← Impact with Eddie Wilson
Impact with Eddie Wilson
39 - The Founder Identity Crisis | 3 Signs You’re Trapped & How to Break Free
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Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson, here to help you visualize what others cannot see, create opportunities where others have failed, and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. Welcome to the Impact Podcast. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about the founder identity crisis. So many founders and business owners struggle with identity, and I'm going to talk to you about that today. And I. And I'm also going to be very transparent in the areas that I've struggled. But before we get started, just want to say a quick thank you to our podcast sponsor, which is because Coffee. Because Coffee, if you need some specialty grade a grade specialty roast coffee, that's a coffee brand that I am partners in. And a percentage of those proceeds go to Impact others. So go check out Because Coffee. You know, when we are building a business, the easiest way for us to find success is to actually pour ourselves into that business. And by pouring ourselves into that business and putting everything we have in it, what happens is there's an exchange. And the exchange is identity. We pour ourselves, our livelihood, our life, our ideas, our blood, sweat, tears into this business, and then in exchange, the business gives us an identity. Especially when there's success. The greater the success, the stronger the identity. You know, as a business owner myself, oftentimes I'm not defined by. You don't hear people talk about the leaders that I've grown or the people that I have created success in. They talk about my accolades, they talk about the business exits, they talk about the companies that I own or I ran, the companies that I currently own or run. They talk about the Aspire tour, they talk about all of these things, but that's not truly what makes me successful. And it's. It's very intentionally not my identity. My identity is so much different. And so I want to talk to you about that because in the business past, I have definitely lost my identity to my business. So why is this important? Well, why it's important is because if your identity is not wrapped up in your business, then you can actually make better decisions for your business. Just practically speaking, when your identity is your business, then all of a sudden you make business decisions that are intentionally or unintentionally geared towards how you succeed or how you benefit or how you become that central figure. And so high achievers oftentimes will build the business, then they become the business. And then when they get to this place of like, when they become the business, then they can't breathe without it. They can't, they can't open their mouths, they can't go to a dinner party without talking about it, they can't, they can't have interactions with their children without referencing, you know, what is going on in the business or what they've done. And then, then they get to this, you know, kind of paradoxical point where they then scale the business, they grow the business and then they can't exit the business properly because it is so much of their identity. And so when we do this, what happens is, is it stunts our own personal growth as well as our business growth. And as well as all the leaders that are in that business, they also get stunted when we wrap our identity into the company that we own. So I want you to think about it and I want you to take a little bit of a test today. How do you know if you are confusing your identity with the business? How do you know if you're wrapping your identity in with this company that you have built? Here are some signs that would clearly indicate, and these are signs in full transparency that I found myself struggling with. If I just go back on my journey a little bit in 2019 when I sell all the companies, that's the largest exit year that I had. I had exited some businesses before and even in 2019 when I, when they accumulated all of the exits that I had, even some of the exits that I was experiencing in 2019 really started back in 2005. It was even, it predated some of the investments that I made in 2013. And so all those exits kind of accumulated and a lot of the payout and a lot of the benefit was in 2019. And you would think that after selling roughly 70 plus companies in one year and probably making the largest amount of money, I mean not probably definitely making the largest amount of money that I've ever made. Life changing money. I was depressed and found myself in a deep dark depression, struggling with what's next and what's my worth and what's my value and, and wanting to rush back into building businesses. Even though I, I needed a break so bad. I, I was so burnt out and I was struggling so much that I found that my identity was so tied to these businesses that I really couldn't even find self worth or self value past the point of the exits. And I will tell you that that was a dark time in my life. It took me a year or two to really find my footing. Sincerely, about two years worth of just trying to Find my footing in what I was doing and how I was acting and what I was reacting to, what? Because it was such a difficult time for me. But let me just give you a couple of signs that I know were indicative of my life leading up to that time period. And let me just give you the test for yourself. Number one, your emotions track with your P and L. Okay? Your profit and loss statement, right? Which is just generally speaking, talking about the health of your business directly affects your emotional output. And so if you have a bad month, all of a sudden you lose your confidence. Like if, if your things aren't going well, then everything is not going well, right? Like if, if the business is going poor, then your personal life is going poor, if your business is not succeeding, then your relationships are failing. That is a clear sign that you are tying your identity to this business. Also, if you have some big win, it's