Executive skills

When I think back over my career, I look at it in two parts. The first part was working in a bank doing financial analyst and sales jobs, then later working as a CFO in a venture backed start up. The second part is running my own solo business where I do everything but am mainly focused on coding/building products and writing/creating marketing materials.

These two careers take entirely different skills. The first part of my career required executive skills: coordinating people, managing projects, convincing others to do what you want through clear and persuasive communication. While the second part requires much more technical building skills like knowing how to write and deploy software, writing in a way that creates good marketing material, then doing a bit of everything on top of that to get things done. (graphic design, video editing, IT troubleshooting, etc)

In my old career, I saw lots of people who rose through the ranks in large companies on the basis of their executive skills, to the point that they were so busy coordinating other people, they lost all touch with building things. Part of the motivation for me to make the move to start my own business was I felt my building skills stagnating and decaying and I didn't want to be someone who just knew how to tell someone else what to do. Not only does that feel precarious in terms of what "if you lose your job, what can you do then?", but I also didn't want to be one of those executive types who talks at such a high level that they have no idea what is actually going on with the product itself.

At the same time, I'm happy that I spent the amount of time I did in executive roles. Close to 10 years gave me plenty of skills that transfer to my current career. Talking with clients, organizing myself and writing persuasively all come in handy and help me run my solo business better. For someone just starting out now, I would tell them to embrace a large corporate career at the beginning to get some of that polish and training. Just make sure you're also working on your building skills, if your job doesn't allow for that, it might be time to move on.