As founders scale their businesses, they shift from doing the work to coaching others to owning from a distance. One client took a vacation and realized the business ran fine without her, triggering an identity crisis. The real measure of your value is building something that works without you.
Are you worth anything if your business doesn't need you? We had a client who just took a vacation, and while she was gone, everything went great. Fine. No emergencies. Sales were actually up. And she's wondering like, okay, am I now just completely irrelevant? Am I unnecessary? And the reality is this is something that nobody talks about. This identity shift that happens at scale when you get everything that you thought you wanted, except along the way you completely lost your identity, is something business owners don't talk about. We gotta talk about it. Here's what happens. When you start your company, you are your company's most valuable player. You're on the field, you're doing the stuff, you're getting the claps, you're getting the cheers, and it feels good. And that is what our identity is around. It's around being the most valuable player. But this is not what's going to scale businesses. It might make you famous, but it's not going to build a business that can scale and that can create actual enterprise and exit value. So we need to move— we need to move from the field to the sidelines as the coach. That's the first big shift that takes place when you go from founder to CEO. And this is a good thing, but if you don't redefine your role, it can still feel like loss. The next big shift that happens is when we shift from the sidelines as a coach to the luxury box as the business owner. And this is the biggest shift of all because this is when we no longer even feel like we're doing the work anymore, because you're not. Again, if I'd asked you at the beginning, is this what you wanted? You told me, yes, it's exactly what I want. But what nobody tells you is that it is a shift in identity. So you need to know that going into it. The identity shift is real. The identity shift is actually a good thing, but we need to define it accordingly. So as your role shifts, just make sure you're updating your job description and make sure that you're seeing this as a promotion, not a demotion, and not a loss of identity.
