Jeff Church left a stable job to buy and build a company after interviewing senior citizens who regretted not taking business risks. He talks about overcoming the fear of failure and why integrity matters when you leave.
Towards the end of my late 30s, I began to really think, I want to go off on my own and I want to take that entrepreneurial plunge. I want to do that. My wife, who is Mediterranean and first generation American, has the risk tolerance of Richard Branson. So she's always pushing, pushing, pushing to kind of do that. But I grew up kind of Midwesternish and, you know, I had a very risk averse, you know, a somewhat risk averse profile. But I knew I kind of wanted to do that. I knew I wanted to do that. And I felt like I was standing on a high board blindfolded, wondering if there was water in the pool beneath me, knowing that I want to take that plunge, but I just can't quite take that plunge because I wasn't sure if there was water in the pool. And then to make matters worse, my mom piled on and she wanted me to do it. And then when your mom wants you to do something, you know, maybe it's a bad idea, right? Because I remember when I played high school football and we lost the game 42 to nothing, and I had a horrible game. And I came into the house and she said, well, I thought you played good, honey. So, you know, I just wasn't quite there. But, you know, one night I was channel surfing late and I came across an interview. And the interviewer was going around, he was interviewing about 10 people, senior citizens, and he was asking them what did they wish they had done differently in their careers. And every single one of those people said they wish they had taken more business risk. They wish they had kind of put it out there a little bit further. And the last thing you want to do is get to that stage in your life and feel like, geez, if only I had kind of taken that shot. I'd much rather take the shot and be able to look back and say, hey, I took the shot. It didn't work, but I took the shot. I gave it everything I got. And I realized at that time that I had switched my paradigm from that high school football example of being more afraid of failing to now I was more afraid of being mediocre than I was of failing. So I worked out a deal with my employer to leave, and I spent three months basically working with them on a transition plan. I was running a couple hundred million dollar business and I worked out a deal with them, and I felt really good about that deal. I took a tremendous amount of integrity in doing that. I would really encourage any of you to the extent you leave somewhere you only have your good name in life to really leave as your legacy. And it ended up as I left. After I left, I wanted to go find a company to buy and build. And there had been a company that we passed on, and the company that I was at just before I left, and I was out looking for businesses, and I remembered that company. So I went back to the CEO of the company, and I said, hey, do you mind if I contact these guys? We passed on them previously. And they said, yeah, no problem. It was a conflict. It didn't make sense for us in that particular situation. And that was the company I ended up buying. So, you know, really not burning bridges, you know, really doing things right, you know, is really so important.
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
Depois de tantas histórias, aprendizados e pausas necessárias, o @interior_iza está de volta
