How to become a 20-something CEO

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Fresh out of college, many Gen Zers are adding three letters to their resumes: CEO. These 20-somethings are breaking through barriers in pursuit of entrepreneurship. What they lack in experience they're making up for in creativity, passion and knowledge. These two creators share how they made the leap from student to CEO.

Kelsey Davis, 24 | CEO & Founder of CLLCTVE

As the CEO of Los Angeles-based CLLCTVE, Davis oversees a team of 10. Her tech startup, founded in 2019, is a portfolio platform that connects creators to their next opportunity. After graduating from Syracuse University in 2019, Davis earned her master's in entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises. Her entrepreneurial spirit was born years earlier, however.

When did you decide to pursue entrepreneurship? I think I've always been an entrepreneur. It's really been the way in which I've just expressed myself, whether that was in the context of film or music. In high school, I started freelancing when it came to videography. By the time I got to Syracuse, by my sophomore year, I was traveling the world, producing content for brands. I think the freelance journey taught me a lot just in general about entrepreneurship. Once I built CLLCTVE, I was able to take those independent, entrepreneurial skills I learned as a freelancer to then translate that into running a corporation.

What does the day in the life as a CEO look like? There's really two different types of work. There's the collaborative work: the meetings, the managing stakeholders and doing things like press. Anything that has to do with conversations that drive us forward and that create new business. Then, a lot of independent work. Doing a lot of ideating, brainstorming and mind mapping around future product ideas. That could be literally anywhere from eight to freakin’ 12 hours. It's fun because I kind of see it like a playground. The different types of work are kind of different ways that I can engage in something that I love.

What have been the greatest challenges you've faced? Challenges exist every day. I think it's just a matter of being able to learn. How can we synthesize and observe and gain insights into what's happening so that, ideally, we could predict how to change that curve moving forward? I don't see challenges as issues.

How do you measure success for you and your company? If I'm able to create a world where I have healthy relationships with my job, work, family, that makes me feel free and capable to do anything that I want to do. For me, as an individual, that's how I define success. For the company, in terms of what success looks like, we imagine a future where every creator has access to creating the life they want. We know that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. I think success looks like getting closer to bridging that gap by being able to even the playing field for our creators.

Has anything surprised you about being a young CEO? It surprised me that it'd be such a trend, honestly. I feel like when I first started ... the idea of being a young CEO wasn't as cute, for lack of better words. It was very much so like ... what do you know? I think now, because of these findings and insights around Gen Z and our access to information, it's kind of eased the market in terms of our capacity as young people to be CEOs.

Who has had an impact on your journey? It takes a village to really build something. People say, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." I really believe that, and I think mentors are one of many types of relationships that help you get there. We provide resources for people on our team in relation to their roles, which is something that's been really cool. Everybody on our team is Gen Z for the most part, so even though we believe that we're really smart and we have a lot of ideas, we do lack experience in certain places. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing as long as we supplement that with knowledge. I think mentors are a really great way to do that.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow a similar career path? I would encourage early entrepreneurs to find environments where they can really be groomed and cultivated and developed into that CEO they want to be. Try your best to find an environment that you can create that's a safe space to fail. Entrepreneurship has so many risks. It obviously takes a toll of your mental. There's so many things that you got to show up for, and in that same environment, you have to ideate and get out products. There's just so many things that are unpredictable when you're doing those things as an early entrepreneur, so I would say do your best to create predictability.

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Ziad Ahmed, 23 | CEO & Co-Founder of JUV Consulting

In 2016, Ahmed founded JUV Consulting with his two friends. They were 16. Fast forward to 2021, Ahmed graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's in political science. School didn't put his business plans on hold, however. Ahmed spent the last four years as a full-time student and full-time CEO (he doesn't recommend it). Now, he's based in New York City, leading his Gen Z consultancy that connects clients to young audiences.

When did you decide to pursue entrepreneurship? I started a nonprofit when I was in eighth grade, beginning of ninth grade we launched, called Redefy. Basically created resources that make communities and schools more equitable and inclusive. Through founding Redefy at a really young age, I found myself in rooms that I didn't know existed. The industry leaders, politicians, decision makers. I realized that young people are being spoken about but not spoken to, and that didn't sit right with me. So my junior year of high school, I got together with my friends and I was like, "I think we can do something about this." So I founded JUV Consulting with this idea being, I think the expert on any reality is the person closest to it. I believe that if we're having a conversation about a group of people, those same people should be centered and empowered in that conversation. I didn't know what the heck I was doing but thought maybe there shouldn't be 50-year-old youth experts that exist ... when we can speak for ourselves.

How did you balance being a full-time student and full-time CEO? I wouldn't recommend it, is the short answer. It's sort of exactly how it sounds. It meant living by my gCal [Google Calendar] to a tee and perhaps not always prioritizing self care in the ways that I should have. But it wasn't so bad insofar as I have an extraordinary team, so it wasn't like I was doing this by myself. I would also say that I optimized. I chose a major that I knew played to my strengths. But it was a lot when I was in three, sometimes four, cities per week. It was doing work on planes and trains and trying to keep up and catch my breath.

