Stop Calling Yourself CEO If You're Not Selling — You're the CSO

Stop calling yourself the CEO when you're not yet selling. Until you are generating real, recurring income from your products or services, what you truly are is the Chief Sales Officer of your business. And you should wear that title with pride and not shame. Many aspiring business owners today have become addicted to titles that sound good on social media but hold no weight in the marketplace. They prematurely brand themselves as Chief Executive Officers when, in truth, they have not yet built anything worth executing.

The hard truth is this: if your business is not making sustainable income, if you are not attracting consistent clients, if you cannot point to a reliable pipeline of cashflow and contracts, then what you are doing is not executive leadership, it’s imaginative hope dressed in entrepreneurial clothing. There’s nothing wrong with being in the early stages of your business. But let’s call it what it is. Until the business is bringing in money without you begging, pleading, or posting without conversions, you’re not running a company. You’re dreaming about one.

So, from this moment on, let’s be honest with ourselves in humility and drop the CEO title. It is not yet time for that seat. Instead, take up the role your business desperately needs today: the role of Chief Sales Officer (the CSO). That’s your job. That’s your office for now. That’s your assignment you should focuys on. You are the CSO of your company and not chief security officer. And your number one duty now is not to attend strategy retreats, it’s not to polish branding elements or chase motivational quotes. Your job is to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell... You are to take your products, your services, your expertise, your offer, and bring them directly to the market. You are to face your target audience, meet their needs, solve their problems, and ask for the sale and referrals from merciful clients who are not afraid of seeing you rise in your own chosen industry.

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The real work is not in planning sessions. It’s in pitching. It is about letting the world know that you carry something that the world or any company needs in solving a particular area of their business. The future of your business does not lie in branding meetings; it lies in making calls, sending follow-ups, knocking on doors, replying inquiries, begging existing WhatsApp contacts to link you up, and closing deals. And you don’t need a social media manager or marketing assistant yet. What you need right now is to be your own evangelist. You must go out and proclaim what you believe your solution can do. Preach it, post it, press it into ears that have money to spend. Until people begin to patronise you; not out of pity alone, but out of conviction that they need what you are offering, so you must keep pushing.

Do not delegate what still belongs to your survival. This is not the time to outsource or get people into business development roles. This is not the time to employ someone to do what even you are afraid to do with full conviction. Do not pay someone a salary to go and sell a product that you, the founder, have not yet proven can be sold. No one will ever believe in your dream more than you do. No employee will love your vision more than you. That’s why you must do the selling first, and do it well.

This is a foundational principle: until your business is closing enough transactions, not one lucky break, but consistent deals and more deals, to survive without your daily hustle, you are not yet the CEO. You are the Lead Salesperson. This is the season to learn the art of persuasion, to master market feedback, to earn credibility, to confront objections, to close your first ten customers. This is the season to fight for every inch of growth until you break through.

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Only when the business begins to consistently attract clients and generate cashflow can you begin transitioning to the role of a CEO. And even then, the CEO doesn’t retire from sales. He or she simply scales it. A CEO builds systems, develops leaders, manages structure, create equitable collaborators in a consortium format with everyone taking equitable ownership in a much more bigger ventures than going solo as one man. But the CSO, especially in the early days, is the driver of survival. One cannot be elevated to vision until they have conquered validation.

So, let your performance earn you the right to be called a CEO not your Instagram bio, not your WhatsApp status, not a printed business card and certainly not your TikTok handle. Let the results of your grind, the revenue of your hustle, the response from the market be the voice that appoints you into the CEO seat. Not before.

Today, stand tall. Face your reflection and re-introduce yourself not as the CEO, but as Chief Sales Officer of your business and consortium. Embrace that role fully. Pick up the phone. Craft compelling offers. Knock on digital and physical doors. Serve your market. Speak your value. Deliver excellence to your customers. And most importantly close deals. Do not be afraid to ask your customers for referrals and introduce you to people that matter so that your life can matter.

Only then, and truly only then, can you ascend to the throne of CEO with honour, results, and income to back the title. That’s how business works. That’s how vision becomes reality. That’s how the entrepreneur becomes an executive. There is a time for dreaming and there is a time for doing. This is the time for doing.

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At KREENO, we specialize in professional debt recovery, stolen asset retrieval, criminal investigation, private prosecution, asset tracking and tracing, corporate governance enforcement, integrity-in-business profiling, educational training for recovery agents, board representation and background checks, psychosocial risks evaluation, and management oversight in cases of financial collapse or receivership. Our goal is to restore what has been lost, reclaim what has been stolen, and rebuild business credibility from the ground up.

Ambassador Daniel C. Koussou of Kreeno Consortium with IGP Kayode A. Egbetokun of Nigeria Police Force

You, as the CSO, should be focused on growth. Let us handle your enforcement battles. Let us chase down that lingering unpaid invoices. Let us gather intelligence on bad-faith clients that have gone incommunicado. Let us recover what they owe whilst you recover your focus.

Together, with Kreeno as your recovery partner, you don’t just dream of a profitable business, you enforce it. We bring you back your rightful earnings, and you bring your market undeniable value.

The age of romantic entrepreneurship is over. This is the era of execution. Wake up. Suit up. Go and sell. And may the work of your hands prosper, until one day, you no longer introduce yourself as CSO but as the CEO the market respects, the numbers confirm, and the nation rewards.

Dr. Ohio O. Ojeagbase FICA, S.FIDR, D.Min.
Chief Private Investigator/CSO, KREENO Consortium

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