Colin Sprake's lifelong friend from South Africa died by suicide, forcing him to reckon with how entrepreneurs sacrifice time with loved ones for business. He argues grief clarifies what matters: use business to fund more time with family and travel, not the other way around.
I lost a close friend a while back, and it really brought perspective to me in my world. And I want to share this with you because I think it's very important. He was a friend of mine. We'd been friends since the age of 3 in South Africa. And then one day I woke up and I was sitting on my computer. I think it was around 2012. I got up early that morning, like really early, like 3:30, and something was calling me deep inside. And I got up and I went and I looked at my computer, which I normally never do when I first wake up, and he had taken his own life. In fact, he tried to take his family's life at the same time, and that really concerned me. At this, of course, I jumped on the phone and tried to console the and be part of where they were at. But the thing that drove home for me is life is so short. We've started business, get into business so that we can spend more time with our families. And sadly, most of us spend less and less time with our families. And then suddenly something happens and we wish we had spent more time. We wish we'd done what matters. Grief is a great clarifier. Grief is a plan. Grief gets you to wake up and see things differently sometimes. And I hope it does for you because it really gets you to focus on what matters. Most of the time we sacrifice what matters while we're trying to make money and get these business businesses off the ground, yet we keep on that habit and eventually all we focus on is our business and we're— what matters to us we seem to lose. So please make sure you keep really clear on what matters to you. Get that alignment with what matters in your life so that you can stay true to why you even started the business in the first place, which is to spend more time with those people you love and give you a different lifestyle that you tour the world and have fun and do the things that really are the heart-connected part of who you are in your world.