what makes you feel like a genius. It's what you kind of tip your hat to. If you have some big win in your business. You're like, yeah, see, like that. That's who I am. I'm this person who wins. And we, we tie our, we tie our successes and our losses in business to ourselves, personally and emotionally. If our peace rides on the numbers, we've confused our worth with our income. Our worth is not our income. Your worth and your value. My worth and my value has nothing to do with the dollars in my bank account. They, they dollars in your bank account are a scorecard and they oftentimes are just a reward for hard work or innovation. But that is not your worth. That is not your value. Your personal financial statement has no correlation to who you are and what your worth is. What your value has, is, is nothing, has nothing to do with the numbers. Sign number two. So number one, your emotions track with your P and L. Number two, you can't picture the business without you. Meditate for a second and think through what would my business look like if I wasn't there. And if you struggle to see yourself out of that business, not because you're burnt out, you just want out, but you actually see yourself outside of the business and still see the business having success. We have misidentified ourselves with our business. And the reason that I, that I know that this is a detriment is because once you start to identify yourself with that business, you can't see a future without you in that business. All of a sudden you'll start doing things and the trickle down effect will be you resist delegation. You'll Hate being off the grid, you'll hate being out of the office. You will take two or three day vacations versus a week vacation because you really can't see yourself outside of it. And you'll have fears about someone else taking over. You'll see someone rising to the top in the organization, finding success, and it brings you terror because you and inadvertently and sometimes in our own subconscious will begin to sabotage that person because we don't want them to have more success than we have because our identity is so much tied to that business. Sign number three. You don't know who you are outside the role. When someone asks you, so what do you do? You easily tell them, this is the job I do, this is the company I have. But if somebody says, who are you? You cannot explain yourself outside of the outputs that you have inside of your business. Who are you? Describe yourself to me, right? Like, tell me who you are at your core. And if you can't identify who you are outside of the business or the work of your hands, then, then you have completely tied your identity to this business. And this is really, really important. And so I want you to look at that. And those three things are a good, clear indicator that you have tied your identity to your business. If you have done that, I'm gonna help you get some relief, okay? Because I found myself there so many times. I'll find my mood is completely tied to the success of the business. I'll find myself really feeling anxious over somebody doing a better job than I do at my own role. Right times. Our identities are tied to these things. So let me give you some framework on how to break free and how I've been working to break free of this in my own life. And this is an ongoing effort. This isn't something that you naturally just do automatically, and it just automatically happens. This is an ongoing effort. So, number one, you have to create emotional separation from your business. You have to create emotional separation. When you view your business as an asset, you become the steward of that asset, not the source of your worth. So I want you to start thinking in terms of a business. And so, like oftentimes when you come inside of my organization, you'll hear me use terms like asset leader, or this is a company asset. So the way that I look at it is collective influence is our private equity firm. And underneath of it, I have a bunch of assets. I don't even call them businesses, I call them assets. And, and there's a framework for that. There's a reason why even in coming into this business and me setting it up, that I use the word asset. And also I use the word asset leader. Instead of saying, hey, they're the CEO of Aspire or they're the president of, you know, our family bank program, I use asset leader. I say, Steve Williams is the asset leader of the family banking program, right? And the reason I do that is because when I train my mind that this is an asset and it holds value without me, it holds value in and of itself. And so if you've ever heard me use that term asset or if any of my employees, that's the clear reason why I make a clear delineation to say this is an asset, because it holds value with or without me. It holds value with someone else at the helm. And so the other thing that I would highly recommend, if you want to create emotional separation, number one, look at your business as an asset versus a complete tie to you, right? Instead of looking at your business as just a business that is there to support you, support your family, look as an asset that is there to support the customers, that's there to employ employees. And then thirdly, to be a good steward of that asset, it should earn profit that then should benefit you, right? And so think about it as an asset, number two, in that is, as a tool, often you should journal your wins and your failures. And in one of my early, early podcasts, I talked about owning your failures, right? Just own them, speak to them, don't avoid them. I think that naturally I always want to win. So when somebody says, hey, tell me about some of your losses or your failures, I really struggle to even go back in time to re regurgitate those because I struggle because I just once, I, I, I, I, you know, learned the lesson, I moved on. But oftentimes we need to journal a failure. Why did we fail? I'll give you a for instance. I believe that every bad decision I've made in business is a decision made in haste, okay? Something that I made too quickly. Every bad decision, every