"What Am I, If Not My Business?"
What happens when it’s time to move on? In the rare moments when entrepreneurs pause to think about it, they are by turns terrified, exhilarated, and just plain mystified by the prospect of life after business.
Jeff Sciortino
After the Deal is Done: Entrepreneurs Joel Altschul (left), Jean Moran, and Dave Hale each had to redefine their lives after they sold their companies.
The members have dribbled in one by one, all nine of them. The serial entrepreneur who is thinking about selling his fourth business but in the meantime is dealing with a regulatory change that could soon put the company in jeopardy. The woman who inherited a company from her father, built it into an industry leader, and has begun to prepare for whatever will come next. The founder still haunted by his decision six years earlier to sell his company, thereby undermining what he cherished most about it: its intimate and vibrant culture. The family business owner who had what the rest of the group regards as the perfect exit and is now financially independent, retired, dividing his time between three homes, filling his days with travel, sailing, golf, writing classes, and grandchildren. Yet he's unable to shake the feeling that he has lost something important and doesn't know how to get it back. And others.
They have come from all over Chicagoland on a steamy afternoon in August to a sprawling white-brick ranch house overlooking a verdant golf course in the woodsy suburb of Inverness, Illinois -- the home of Dave Jackson and his family. He was an early entrepreneur in the home health care business and sold his company in 1998. The following year and a half he recalls as one of the most difficult of his business career, a time when he felt utterly alone, lost, and confused. The experience played a major role in his decision in 2008 to start a new business called Evolve USA with another erstwhile entrepreneur, Bruce Leech. Evolve is a member organization for business owners who have sold, are thinking about selling, or are in the process of selling their companies. The people gathered on Jackson's screened-in porch that afternoon were the first to sign up.
Their mood is cheery as they go around the room, updating the group on personal and business developments since the last meeting. They listen and laugh and give one another gentle digs, until it comes time for the serial entrepreneur, Michael Le Monier, to check in. He has been struggling with a number of issues lately, and the regulatory threat to his business, MedPro Staffing, is the least of them. He has also had to place his father-in-law in an assisted-living facility, empty the old man's home, and put down his dog.
But Le Monier leads off with another piece of news that he finds even more distressing. It concerns someone he met prior to embarking on his entrepreneurial career, when he was working as a regional manager for a national staffing firm. One of his branch managers introduced him to a young employee named Hugh, who he quickly recognized was destined for bigger things. "He was handsome, articulate, and incredibly bright, far smarter than me," Le Monier recalls. "He wound up replacing me in some of my jobs. I loved it, and I loved him. He lifted the whole team. Eventually he left to start three related businesses that did extremely well. Combined sales went from nothing to $220 million in 11 years. A couple of years ago, he sold to a private equity firm for $100 million, or so I have heard.
"In June, he hung himself. My wife and I went to the memorial service in downtown Chicago. I think everyone there was in shock. It was so confusing. I mean, How could the world have lost such an incredible person at such a young age? I asked his former business partner what had happened. He said, 'He lost his sense of purpose.' "
In the almost 28 years I have been observing the entrepreneurial landscape, I have noticed that leaving is a subject most business owners would rather not think about, and so they put off dealing with it as long as they can. I'm talking about selling the company and moving on. There are exceptions, to be sure. Some people have an exit plan in place before they even get started. Others take on investors whose need for a "liquidity event" is clear from the get-go and whose very presence forces the entrepreneur to contemplate the possibility of having to part ways with the company at some point in the future. Still others view themselves as investors and the businesses they buy or start as investments, pure and simple. For them, the whole idea is to maximize a company's monetary value and then sell it at the top.
But those people are a distinct minority. In my experience, they are far outnumbered by founders and owners so preoccupied with making sure the business grows or simply continues from day to day, month to month, and year to year that they don't take the time to get themselves ready for the final phase of their relationship with it. The result is that they are unprepared -- both practically and psychologically -- not only for the sale itself but also for what happens after the deal is done.
And make no mistake: Sooner or later, every business gets sold, given away, or liquidated, and every entrepreneur leaves the company he or she has built. You may leave feet first, and your estate may handle the sale or liquidation, but both events are going to happen. They can't be avoided. The only question is, How much of a say are you going to have in either one?
Even if you do lay the proper groundwork for your eventual exit, however, it's not clear what, if anything, you can do to prepare for the immediate aftermath -- that is, the metamorphosis from top banana one day to ordinary piece of fruit the next. Some owners need years to acclimate themselves to the change. If you have spent most of your adult life building an enterprise -- and especially if you started with nothing -- it is probably inevitable that you are going to have trouble determining exactly where your business ends and you begin. There may be emotional ties you aren't fully aware of. Chances are, you haven't had time to reflect on them -- or much of anything else, for that matter. Running a business is nothing if not intense. Maintaining some semblance of a life outside the business is challenge enough.
And let's face it: Being the boss brings a kind of ego gratification that's tough to let go of. When you're the owner of a private company, people depend on you. They need you. They value your opinion. They want your input. You are an important person in their lives, and they let you know it in a thousand different ways. It is easy to get used to being the center of attention -- and it can be profoundly disorienting when suddenly you aren't so important anymore.
Yet people who have sold their businesses tell me that the biggest obstacle to a graceful transition has to do with something else: the change in the nature of the questions they are facing. Successful entrepreneurs tend to be highly goal-oriented. That works to your advantage in a business context, when you are constantly focused on setting and achieving objectives, usually ones that are quantifiable. The questions you deal with all revolve around your progress toward a goal. How far along are we? What is holding us back? When will we hit the target? And so on.
