Hot Seat

Chapter 37. 14 Answers That Will Save You 100 Hours

The day we moved out of my basement and into our new office, Ontela’s chairman, Tom Huseby, came by to wish us well. On the way out, he pulled me aside for a moment:

You’ve got my mobile phone number. If I see it’s you on the caller ID, I’m almost always going to answer it. Some CEOs take this to mean they shouldn’t call unless it’s important. That’s stupid.

“You’re going to face a dozen different decisions each month. They’re going to be trivial, minor decisions, like ‘Should I lease furniture or buy it?’ You can either spend three hours thinking about it, or take three minutes and call me. So take three minutes and call me.”

Tom saved me hundreds of hours of overthinking with a few dozen short phone calls. While there are a lot of decisions you will need to struggle through as you learn and grow as CEO, in this chapter, we’ll cross a few easy ones off the list.

While there may be slight optimizations to be had here, you’ve got better things to do with your time. Just follow the best practices below and you should be set.

Oh, and an obvious disclaimer: this is not a substitute for legal advice, no matter how convincing or certain it may sound.

Without further ado, here’s my best advice on how to handle some of the mundane dilemmas every startup’s likely to face:

Should I lease furniture or buy it?

Don’t lease it. First, ask your landlords if they have furniture you can use for free. Then, ask other startups. Then, depending ...