Why Entrepreneurs must have an end game

Much as we would like to, we never really love our parents as much as we do our children. Your business is exactly like a child. In the early or startup years it will depend completely upon you, looking to you for all the answers. You will always supply them with confidence, belying the uncertainty that you may feel as a first time owner just as you do as a first time parent. The child will look to you 24/7 in sickness and in health and as the parent you will always be there regardless of the problem, dropping everything else in the process. Your business and its components from customers to your team will do the same and like the parent you will be ready and willing to oblige. You cannot easily walkout on your children. Oh some due but for the majority it’s a non-starter. Same thing with your business. You are your business but try to remember your business is not you.

The middle years are the best when you have become comfortable within your developing family and confident in the decisions that must be made. Neither your child or your business will question you during this peak period. Things do get into a groove on both fronts but then comes the maturing years, the transition from total dependence  to independence. Tough for the parent to admit it’s time to let go and let the child mature  developing all of it’s capabilities, finding new methods and learning new things that the parent doesn’t know or understand.  So difficult to do but you the parent do it willingly in the best interest of your child. And so you must with your business. At some point you will become the limitation in your business. The day will come when it has outgrown you. It will not mature and reach it’s potential unless you let go. Easier said than done but be ready.

Like your first born that first business must move on to a new future. But then remember you can do it again. Maybe you already are. The second child is easier. There are tried and true practices that you know and understand. You can take that second child from gestation through birth to adolescence from startup to a thriving healthy entity. You can do this as many times as you can handle. And so you can with business. That’s what makes you a parent and that’s what makes you an entrepreneur. There are many mentors that can steward your child and your business into full maturity who cannot deal with the early years. You are the one who launches them from nothing and starts them along the path to maturity.

So recognize the need for that end game- when it is time to move on and begin again. It’s what you do best. The child will ask for you opinion. The business may ask you to consult. You will learn to enjoy both, but you will find your happiness doing it all over again.