Joel Trammell is the Founder of the Texas CEO Magazine and the Co-founder of American CEO, a company that provides educational resources for chief executive officers. He is a successful entrepreneur who has founded four businesses and served as CEO of seven others – from start-ups to public firms valued at $1 billion. As an author and educator, Joel has extensive experience teaching CEO Master Classes and Managerial Excellence Courses. He regularly speaks at conferences and nationwide events and has contributed to Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Inc.com. He has served on the boards of public, private, and nonprofit organizations and is now on a mission to teach aspiring and established CEOs how to effectively carry out their position. In this episode… CEOs face difficult situations and must make tough decisions. They are frequently caught between employees, shareholders, and clients who have very different interests, wants, and needs. Given the lens of these various parties, how does a CEO maintain balance and fairness in determining which one has supremacy? Joel Trammell says that a good CEO should be able to effectively identify and manage the two triangles of tension in every business. The first triangle is the external tension – the wants and needs of employees, customers, and shareholders. The second triangle represents the internal tension between the sales group, product group, and marketing group. The role of a CEO is managing the white space, communication, and coordination of those six fundamental areas simultaneously. In this episode of The Lazy CEO Podcast, Jim Schleckser sits down with Joel Trammell, the Founder of Texas CEO Magazine and the Co-founder of American CEO. They talk about the challenges CEOs face everyday when making crucial decisions for their businesses. Joel also talks about what being an executive means and why hiring should be a continuous process when building a successful company.