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To all CEO/Founders, what designation do you put as your email signature?

yungmillionaire

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I have been deliberating this for some time now, being the sole founder of a small business (less than 10 staff). I have been putting my designation as 'Business Development' on my email signature. Calling yourself a CEO/Founder to me implies that you are a leader of a large organization. A CEO in the conventional sense refers to someone who operates a vast enterprise with a complex management structure, board of directors and stockholders. This varies from culture to culture, but I personally think that calling myself Founder/Owner/Director/CEO etc at this stage, comes across as arrogant when I am running but a small company.

However, when communicating back and forth via email with important government people and business partners, would this 'Business Development' title play me down in terms of authority or respect?

Would love to hear everyones thoughts!
 
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pmaloneus

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I generally agree with you, however, director still seems more plausible/makes more sense than CEO . Depending on your specific situation I would use something along the lines of:

Director, Business Development
Director of Business Development
Head of Sales
Head of Partnerships
 

MythOfSisyphus

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Managing Director.

CEO just sounds so corny for a company with a handful of employees.

From your list... Founder & Owner are also fine IMO.
 
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Johnny boy

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I have been deliberating this for some time now, being the sole founder of a small business (less than 10 staff). I have been putting my designation as 'Business Development' on my email signature. Calling yourself a CEO/Founder to me implies that you are a leader of a large organization. A CEO in the conventional sense refers to someone who operates a vast enterprise with a complex management structure, board of directors and stockholders. This varies from culture to culture, but I personally think that calling myself Founder/Owner/Director/CEO etc at this stage, comes across as arrogant when I am running but a small company.

However, when communicating back and forth via email with important government people and business partners, would this 'Business Development' title play me down in terms of authority or respect?

Would love to hear everyones thoughts!

Calling yourself a CEO makes you sound like a high school kid who puts "entrepreneur" in their Instagram bio.

Most of the time my designation is "account manager".
 

Andy Black

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I just signoff with my name.
 
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Ravens_Shadow

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We're building a large enterprise, though we're still a small team. I disagree with the looking down on "CEO" titles. If you're running a small amazon store, sure you don't need that bullshit. If you're serving companies with revenues in the hundreds of millions/billions like my company does, CEO is appropriate, and you might as well go ahead and get settled into your role.
 
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csalvato

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We're building a large enterprise, though we're still a small team. I disagree with the looking down on "CEO" titles. If you're running an amazon store, sure you don't need that bullshit. If you're serving companies with revenues in the hundreds of millions/billions like my company does, CEO is appropriate, and you might as well go ahead and get settled into your role.

I agree. Whenever I see someone averse to calling themselves a CEO, it makes me think they aren’t shooting to be a big company.

EDIT: related:
View: https://youtu.be/0gPzMrWeLSs
 
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biophase

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I actually never sign my emails with my title. However, I've done that on a few emails this year.

Often times when dealing with a large corporation, my employees sometimes get the run around and they get bounced around to idiots that have no authority.

So when that happens I have them cc me on the emails. Then I usually jump into the email thread all pissed off and I sign it with my name and full title asking for the situation to get escalated. That usually catches their attention and usually gets me up to a director or VP to handle our issues.

On our latest issue, I had to do this and also bombard all the Linkedin C-level and VP profiles and post on their FB page to get results.
 

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