An entrepreneur describes the panic after selling their company: terrified of losing wealth and status, they kept hustling despite having money. They realized they'd optimized for ego metrics—income, fame, status—while building nothing meaningful in their actual life.
After I sold my company, I thought I would feel free, but instead what happened is that I freaked out about losing what I had built. And by that I mean, like, an amount of money in the bank. And I had this pile of money show up. And then I was just worried about it going away. And then I was worried about what other people would think if all of that money went away. And so I just stayed addicted to the grind. And so I just kept hustling. And what I learned years after the fact was that I had optimized for things like status. And what I realized after a lot of pain, was that I had built income streams, but I hadn't actually built a life. And that is a dangerous trap for a lot of entrepreneurs is it takes so much of us to build a company that we also forget to build a life. And, man, that sounds like some work life balance bs. But I think what most of us want is not the money or the status or the fame. What most of us want is to do work that we enjoy is to do work that we find fulfilling. And if we have compromised that in favor of the end result or the ego metrics, then we can get all of that end result and still not feel fulfilled or like what we did mattered.
