Bringing In a CEO Sometimes it's best to give up your company's top job.

Ben Kaufman got the idea for Mophie, raised initial funding and turned it into a business while still in college. But as the Burlington, Vermont, developer of iPod accessories and other digital lifestyle products headed for its first anniversary and the $1 million annual sales mark, Kaufman, 20, saw the need for a more experienced person atop the organizational chart. So he hired Dave Schmidt, 45, a veteran youth consumer marketer, as CEO and demoted himself to head creative person. "I started the company so I could take ideas and have a forum for introducing them," Kaufman explains. "Hiring a CEO was the next logical step."

How to make hiring your own CEO work for you:

1. Appreciate the advantages. Demoting yourself may sound like a bad idea, but it can actually help your company grow, especially if you're better at creating a vision and spotting opportunities than managing day-to-day details, according to Nicholas Di Marco, professor of HR management at Webster University in St. Louis. "The smart entrepreneur will bring in an outside CEO to create the infrastructure to carry the organization to the next stage of development," says Di Marco. Handing over the CEO duties can also let you spend more time on the work that initially attracted you to entrepreneurship, which is one of the benefits Kaufman sought.