Three Stages of the Founder Journey (and Who You Need to Be at Each)
My coaching practice has evolved to almost exclusively serving founders in the last year or so.
Why?
To be a founder, one has to see the world differently. They have to believe they have an idea that is better than everything out there. That they can change the world with that idea.
Turns out, that is is even more true for the founder’s internal world than it is for the external. And the two are inextricably linked.
I have created a successful coaching practice by both letting go my previous identity, and then creating myself as a successful coach. And now I do the same for founders. No matter what their previous identity was, their results improve exponentially when they see they can create and come from a more powerful place
We create massive change when we create ourselves differently. And for the founder, these changes are available at three stages of their business, in at least three different but related ways.
Stand
By far the most difficult step in founding is the first one.
To declare that you know a better way. To commit to bringing that better way into the world.
Our entire economic structure is build around the idea of workers doing jobs, fitting within a box on a chart and not challenging the boundaries of that box. And it works just well enough that most people dare not challenge it. Operate within the model and you will get lots of good things—a job that pays well. The opportunity to do more and earn more through promotions. You will likely do well on the material side of life. You will provide for your family. Your children will get college educations and training in how to continue within that model.
Some people, though, are not happy with this model. They are not fulfilled. They have all the things but there is no meaning, no purpose, no joy, no sense of serving something larger than themselves.
Maybe you?
Just standing up a viable business is a heroic effort in a system that seems stacked against you.
Declaring that you know a better way, and that you are willing to try different things until it works, is heroic.
You will likely fail along the way. You will be tempted to quit.
But the simple commitment, the declaration to yourself, that you will figure it out, that you have always figured things out, will make all the difference.
How do you make that easier?
At this stage the most helpful thing you can do is surround yourself with colleagues, mentors, teachers, and coaches who are doing this or already have.
To normalize the kind of success you are looking to create.
To see that it is not only easy, but inevitable, that you will create yourself more powerfully.
If you surround yourself with employees, all you will hear about how it is too dangerous to go out on your own, to lose your health insurance, your pension, your safety, your stability. After all, it’s not a good time now, how will you get customers, what about the economy?
And so on and so on.
Would you rather surround yourself with people who are afraid of what you are doing? Who instinctively advise against it?
Or with people who have done it, and know why the “problems,” for example, having multiple people paying you rather than just one, are actually better than a traditional job? Who have figured out affordable health care and all the other supposed reasons why you “can’t” do what you want to?
You are going to do the impossible. Surround yourself with other people just like you who are or have done the same or even more. And show up as powerfully as you can.
Scale
You made it. You now have a thriving business. You have a proven concept and you can deliver it profitably.
Now you face a choice. Is that enough for you, or do you want more?
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There is nothing wrong with being satisfied with a “lifestyle” business. With being a one-person, or a one-location, operation.
But you might be called to more. You might be called to scale.
Scaling means building the business with repeatable processes. Teaching others how you do what you do so they can do it. Holding the vision. Creating a leadership team with separate functions—product, sales, account management, finance, legal, HR.
When you were standing up the business it was all about you. About your idea. About proving the idea could work.
Now you know all that. And it is time to get out of the way. Your growth depends on how much control you are willing to give up.
Most founders who build successful businesses are not able to scale them. Why? Not because the idea isn’t a good one. The fact that they have a successful business proves that in fact they do have a good idea.
No, the reason that they fail is that what is required of the founder to scale is exactly opposite of the what it takes to stand up the business in the first place.
When you are standing up a business, you are critical to the success of the endeavor. When you are scaling, you are actively removing yourself from the day-to-day operations. Your job is to build a team, build a culture in which the best ideas thrive. And then to think about what you want the business to be in the long term while your team runs everything else much more smoothly than you ever could.
Your success in this endeavor will determine whether you get to the next phase.
Sell
This is the glamour phase. Where it all comes together and you take the company public, or someone comes along and offers you a lot of money to buy you out.
At least with respect to a purchase, the most common exit, a business is most valuable when it can thrive without you. And when a buyer has a strategic reason to acquire you, that upside is even greater.
Assuming the business is growing in revenue and profitablity, the longer you hold on the more you will get.
The people around you, for the most part, will urge you to sell. They want their money, and they would rather have it now than wait for a bigger payout later. I have even seen investors and board members actively undermine the own long term interests out of personal feelings, greed, or a simple desire to get their money out now.
There’s a paradox here. To maximize the value of your company, you have to make sure it does not need you, AND, if the business is successful, staying in control of it as you long as you can.
That is a unique and powerful kind of leader. The kind who can advocate for an idea without feeling any personal attachment to it.
And it takes a very particular kind of personal work.
The kind of work that I do with founders at every step of their journey.
Different Challenges Require Different Insights
We have talked about who you must be at each of these three stages. But we haven’t talked about the most effective ways to see and then be that.
The most common type of leader focuses on execution. There is nothing wrong with this, and it can be very effective. Operators are very necessary, but they don’t lead to the kind of exponential growth that, if you have read this far, I suspect you want. Execution, by itself, will not lead to the success you want.
Next is the most common type of personal development, which I will call affirmation. You could call this positive thinking or “the Secret” or many other terms. Proving that you can do it, that you are worthy, that you can be a winner, in large part by saying it or visualizing it over and over. No question this can be effective. I would say you could 2x your results if you focus on thinking more positively, on creating yourself in a more useful and powerful way. But the weakness of this approach is that you have built good on top of bad (those doubts that you really aren’t enough haven’t actually gone away) and that can create quite a drag on your results.
Next, and less common but maybe even more powerful, is the work that I have done in the Three Principles community and with my Buddhist teachers. This involves seeing that we only ever experience the world through our thinking and that our thinking is constantly in flux. I will call this realization. When you truly see this, your experience of things gets a lot easier. You see that you are creating it all, even the sense of being or not being enough. And, when most people see they don’t have to do anything to prove that they are worthy, they actually create more. My experience is that those on the realization path might create 2-3 times the results of the executors. But it can also result in completely disengaging, at least for awhile, because the pull of “enoughness” can be so powerful that momentum stops when it is no longer present.
Lastly is the approach that I use in my proprietary Creating Extraordinary Futures Process?. And I believe this approach can 10x your results. First, you have to see that you are nothing (and the ability to create anything and everything), as in the realization path. Then, you can consciously create yourself as something much more powerful—like the affirmation path but so much more powerful. You are no longer creating this on top of your former doubts—those have been released or at least greatly reduced because you see they are not real. Instead, you see that if you are creating yourself, always, you can CONSCIOUSLY create yourself as anyone you want or need to be.
I call this transformation, and it is the heart of my work with founders.
Join My Founder Community
I am in the process of building out support for founders at all levels. If you would like to be part of my founder community, please reach out and we can continue the conversation. And, at the right time, we might have a conversation about deeper support, either one-on-one or in a group.