bad decision also did not have data present, right? And the reason I know this is not just because it's the way my gut feels. It's because I've looked at my failures, I've talked about my failures, my, in the, at the company, like we, we talk about these failures. What do we do that caused this breakdown? And I can tell you that those two key are, are key indicators of me making a potential next failure, right? If I make something too fast or I don't have data to back up the decision, right? So if you'll journal your wins and your. Your failures and then label them as data, not identity. Right. Your label it is company data. When you're journaling your wins and your losses, don't just say, I won and this is how I won, and this is what it meant to me. Right? Make it a point of data so that you can go back and reference it from a standpoint of should I do this or should I not do this again. Right. But do not label it as identity. All right? Step number two, how to break free. Clarify your calling versus your company. Okay. In the end, oftentimes we will look at the brand that is our company, our website, our logo, the stories, the customers. Right? And we'll identify with it. Right? And so if you think about it, we have what's called the Aspire Tour. The Aspire Tour is the nation's largest business tour. And every month we go on stage and we speak to thousands of entrepreneurs. And, you know, over the last three years, it has been a crazy ride where just thousands and thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs have come and listened. And it would be very easy for me to just identify with the success of the Aspire Tour. It's one of the biggest things we've ever. I've ever built from a notoriety standpoint. I mean, this thing has traveled the nation, it's gotten accolades, and it's easy for me to associate with Aspire because it has bigness to it. So because it has bigness to it, because it has success with it. It's so easy for me to say, I am the Aspirator the Aspire Tour is, Eddie. But the fact of the matter is, is the Aspire Tour is so much greater than that. It has a purpose, and the purpose is impact others. Every time I get on the stage in the morning of the Aspire Tour, I kick it off by talking about living a life of impact and living a life of purpose, and I share something that they can take, you know, some sort of ownership in for the last, I don't know, 34 events, we've raised enough money to dig a well somewhere in the world. And so the Aspire Tour, to me, is more than the stage. It's more than the identity. It's. It's impact others. Because my calling is so much bigger than the company that is serving the calling. You have to choose something bigger than your company. And what's bigger than your company is your calling. And I don't know what your calling is, but your calling could be to bring light love into the world, it could be to change the way that we see things. I think that if you ask Elon Musk what is, I think recently I was listening and they asked him, what, what is your calling? And he said, to change the way that travel is completed and done and perceived in the world and even in the universe. Like, if you think about that, it's like, oh, no wonder he's got a space program and no wonder he's digging high speed rails underneath the ground. No wonder he's built electric cars. It's like all of it starts to make sense because what he was saying is, is my identity is bigger than Tesla. My identity is bigger than Twitter. X. Right. His identity is is he's creating something that wasn't ever in existence before. Right? And so we need to make sure that our calling is stronger than our company, that our brand isn't the logos, the brand isn't the website, the brand isn't the success of the P and L. The brand is whatever the vehicle of the business is actually driving towards. In the end, what I know is that calling is constant, no matter what vehicle I'm driving. Okay? My calling is constant. My calling is to make impact on people around the world that can't impact their own themselves, their, their own lives. And so that's why we have feeding centers and orphanages and dig clean water and create sustainable businesses. That's my calling. That's a part of who I am. So if I were to sell all these companies today and walk out, I still have the calling. It's bigger, right? Like it's, it's still a North Star. And so clarify. Your calling versus your company is really, really important. That's step number two. All right, step number three. And I would say that, you know, this is important, but probably I would say clarifying your calling versus your company is number one importance, but the step number three, this last step, is build systems so that you are not the central figure. Oftentimes we resist systems because we want to feel important. So replace myself from the mission critical. If I'm still mission critical for my business, my identity will always be tied to it. And oftentimes the reason I won't build systems is not because I'm a maverick or I don't like systems. The reason I won't build systems is because it hurts my ego. It goes against my very ego. Because when someone else can do it and do it as well as I do it, if not better, then I'm not needed anymore. Now my ego takes a hit, the Business should grow because of your vision, not because of your constant involvement. Let me say that one more time. Your business should grow because of your vision, not because of your constant involvement. Let me give you a quick example, because I think that oftentimes, as a small business owner, we feel like, man, we've done all this wrong, right? And every time I get on the podcast, I'm giving you something you got to correct or change. But understand that this is a journey. This is not just a destination that we're leading towards. It's the journey of growth. And one of the examples is Howard Schultz. Howard Schultz was the kind of visionary founder of Starbucks. He went and spent all the time in Tuscany, brought it back, and then created this crazy experience. And now even the specialty roast coffee that we have today really has