dominion – the crown.
The “no cross, no crown” principle is universal. The warrior’s motto is “no guts, no glory.” Health buffs chant “no pain, no gain.” No Olympic athlete can expect winning a gold medal without the rigors and sacrifices of training.
A friend of mine was hired as a church secretary. Now you may think that working in a church is like a preview of Heaven, blissful harmony with co-workers who are candidates for sainthood.
A shock awaited her. Her predecessor gave her such a hard time during the turn-over period that she felt humiliated and overworked.
My friend told the senior pastor that she wanted to quit just a few days after being hired. The pastor sympathetically listened. After she poured out her grief, he wisely said, “You are free to resign, but you will be missing out on the glory had you stayed.”
Encouraged, she put up with her predecessor’s attitude until it was the latter’s time to leave. Now with free hand, she re-organized the systems and files of the church office until it was the model of efficiency. She stayed on for three years, capping each year with an excellent rating in her performance appraisals.
When it was her time to leave, she made sure that her replacement would not go through a hurtful and frustrating turnover she had before. In fact, she was so organized, the turn-over to the new secretary took less than a day. My friend left in glory.
When you will bear your own cross – being overworked and underpaid, being shouted at or exploited, being in obscurity or despair – I encourage you to consider Him who endured His cross until the time He was raised to a position of indisputable, glorious authority.
Perhaps your cross is being jobless in the first place.
But as long as we entrust ourselves to the Father, He will make everything right in the end.
It was true during the first Holy Week. It remains true this week.
Sometimes leadership means doing the opposite of a status quo.
Consider this simple example. I run two factories. I was manager of the first for about three years. Then the manager of the second factory retired and I was given his operations as well. Both factories are within the same compound.
Soon afterwards, I checked the office of the retired manager. There on his desk was a gleaming service bell, the kind you see in hotel reception desks.
Curious, I pressed the bell. TING!
One staff rose from a nearby cubicle and dutifully went to me. It was soon evident that my predecessor used the bell to summon someone to his office so he can issue instructions or hand over some documents.
“What am I? A king?” I thought.
So I told that staff to remove the bell. That was the first and last time I ever used it. I like to think that this simple act spoke volumes more than if I were to give a flowery inaugural speech.
I have the habit of going to people, not telling them to go to me. I am a big believer of servant leadership and it is more of deeds, not words.
For example, HR would leave a document on my desk for my signature. After I signed it, I would hand-carry the document to the HR office. This also allowed me some walking exercise and small talk with the troops.
Later, I learned one angle of how I got the second factory. Its operations head noticed my practice and when his boss (the manager of that second factory) was retiring, he lobbied that I take over.
Leadership goes like that: many times you have to go against the flow. Jesus modeled reversals too:
Instead of telling people to go to Him, He went to people.
Instead of demanding to be served, He is servant of all.
Instead of having someone wash His feet, He washed His disciples’ feet.
And the biggest reversal of all:
Instead of us striving for a good life to earn our way to heaven, Jesus died a horrible death at the Cross so that we, by grace through faith, receive eternal life.
Yes, leadership means that we do the reverse of an accepted paradigm or protocol.
So the next time you see a service bell, try not to fall in love with it. Love people instead and the rest will follow.
A friend told me, “Nelson, I am worried about Russia invading Ukraine. What if it leads to World War III?”
I can imagine him having apocalyptic visions of massive armies drenched in bloodbath, the global economy in shambles, perhaps even nuclear winter.
I understand. These nightmare scenarios crossed my imagination, too.
But there is one perspective we need to keep in mind.
Jesus said in two separate occasions “You will hear wars and rumors of wars… I have said these things to you, that in me, you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world” (Matthew 24:6, John 16:32b-33).
These are realistic words. War exists. We cannot be spiritual ostriches hiding our heads in the sand. We cannot flippantly say of the Ukraine crisis as “oh, don’t worry, God is in control.”
But rather than sinking into dismay, Jesus invites us to take heart. The secret is to take heart in WHO.
We fret, even panic, because we think our fate lies in the hands of global leaders. “If only Putin were not that greedy.” “If only Biden would show more guts.”
But these avail us naught. In declaring that He had overcome the world, Jesus is inviting us to put our trust in Him. To show for it, He has died on the Cross and risen from the dead. If He has conquered death, He can conquer anything.
So why is this still happening? After all, didn’t Jesus use the past perfect tense? “I HAVE overcome the world,” He claimed. So why didn’t He put a tight lease on Putin? Or usher world peace, for that matter?
The writer of Hebrews answered it well. Paraphrasing 2:5-9, we do not see the world as it should be: where justice flows like a mighty river, where swords will be beaten into plowshares, where nobody will cry out in pain ever again. But we see Jesus, Who one day will make everything right.
Have you placed your heart in the hands of the Prince of Peace? Only then we can take heart. Only then we can watch the world plunge into tribulation… and still be unshaken.
Debra had a sinking feeling when the executive vice-president summoned her to his office.
Barely out of journalism school, she was hired to manage a major direct mail campaign for a publishing company. This involved supervising the copy writing, production and distribution. It did not reassure her that the executive somberly asked her to take a seat.
The executive told Debra that the printed envelopes she ordered were too small for the brochures to fit inside them. In short, the envelopes were useless. Debra instantly realized the impact: additional costs to rectify the problem, lower profits, and delayed distribution.
“I’m sorry, Deb,” the executive said, “Now you have to go…”
Fighting back her tears, she rose from her chair and mumbled, “I’ll clean up my desk.”
The executive smiled, “No, you didn’t get me. Go call the printer and see how quickly he can print the new envelopes. Just make sure you tell them the right size. Then come back and let’s figure this out.”
Debra left his office in a daze, unsure whether it was due to her mistake or her boss’s reaction. She made the call, got the information, and hesitantly reported to the executive. Schedules were quickly revised, but Debra lingered on.
“Sir, is that it?” she asked, “You’re not going to fire me? Or tell me how this is all my fault? Or how could I have been so stupid?”
“Deb,” the executive replied, “these things happen. Trying to figure out whose fault it is won’t do anything to solve the problem. We all make mistakes. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning.”
While mistakes are inevitable, what counts is how we benefit from them. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning. This does not give us license to render sloppy work, uncaring on how our mistakes will affect the company. But neither should we fail to learn from honest mistakes. Just don’t commit the same blunder again and again.
So if you are haunted by that boo-boo last week, take heart. Mistakes and failure don’t define you. Now back to the task at hand…
May 28, 2022
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