But once you have sold and left the company, you suddenly find yourself in a place in which quantifiable objectives are much less relevant. The most pressing questions you face are existential ones: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? "Running a business day to day is a rat race, and there's a lot of stress associated with it," says Michael Le Monier. "But what we deal with here in Evolve is a different kind of stress that has more to do with purpose and the meaning of life. What happened with Hugh really drove home to me the importance of discovering our larger purpose. That's hard. Until you sell the business, you don't have the privilege or responsibility of choice. You're supporting a family, or whatever. It's much harder to choose your purpose than to have life's realities choose you."
Back on Dave Jackson's porch, the group is putting together a list of potential discussion topics based on issues that have surfaced during the check-ins. The retired family business owner, Joel Altschul, remarks that, for the first time in more than two years, Evolve co-founder Bruce Leech has checked in without once mentioning his former business. He talked about his new apartment in Chicago, the activities of his three children, some developments with Evolve, and the decision to put his father with Alzheimer's in hospice care. But he said not a word about CrossCom National, which he founded in 1981, ran for 20 years, sold in 2004, and still owns 20 percent of. The company installs and services in-store voice and data systems for large retailers such as Walmart and Walgreens.
"It's just not on the top of my mind right now," Leech says. "Not that I'm at peace with it. I'm just exhausted being torn up about it."
Leech feels, in retrospect, that he was railroaded into the sale. He was in bad shape at the time -- recently divorced, disconnected from his children, financially strapped, burned out on the business, and tired, dog-tired. Then CrossCom lost a major customer, and selling seemed like a way out. There were prospective buyers in the wings. His advisory board thought it was a good idea. So did Greg Miller, his successor as CEO. They called in the private equity people, and the deal took on a life of its own. "I just wish I'd had six months to cool out," Leech says. "If I'd had some time to effectively transition out of the day to day, there might have been another interim or hybrid role that would have been more satisfying than leaving. But once the deal guys get involved, you get marched down that road, and the next thing you know, you're sitting on the outside."
The deal was a typical leveraged buyout. Leech had given his senior managers 20 percent of the equity, and he kept 20. A private equity firm bought the other 60 percent and put up a portion of the debt. The rest of it came from a bank. The new owners planned to expand the business, pay down the debt, and have a second, bigger "liquidity event" in the next four to six years. So Leech would have two paydays as well as a seat on the board, but would no longer be involved in operations.
"The night before the close, I was in the office at 2 a.m.," he says. "I remember it like yesterday. I sat there surrounded by stacks of paper representing 25 years of my life, wondering if this truly was the best thing for me. I never felt more alone in my life. It was terrible. Then the flash of the obvious hit me: Everybody who was saying this was best for me was getting a piece of the deal. While I consider many of them friends, a little voice inside me was asking, 'Did any of them look out for my best interests?' But I thought, 'I can't pull out now. Everyone is counting on me.' I signed all the papers."
He was all right for the first few months. He took a vacation, spent time with his children, flew his airplane -- he had recently earned his pilot's license -- and worked on his investments. After a failed attempt to work from home, he rented an office on Michigan Avenue, overlooking the lake. That's when it hit him: "I got real alone. My friends were still working. My kids were in school. There was no one to hang out with. I had nothing to do. People did the obligatory 'How're you doing? Must be nice to be retired.' I hate that word. I was in my mid-40s. It wasn't time to hang things up. I felt totally insignificant."
So began his journey to figure out who he was. At some point along the way, he began to understand what he had lost. He has come to miss it more and more over time, as the other Evolve members are aware. "I've heard you say you miss the fun," says Jack Altschuler, who sold his industrial water treatment company in 1998.
"I really miss it," says Leech. "I went to visit Tasty Catering" -- a Chicago-area business recently honored by Inc. as a top small company workplace. "I saw their culture, and it reminded me how special ours used to be. I took it for granted back then. I can appreciate it now because I can see what's gone."
"You could go out and do it again," says Le Monier, the serial entrepreneur.
"Well, yes, and I'm trying to get that back with Evolve," says Leech.
Relatively few recovering entrepreneurs have such strong feelings of remorse over the decision to sell, but the sense of being lost for a while is very common, and so is the search for fulfillment -- and meaning. Leech's Evolve partner, Dave Jackson, says his search began right around the time he sold his business, thanks in part to a book he had read called Halftime, by Bob Buford, who writes about going "from professional success to significance." Jackson had the success part pretty well covered by then. His company, FirstChoice Health Care, which he had started in 1989, had grown to about $10 million in sales, with 150 employees and gross margins of 30 percent to 35 percent. On paper, at least, it was worth $4 million to $5 million.
Jackson had had enough, though. The business wasn't fun anymore. He was having to focus more and more on operations, which he didn't enjoy. "Everything felt like work," he says. Meanwhile, changes to Medicare reimbursement formulas were about to tilt the competitive landscape in favor of larger companies. Jackson decided it was the right moment to sell, and in July 1998 FirstChoice was acquired by Baltimore-based Integrated Health Services, then a Fortune 500 company. There he was, 38 years old, with a modest amount of wealth for the first time in his life, trying to figure out what comes next, and the challenge of moving from success to significance resonated.