its popularity based on what Howard Schultz did, right? Now. Howard Schultz created a chain store, and he got America to fall in love with those white and green cups, you know? But Howard Schultz did something greater than that. He created a brand that is global and globally recognized. But think about it. How many times has Howard Schultz in his lifetime been introduced to Speak? And he said, this is Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, right? This is Howard Schultz. He created Starbucks. This is Howard Schultz. He brought coffee to the world through the vehicle of Starbucks, right? And so you think about somebody at his level and how difficult it is for him to separate. So Howard Schultz founded Starbucks, and he eventually stepped away twice. Here's the thing. The first time he stepped away, he began to start feeling like the company itself was beginning to take a dip. He began to think that it was going the wrong direction. And his identity was so tied to the brand that he kept coming back. He would find fault with the CEO, his board, right? Because they're publicly traded, the board would say, oh, you gotta come back. It would feed this sense of ego, of like, oh, man, I'm the person that can come save this. I created it, now I'm gonna save it. And he did it multiple times, Howard Schultz. But he was never as effective as the very first time he did it. Isn't this a kind of an interesting thing? He came in to save it, and he. Every time that he came in to save it, he had limited results, okay? And to the point where finally he rode off into the sunset. And today, I would argue that the CEO of Starbucks today is one of the greatest leaders Starbucks has ever had. He started righting a lot of the wrongs. He had a strong enough backbone to make some changes that no one could make. He saw massive growth, and he is highly, highly paid. This, the new Starbucks CEO is, is, in my opinion, the greatest CEO. Now, that doesn't take away what Howard Schultz did in the creation of the brand. But the current CEO, I believe, is the greatest CEO that Starbucks has ever had. I think he's a better CEO than Howard Schultz was. But Howard Schultz got lost in the identity of it. He'll never lose it. But think about it. If Howard Schultz kept tying his identity back to Starbucks, he has to continue to go in reverse. How sad is it that Howard Schultz felt like he had to continually go back in order to essentially to find that identity one more time? And I know that I have found myself in that very same role. There was a company that I sold that about a year after it, during the pandemic, I got a call, and they offered me a very large sum of money to come back and fix it. I immediately fell back in, and I had worked for a year to separate myself from the identity of those businesses and to find purpose again and to find a North Star. And I started going hard after impact others. But that one phone call, right, that one phone call brought me back five years. And all of a sudden I got excited, and I was like, ooh, I get to tie my identity back to this company one more time. They need me. They want me, right? And I all of a sudden started to feel this emotion. And I knew in that moment I had to say no. No matter how much money they gave me, no matter how much they wanted me to save this company, they wanted me to fix it. After the pandemic, no matter how much they wanted me to dive back in, I had to say no. And I had to say no because it couldn't become my identity. I was far enough down the path of impact Others and starting to feel fulfillment for the first time in my life. Helping these orphans and finding, you know, bringing that. That kind of space of joy into the world for people that couldn't impact themselves. And I knew that if I were to go back to that company and take on that identity again, the regression I would feel in all the steps, all the success that I had felt in moving forward would be lost. And I knew that I had to make that choice. You are the architect of this business. You are the architect, but you're not the empire. Oftentimes when I talk about my system of building empires, we think that the empire is the end result. And I would say that I'm not the empire. I'm the architect of the empire. If we put ourselves in the right context, we're the architect, we're the steward of the asset, right? If you put yourself in the right framework, it allows you to make sure that you have the right identity. Let me say one last thing, and that is this. You as a human being are bigger than any company you could ever build. You could go build Tesla, build a billion dollar company. I'm telling you, you are bigger. Your calling is greater, your calling is higher. You should start diving deep into who you are and what you do. I would say that sometimes as an entrepreneur, I miss take where my value is. If you think about it, I have three boys. And one of the mistakes that I have made over my lifetime is thinking that the company has enough value that it deserves all of my attention and all of my, all of my investment. But I will tell you that one thing that I've learned is that if I could raise three successful boys, if I could raise three boys that brought light and love and, and, and, and, you know, amazing things into this world, right, then that is one of the greatest achievements I could ever achieve. Right? It's greater than any company. If I could create a nonprofit that serves people and it doesn't have to serve billions, even if it served just a few, that's a greater purpose than just building a company. We have to get to the place where the architect, where we're supporting it and we're, we're leaning in towards vision because our calling is bigger than any company. You, as a human, are bigger than anything that you can build. You have intrinsic value, intrinsic worth. And I want you to find your identity and, and who you are, not what you build. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. Love to connect with you further. And you can connect with me on social media at Eddie Wilson official on any of the social media channels.