12 Business and Life Insights to Make BIG Happen in 2025 for CEOs, Leaders, and Entrepreneurs
At the end of 2023, the team at CEO Coaching International predicted that the “new normal” for businesses could be managing a state of constant flux.
2024 certainly bore out that prediction. Between ongoing wars in the Middle East and Europe, political divisions all over the globe, the disconnect between a strong economy and cash-strapped consumers, and rapid developments in tech, very few CEOs had the same weekly to-do list every Monday morning.
All of those factors could conspire to make 2025 even more challenging. But if you’re waiting around to see what the second Trump Administration will have on its agenda in January, then you’re already planning to fail. The best CEOs we coach are already deep into their annual planning. And they’re going to use these 12 leadership principles from our 2024 CEO Coaching International Podcasts to keep Making BIG Happen in the new year.
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1. DNA is not destiny.
“Live 120 Years Young” was one of the Four Groundbreaking Event Themes at the 2024 Make BIG Happen Summit. Dr. Matt Dawson, Co-founder and CEO of Wild Health, stressed the need to for CEOs to be proactive about their stress, health, and self-care.
“Every patient that we see, we sequence their DNA,” Dr. Dawson said. “But DNA only accounts for about 20% of your health outcome. The other 80% is made up of what you do. So we measure those epigenetics. We look at about a million sites on your DNA to see how you’ve turned your epigenetics up or down in different specific genes. We also look at a ton of biomarkers and blood work, and measure all the things that make you feel or perform a certain way: your vitamins, minerals, nutrients, hormones. And then we collect an incredible amount of phenotypic data from questionnaires, your microbiome data, data from your wearables. In total, we take millions of data points and put it into an AI algorithm that gives precision recommendations specifically for you.”
2. Consciously build high-performing teams.
The Five Traits of High-Performing Teams from Lisa Tanzer
“Aligned incentives are everything,” Lisa says. “If it’s not important to you, why are you going to do it? I love companies that have incentives that go top to bottom. We all win and lose on EBITDA, if that’s important. It matters to everybody because you need to make these metrics work in order for anyone to get their bonus. I did this at one company where literally, top to bottom, warehouse worker to leadership team, EBITDA drove the bonus. And then how do you make a metric like EBITDA relatable to everybody? Every single company meeting that everyone was at, we described EBITDA. We all had the same goal. And I remember one day walking through the distribution center and someone says, ‘Hey, Lisa, I found this new packing tape and it’s one cent cheaper. That’s going to help EBITDA, right?’ Exactly. Everyone knew it. You have to make sure their incentives are aligned with their goals.”
— Lisa Tanzer, a coach at CEO Coaching International
3. Clarity + Alignment = Success
Powerful Tactics to Drive Impactful Execution in Your Organization
“ Execution doesn’t happen without a clear vision and focus on people and culture. It’s important to start with alignment to a vision and then setting key initiatives and ensuring accountability at every level within the organization. The formula that I always love and have used for years within my organizations is: Clarity + Alignment = Success. If you ask any of my leaders or employees, they could repeat that formula back to you. And if your team understands where you’re headed and why, execution will naturally follow.”
— Spencer Shaffer, a coach at CEO Coaching International
4. Sell “one to many.”
A 7-Time CEO’s Roadmap for Creating High-Value, Scalable, and Sellable Businesses
“We used a concept of ‘sell one to many.’ You typically have limited resources in startups and you want to use those resources wisely. Selling one account at a time, it’s like your feet are in quicksand. We looked for opportunities to sell our products to what we call ‘prescribing groups,’ group influencers, an authority that could direct the behavior of a large group of consumers to the product and cut our costs. I convinced the NCAA chair for the NCAA golf championships, divisions I, II, and III, men’s and women’s, to ban the use of metal spikes in the end-of-the-year tournament. And this ultimately forced the college teams to adopt our product as they played during the season. And so each year we converted more than 6,000 of the best players in the country to our products.”
— Jon Hyman, a coach at CEO Coaching International
5. It’s the What as well as the Why.
A Proven 5-Step Method to Mastering Complex Business Challenges
“Create a BIG picture that’s crystal clear on the destination that you want to take the company toward. It’s the What as well as the Why. Try to give your team an understanding of not only what we’re trying to accomplish but why we’re trying to accomplish those particular initiatives. It’s the difference between saying, ‘We’re going to go to New York City,’ as opposed to, ‘We’re going to travel from our office to the Empire State Building by Friday at 5.’ The difference in that clarity will certainly make a difference as to where we wind up as an organization.”
— Chris Justice, a coach at CEO Coaching International
6. Look deeper.
A Proven Process for Achieving Strong Culture, Rapid Growth, and a BIG Exit
“We did stall at one point at YayPay and we dug in and tried to figure out what was going on. And the first step behind that was just look at the current customer base, analyze it, segment it, learn as much as you can about your current customer base. Why are they buying? What are their key characteristics? What are the trends in each segment in these customer groups? Analyze that. Ensure that there’s a large enough market for the segments that you’re winning in. Understand the segments you’re not winning in and why. Don’t be afraid to go back and to revisit the buyer persona and customer needs. Do 20 or 30 in-depth interviews for both buyers and users. Marketing should do that, but the CEO needs to join in for a large part of that. If you’re reviewing the strategy, you need to get your fingers dirty. Understand what customers want. Analyze competitors. Look at churn, customers you’ve lost. We did that on a number of occasions over the years, and we always came out of that much, much stronger than before. Look deeper.”
