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For business owners that have some kind of grasp on reality (you can’t guarantee you will be here tomorrow), it is so absolutely critical that the personal plan for what you will be doing post-exit begins before you sell your business, whether you're a year out from exit or whether you are 15. If you care about your business, your employees, your vendors/partners, your family, your community and your clients…you will be running your business ready to exit on the best possible terms…right now.
A lot of times I get asked by people “ Wow, I really admire how you dedicate yourself to go fly-fishing during the week. I just can't do that right now.” Or, “How do you do that?”
How I do it is be accepting some truths:
- I know that I'm not going to get everything done, period. So I'm old enough and experienced enough to know that I'm never going to finish the to-do list while I'm on this Earth, so I am probably just a little bit more experienced, and have been able to accept that better than earlier in my life.
- The other thing is I've seen my life get ripped wide open before through things I couldn’t prepare for and avoid. I've experienced what it's like to have a child born at 24 weeks and be in intensive care for months, and so I know that not everything's guaranteed.
I've built businesses, sold businesses successfully and I've lost businesses for pennies on the dollar. One of the things that I've decided for myself, going forward, is that my definition of success is going to include living right now.
My friends that love fly fishing, or any other passion of theirs and don’t think they have time to do it right now are wrong. Their assumption, well meaning, is that they will have time later to pursue what makes them alive after they do ‘x’. That is certainly possible, but you aren’t in control of the future and what would it be like to sacrifice everything so that you could do something later only to find out that you can’t?
Death and disability are equal opportunity haters.
And here's the irony of it all: I absolutely believe, and so does my wife who supports me in this, I absolutely believe that my insistence and my prioritization of going fly-fishing is a huge part of why I'm actually successful now. The other beauty for me of fly-fishing is all the time off the water is just as compelling. How am I going to fish? Where am I going to fish? What's the weather like? How much time do I have? What time of the year is it? It's just keeping my brain engaged, keeping my brain happy.
For almost 15 years I was in this, in-between state of having failed, but knowing that I had the talent to do better and not being able to perform. And that is so frustrating. And what I needed was to do things that were good for me, things that made me feel better and yet I kept telling myself I didn’t have the time.
It wasn't just about being in shape or anything like that. It is just fly-fishing for me, being on the water, the complicated necessity of it, the beauty of it just heals part of my soul and allows me to get more stuff done in less time.
And so it's absolutely critical that you have something like that, even if it's just an hour where you are doing something during the business week, during the work week, that is just for you. By the way, being selfish sometimes is good because if you don't take care of yourself, if you don't ensure that you are prepared to give it your best or the best you can, no one else is going to benefit from you otherwise.
It's kind of that bad spiral we get in where it's like, well, I'll get back in shape, by the way, this is personal for me, I really let myself slide last year and I'm working on getting back in shape primarily because it's starting to affect my fly-fishing.
But if you keep letting things slide eventually, everything else begins to slide and so that's why the personal plan is important. That's why you have to live right now.
That's why you need to do things designed for your brain to say, “Hey, we're not just grinding like a machine, we are human beings and we're experiencing joy and fun.” That way you know that all the struggle and sacrifice isn’t completely one sided.
I have written before about this and I will write about it again because you are worth it. This is your one shot and you don’t get a do over. You can have business growth and do the things you love. There is a price to pay and it is preparation and design. You must decide that you are going to prioritize, at least a little bit, your own life and happiness. Then, you must build that into your schedule and trust that the investment will return more than it costs.
Trust me, it will.
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