“Am I wasting my life if I retire at 40?” I heard the angst in his voice, and I wanted to hug him. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard about the uncertainty and isolation of business success.
I have a habit of writing about what I hear behind the scenes so that people feel less alone. Hence, the first part of this article is for people who successfully sold their business(s), and need support. The second part is for those who love them.
Last year, I was speaking with someone who had sold his business at a high valuation. I empathized with the transition and asked if he had people to talk to. The reply was this, “the thing is Tricia, it’s pretty hard to discuss with other people. They’re like, ‘geez must be rough to have millions in the bank and not have to work again.’”
“I’m not sure what to do next.”
“I was expecting to feel relief, but I don’t.”
“I feel guilty when I stop to relax.”
“I sound ungrateful for complaining about this.”
“I have this anxiety, and I don’t know where it comes from.’
“I’ve always judged value by what people bring to the table. So am I just taking up space now?”
“Do I start another business?”
“I’m really struggling.”
“Maybe I should get a job.”
If any of the above resonates with you, you are not alone. Our culture does a poor job of discussing the downside of success transitions. The money in the bank doesn’t give you direction about how to use your time; it doesn’t solve the emotional poverty of your childhood; it doesn’t give you a roadmap for what comes next. In fact, it can increase the sense of being ‘other’ as your new circumstances make it harder to connect with the people around you. We seek to belong, and success transitions can be incredibly isolating.
If You Sold Your Business(s) and You are Struggling
You put years of your life into building that baby. Even with the stress, it gave you structure and meaning. Even if you hated it, you knew what to expect. Depending on your personality and the business, it may have given you a creative outlet, a source of challenge, an escape from other stressors, and a huge part of your identity.
Even if you’ve worked your butt off on work-life integration and have a color-coded calendar that reflects diverse activities, selling a business can create a sense of loss. You focused on its growth, the cash flow, the competitors, the marketing, the employees, the triumphs, and the failures. Businesses tend to be like children. They can’t be compartmentalized into a room and pulled out only when it’s convenient. Hence, the business is integrated into your hopes, fears, and daily concerns. It’s possible that the business helped build self-worth and made you feel successful as a human. Now that yardstick is gone.
In addition to figuring out a different identity, your time is up for grabs. It doesn’t feel as freeing and spacious as you’d anticipated. You feel…at a loss. It’s like standing in a messy room and not knowing what to clean first. The unknowns and the plethora of options can be depressing instead of freeing.
Being stressed out does not make you ungrateful.
I understand you have a first-world problem. However, it’s still a problem. The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory and associated research is one of the primary take-aways from my Psychology 100 class, and it informs my thoughts to this day. The bottom line is this–positive events are stressful. Many people don’t lump divorce and selling a business as equally stressful. Yet all change requires adaptation. It’s often associated with different routines, uncertainty, and new learning curves that drain energy.
Selling a business that one has built impacts many life factors; so please know that the research validates your right to be stressed out of your mind instead of dancing on the ceiling.
This is what you can do:
1. Accept the suck as an inevitable part of your success transition. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to embrace it. You don’t have to have a positive attitude. However, there is not a shortcut through it.
2. Put a little structure back into your life. Whether it’s taking a walk or going to the gym or reading each afternoon, a sense of routine is grounding. There is no right or wrong thing to do; I don’t care if you decide to scout for bunny rabbits at 2 am–just pick 2-3 things that add structure to your day.
3. Avoid people who are unhelpful. You will find that some people are well-intentioned, but they can’t get past their own emotions to support yours. Their words can increase isolation and self-doubt, so distract them by steering conversation toward their life concerns rather than your own.
4. If a person seems to genuinely love and want to help you, tell them how they can support you. I have a friend who I know won’t have the words I need; so I tell him to send me Dad jokes. I get to groan, and he can feel helpful. Maybe you don’t want to have a conversation at all; it’s fine to tell people that the topic is off-limits. “I’m struggling, but I don’t want to discuss it. I’d love to take a hike or go to a game though.”
5. Write what you are grateful for, but this is NOT to pressure yourself into a positive emotion. Writing out gratitudes simply helps with perspective. It can help you to understand that transition is temporary, and only a part of your life story rather than the whole.
6. Anticipate that it will take at least a year for things to even out. Sometimes changes incur additional changes (which I’ve dubbed the unmitigated sequelae of suck). Emotionally plan for it and don’t beat yourself up, thinking that something is wrong with you.
7. Should you start another business? Maybe. But you aren’t wasting your life if you retire either. The main thing is to try your best not to be reactive and default to your normal course of decision-making simply because it’s familiar.
8. Make a list of all of the things you’ve always wanted to do but didn’t have the time. You might also want to list challenges or other business opportunities that have interested you. You may not be in an emotional place to be interested in any of it, but as you get further out, you can decide which items to pick up and try.
9. If you are considering starting a new business, assess the lifestyle you have had with the previous business(s) and the one you want in the future. One of the most common desires I hear is that people would like to be less involved in daily operations. Consider using the extra cash to build differently than you may have done if you were bootstrapping the first one.
For People Who Want to Support Those in Success Transitions
1. Do not force positivity.
Phrases such as:
“You’re lucky.”
“I wish I had your problem.”
“It will get better.”
“Look on the bright side.”
“It could be worse.”
“Aren’t you excited?”
..all of these minimize a person’s emotions.
True empathy reflects what a person feels, not what you want them to feel.
2. Say: “I understand this is a lot of transition for you. It seems like some of it might be good and some of it might be hard. Let me know if you need to vent.”
3. Encourage. “You’ve got this. I’ve seen you navigate other difficulties. You’re in a learning curve right now.”
4. Validate the confusion. “I know that you have an action plan for everything, but it seems that if you spent 20 years doing one thing, it might take some time to figure out what is next.” High Achievers usually feel like failures if they can’t figure things out in 24 hours, so drawing a contrast between doing something for 20 years and trying to reorient within 3 months can help ground them.
For everyone reading, success unleashes new learning and it can be incredibly difficult because our culture does not discuss the downside of it. Give yourself permission to adapt, to be sad, to grieve, to question. You are not ungrateful; you are simply a human trying to figure out the next pathway forward.