— Anthony Venus, a coach at CEO Coaching International
7. Ask “Three Killer AI Questions.”
How to Turn AI Hype Into Big Profits
It’s not the CEO’s job to be the company’s AI expert. Ask yourself and your leadership team, on a scale of 1 to 10:
- How much impact will AI have on our industry in the next 10 years?
- How much will AI impact our business specifically?
- How good is our current AI strategy?
“We’ve literally asked these questions to 100 companies,” says Randy Koch, a coach at CEO Coaching International and the architect of our CEO AI Roadmap Product (AI Strategy for CEOs). “Question number two, how much will AI impact your business, on average the answer is nine. And question three, how good is your current AI strategy, on average that rating is two. So you have this BIG gap between how will AI affect your business and do you really have a strategy. If you have a delta bigger than two between those two questions, then it’s crystal clear: you have to build an AI strategy right away.”
8. Make your comp package a strategic tool to attract key talent.
5 Keys to a Compensation Package that Attracts, Retains, and Motivates Top Talent
“Compensation, in and of itself, whether it’s base pay, variable pay bonuses, long term, short term, is a negative motivator. That means that it is always about, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ The rewards that we get in one year, if we don’t see that opportunity grow over time, all other things equal, our motivation from that same amount goes down. So if we don’t have the comp programs designed in such a way that people clearly understand what they’re trying to achieve, what they can do to continue to grow their contribution to the business, and what they can do to continue to benefit from those programs on an increasing basis over time, the general tendency is that they are demotivating rather than motivating. How do we drive long-term behavior in organizations at all levels? At the end of the day, it actually has little to do with compensation. It is feeling seen and valued in the organization and having an opportunity to contribute.”
— Jen L’Estrange, founder and CEO Red Clover
9. Scale leadership along with the company.
How to Align Vision, Mission, Culture, Strategy & Execution for Explosive Growth
“It is definitely a challenge for a startup leader to understand what it’s going to require in terms of your own personal leadership abilities and what the environment is going to require from you in terms of managing a much larger, much more complex, much more complicated organization. You have to be honest with yourself about whether or not that’s where you want to go. Most people say they want to grow. But some people find when they get what they ask for, they’re lost, they’re bewildered, they’re in a world of hurt and don’t know how to get out of it.”
— Greg Martin, a coach at CEO Coaching International
10. Overcome fear by making innovation a core value.
Here’s How to Master New Product Development and Build a Culture of Innovation
“It’s very difficult for large organizations to take risks. And that can even be true for older, small-to-medium size businesses who have a cash cow product or set of services. It’s very hard for them to say, ‘We’re going to try something new.’ Some of it has to do with this habit of what we sell and who we are, and some of it has to do with changing the behavior of selling something new or going to market with something new. You have to instill in the culture that the ability to test, try, and fail is okay, as long as you learn and as long as the failing isn’t fatal to the business.”
— Greg Coticchia, a coach at CEO Coaching International
11. Make your go-to-market strategy…dynamic.
Five Steps to a Dynamic Go-To-Market Strategy
“CEOs and their teams should regularly ask themselves, what specific problem does our product solve today?” Mary says. “A simple but effective exercise is to clearly articulate in a single sentence the problem their product solves for their customers. This also helps to reinforce clarity across the organization. A second thing to do is engage directly with your customers. You really need to establish a regular cadence of customer engagement, specifically around product definition. Conduct what I call a product use session to answer, how do customers describe the issues our product addresses? Understand their language and use that to reflect in your product description so you’re creating that resonating effect with your target customers and the market. What is the feedback our customer service and sales reps are hearing from prospects and customers? And finally, stay alert to your competitor’s product definition messaging and ensure that yours remains differentiated.”
— Mary Naylor, a coach at CEO Coaching International
12. Embrace change.
Why PE Firms Should Engage Coaches for Their Portco CEOs
“The quicker you can embrace change, the better it’s going to be. What is important as a portfolio CEO is to really understand, what does your private equity firm bring to the table and how can I quickly access that so that we can create value quickly? Because ultimately you as a CEO and various members of your management team are going to do well when it comes to the second bite of that apple and you’re moving to harvest. There’s an incredible financial opportunity and upside to be had. But the earlier you can really adopt and embrace the new ownership and what they’re doing and how they’re bringing in not just financial resources, but a tremendous portfolio of people and services and things that they do extremely well, and to be able to tap the value they bring, that should help unlock even greater value for you and for them ultimately.”
— Randy Dewey, the President of CEO Coaching International
Are you ready to Make BIG Happen in 2025?
Thank you to all the CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders who subscribe to and share our blogs and podcasts. We have a great lineup of guests and topics scheduled for the year ahead, so stay tuned for more valuable, actionable insights on how your business can Make BIG Happen.
And as you’re starting to fill in your 2025 calendar, we hope you’ll reserve April 24-27 for the 2025 Make BIG Happen Summit at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach Hotel. This year, in addition to our usual lineup of world-class speakers and social events, we’re excited to unveil our exclusive “MBH” program—a full MBA experience distilled into one intensive day. You’ll gain strategies and insights directly from renowned experts like Good To Great author Jim Collins, and Harvard Business School professors Deepak Malhotra and Boris Groysberg. Click here to register.
About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, the firm has coached more than 1,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs across 100+ industries and 60 countries. Its coaches—former CEOs, presidents, and executives—have led businesses ranging from startups to over $10 billion, driving double-digit sales and profit growth, many culminating in eight, nine, or ten-figure exits.
Companies that have worked with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have achieved an average revenue CAGR of 31% (2.6X the U.S. average) and an average EBITDA CAGR of 52.3% (more than 5X the U.S. average).
Discover how coaching can transform your leadership journey at ceocoachinginternational.com.
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