Thrive in 2025: 5 Habits of the Most Successful Business Leaders

Over the course of my career, I have been lucky enough to have worked with many successful business leaders and entrepreneurs. The lessons I have learned from these experiences have always been helpful, but now, as a fractional CMO and a newbie business owner, I am able to apply these lessons and observations into my own business. Let me tell you, they have been an absolute game-changer.

In the past year, I have also spent a great deal of time in what you might call the “self-help” aisle for both my personal and professional development (I have found as a new business owner that these actually go hand in hand). Before launching my own business, I found these books pretty yawn-inducing and impractical. Now, I am officially a self-help convert. 

While some of these books still fall in the lullaby category, when I find one that resonates with me based on where I am in my journey with a strong, relatable author, I am hooked. 

The reason I bring up the business-leader lessons and the self-help books in the same blog post is because while each of these have been useful to me separately, I have found that they complement each other incredibly well. When real-world connections and lessons combine with nicely synthesized, neatly packaged lessons based on real-world experiences, the learnings are that much more powerful, that much more practical, that much more inspiring. 

There are so many helpful habits that breed business success, but here I will synthesize what I feel are the 5 most important habits that I have gleaned from successful business owners, entrepreneurs and authors in hopes that they help you survive and thrive in 2025:

1. Delegating 

When you first start a company, you are the C-suite and employee base. You are wearing many hats, gloves and suits of armor to deal with the inevitable setbacks. But, as your company grows, so must you grow willing to relinquish these other roles and focus on the areas that are going to get your business to the next level.

Small companies with big goals need the right leaders and team members in place to free up CEO time. This is why the fractional leadership model works well for modern businesses and CEOs who know that they can’t be everywhere, everything or everyone to the business. 

Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (fCMO), Chief Financial Officer (fCFO), and Chief Revenue Officer (fCRO) are the most common C-suite fractional roles. These leaders laser-focus their time solving the biggest problems and crafting the most impactful strategies. The strategies are then executed by supporting resources, whether freelancers or full-timers. 

With that model, CEOs get a large percentage of their time freed up to focus on big picture strategy-setting, revenue-getting, product development, or whatever else they feel will take their business to the next level. In order to get money, you have to get out of the minutiae. 

2. Partnerships & outsourcing

Let’s face it, as a small business, you probably only do one or a few things well, and that is how it should be. You likely don’t have the capital to hire huge teams with high overhead. This is where partnerships and outsourcing come in. 

Finding the right partners to complement your offer is key in the early stages of business. It gives you speed, agility and an edge to remain competitive. Partners also provide companies flexibility to pivot into or out of an area as the market demands. Partnerships evolve alongside your business, and outgrowing a partnership is typically a symbol of success. 

Like Partnerships, outsourcing has many benefits to growing businesses. Outsourcing specific, often operational, tasks to the right partner offers many of the same benefits mentioned above. There are on-shore, near-shore and off-shore options to suit individual company needs. Often global in nature, partnering with these companies to handle tasks such as Customer Service, Accounting, and Marketing execution gives companies global presence and allows them to scale operations quickly and cost-effectively, which is key to success in the early days of business. 

My fractional CMO client, Unity Communications, is a great example of a business process outsourcing (BPO) company that helps fast-growing businesses win with their highly competent near and on-shore teams that flawlessly manage important tasks on behalf of their clients’ business.

3. Time mastery

Successful business leaders are clockmasters.  While we all have 24 hours in a day, based on their impact in a given day, these people seemingly have 48. On top of effective delegation, their schedules are tightly managed. 

Time blocking is key with blocks for meeting time, desk-work time, recharge and refueling time, and whatever else they prioritize in their lives. 

Typically, they save the important conversations and to-dos for the morning hours when brainpower is at a high. Sometimes, they even block out ½ days or entire days for time to reflect and research. Often in this “pause” is when the lightbulb moments happen and the biggest ideas and the most innovative strategies are formed. Master your time and you will master your market. 

4. Fast decision-making

While facts and minute details are important, as is forecasting possible outcomes of a decision, it is not the CEO’s job to pull apart a problem, turn it on its head and put it back together again 10 times over. That is why the CEO delegates to his trusted leaders that are meant to do all of the above on his or her behalf, filter the facts down to the need-to-knows, anticipate questions, and provide the most crucial details that enable the CEO to make an effective decision. In addition to these facts and stats, the most successful business leaders often turn to intuition and/or gut feeling to make a final call as these instinctual nudges are meant to point us in the right direction.

 This combination of highly distilled facts and instincts make for fast and effective decision-making, setting up the business to reap the rewards more quickly. 

5. Prioritize personal lives

While work takes up so much of our lives, more and more we are seeing that effective leaders find time for every facet of themselves, not just their CEO self. They find and pursue healthy hobbies, build connections with their fellow humans, find a trusted tribe to share ideas and solve problems with, travel the world - and much more. They also encourage the same behavior with their employees, demonstrating empathy and embracing authenticity. 

Because they know that taking a temporary step back in your business or role to refill your cup, restore your energy, or tap into your creativity is how you take ten steps forward.

Is “do better Marketing” on your 2025 to-do list? Book a Discovery Session, and let’s talk more. 

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Business leaders, if you find yourself doing all of these things, a few of these things, none of these things, or other things that help you as a leader, comment below with your take. Help us all be better leaders in 2025.