What does the day in the life as a CEO look like? A lot of my job is relationship building. I spend a lot of time talking to clients, potential clients, building community with people in the marketing world, Gen Z thought leaders, influencers that we work with. A lot of my job is vision setting and strategy sessions. Big picture, working on the company with my leadership team. A lot of my job is reviewing the work that my team is putting out to our clients and making sure that it's up to par. I would say a lot of my job is people management. It's hiring. It's helping to make sure the team is doing OK and putting out fires where fires need to be put out, both internally and externally. I think being a CEO in general is a lot of firefighting.

What have been the greatest challenges you've faced? Every part of this I'm challenged by every single day, but I've learned more than I'd ever bargained for. I used to get really stressed out by everything. When you're a student, the mindset is often like everything that isn't an A or isn't perfect is bad. We started the company as students. We were very hardo, try-hard students, so every little thing was so heavy. Like, "Oh my God, a client isn't happy about this. Crisis, crisis, crisis." Every challenge felt so heavy and big, but now I've weathered storms. One person leaving felt like a catastrophe, and everything felt catastrophic when I was earlier in the journey. Now it's like, "Bestie, we've weathered worse, so we'll weather this too." Each challenge is less heavy. 

How do you measure success for you and your company? I'm happiest as CEO of JUV consulting when two of my team members become best friends with each other. That's when I feel like I did something right. Yeah it's cool when we get a big deal or we meet a revenue goal. It's not what fulfills me. What fulfills me is this idea that perhaps we built a community that makes people feel like they can be their full selves at work. We don't always get it right, but when we do, that gives me joy.

Has anything surprised you about being a young CEO? Everything. That I am one. That I'm still one. I'm surprised at how hard it is. I want to be best friends with my team and then also be a good boss to my team. I want so badly for everyone to like me. I want my team to like me, I want my clients to like me and I want my competitors to like me. It's hard to do that while also making good business decisions and doing your job. Like I said, it's a lot more firefighting and people management than I had realized. I'm comfortable with making decisions and speaking and setting vision, but damn it, I did not sign up for learning what it felt like to fire someone.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow a similar career path? I'm so wonderfully unqualified to give anyone advice, insofar as I'm embracing this sense of not knowing. I'm not in a place to be like, "Do this to get to point B" because I don't know where my point B is. I'm still figuring that out. But what I would say is ... the advice that I'd give to my younger self is to embrace the not knowing earlier and to lead from a place of curiosity, rather than just a conviction. And if I could go back and do things differently, I would choose being young more than I did. That's not to say I'm not proud of where I am. It's to say that I probably wouldn't want my kid to do the same.

➡️ Follow Ziad Ahmed to stay up to date with his content in your feed.

*Some quotes may have been edited for clarity and readability.

Getting a pulse on Gen Z

• Millennials, Gen Z eye new jobs | Theunis Bates: Younger workers have a simple message for employers: We’re outta here. That’s the finding of a new survey by Microsoft, parent company of LinkedIn, with 52% of Gen Z and millennial employees — those under age 41 — saying they are somewhat or extremely likely to consider a job change in the coming year. Some 35% of Gen Xers and baby boomers say they are thinking of bailing on their bosses. Among all American workers, 43% are weighing a job change, up from 41% last year. Here’s what people are saying. 
• Job hopping is the Gen Z way | Cate Chapman: Gen Z joined the workforce just as the pandemic shook up the job market. Not surprisingly, that's changed the way this young cohort views work, with Gen Z showing a greater willingness to job hop than older generations. Members of Gen Z are switching jobs at a rate 134% higher than in 2019, according to LinkedIn data. That compares to 24% more for millennials and 4% less for boomers. And Gen Zers plan to keep moving: 25% say they hope or plan to leave their employers in the next six months, compared with 23% of millennials and 18% of Gen Xers. Here’s what people are saying.
• New grads commanding $100k to start | Jake Perez: Entry-level workers in tech, banking and consulting are now accepting six-figure offers, irking some more established, early-career workers who were hired at lower salary ranges. The Wall Street Journal reports major banks — including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup — bumped analysts' pay to $100,000 last year, then quickly tacked on another $10,000. Major consultancies now also have a $100,000 floor. The rush to snag six-figure hires comes as firms struggle to staff up during the Great Reshuffle and more established professionals quit or retire early. Here’s what people are saying.

Food for thought

Putting yourself first

Two months ago, Amy Slawson took a sabbatical from her corporate job to connect with nature and herself. That's led her to where she is now: At the Pacific Crest Trail, preparing to hike 2,650 miles through California, Oregon and Washington.

"Over the past years, I have been so engrossed in the daily grind, that I never felt I had enough time for something so simple. It feels fitting to capture this occasion, pulling together the disparate pieces of my life’s puzzle; sanding the edges of some amazing professional experiences; taking the time to reflect and appreciate it all." — Amy Slawson (currently off the grid)

💡 How are you carving out time for yourself? Share in the comments below.