Podcast
Ep. 13 — Who are you when the company is gone?
Two founders, both post-exit, both quietly lost. The episode people email me about most.
Both of my guests sold their companies. Both did well. Both describe the following eighteen months as the hardest of their adult lives, and neither of them saw it coming, and — this is the part that got me — neither of them told anybody at the time.
The thing nobody says at the party
When you have been "the founder of X" for nine years, the sentence does a lot of load-bearing work. It answers the question at the party. It explains the hours. It gives the tiredness a purpose.
After the exitIdentityTake it away and the tiredness is still there, and now it means nothing at all.
"I had all the money I'd said I wanted, and I couldn't work out what to do on a Tuesday." — guest, 31:12
What actually helped
Not travel. Both of them tried travel and both of them describe it, with some feeling, as "being lost, but in Portugal".
What helped, in both cases, was somebody asking them the boring question: what did you like doing, before any of this? And then holding them to the answer for about a year.
Listen above
This is the one people write to me about. If you're anywhere near an exit — before or after — I'd start here.
If this landed
The rest of ithappens in a room.
Reading helps. A standing hour with somebody who has no stake in your answer helps more.