Written in 2014.
The last few years of my life have seen dramatic changes. Both of my parents have died. I got my MBA from Duke. I started several companies. All of these are big changes. Life still goes on. There are still so many aspects of my life that are exactly the same as they were before. I still sleep in the same recliner at night, and I still need to lose weight. My favourite chocolate is still the same. As much as life has changed, in some ways things are exactly the same as they were before. My house is still the same wreck (okay, maybe it’s worse) that it has always been. So many changes, but so much is still the same.
I’m coming to realise that even as I build companies, lead Girl Scouts, and get older, I am still fundamentally myself. The core person of who I am doesn’t change. In that contemplation, it makes me realise that other CEOs and executives are people too. They have learned leadership skills, and worked hard to get ahead, but fundamentally they are people. They have likes, dislikes, and fears. It is part of the human condition.
Life after changing jobs is interesting, because I’ve learned that I am not defined by others in my life. I’m not defined by my parents, my husband, or even by my job. I’m also not defined by my children, even though I may be incredibly proud of them. I have emerged from all of the changes stronger than ever, and even more determined to succeed. I have lost a lot in the last few years, but I’ve also discovered a lot about myself, and maybe even have gained more than I’ve lost. I still miss my dad, and nothing will bring him back, but that memory, and the strength, helps me do great things.
Why this is harder for founders than for most people
“I am not defined by my job” is easy to say and genuinely difficult to live when the job is a company you built.
An employee can dislike their work and still know where they end and the role begins. A founder rarely has that line. You chose the name. You decided what it does and how it treats people. When someone criticises the business, it does not land like feedback on a job. It lands like feedback on you, because in a real sense it is.
That fusion is useful for a while. It’s what gets a company through the years when nobody is paying you properly and there’s no reason to keep going except that you care. Businesses that survive usually have someone in them who took it personally.
It stops being useful at a specific point: when the company needs to become something you wouldn’t have chosen.
Where it shows up
The founder-identity problem rarely announces itself. It appears disguised as ordinary business decisions:
- Hiring someone better than you at the thing you’re known for. Obviously correct, and quietly threatening, because that skill is part of how you understand yourself.
- Changing what the business does. Not can you afford it — can you still be yourself if the company isn’t what it was.
- Stepping back from the work. Moving from doing to directing means giving up the part that made you feel competent every day, in exchange for a role where you may not feel competent for a year.
- Selling or closing. The question underneath “what would I do” is usually “who would I be”.
Each of those gets debated as a strategy question when it’s actually an identity question, and the strategy conversation never resolves because it isn’t where the resistance lives.
The test
Reasonable way to find out where you stand: finish the sentence “I am…” three times without mentioning your business, your job title, or your children.
If it’s hard, that’s information — not a failing. It’s extremely common in people who have poured a decade into building something, and it’s worth knowing before circumstances force the question.
Because they will eventually. Businesses end, get sold, change beyond recognition, or simply need a different person running them than the one who started them. The founders who handle that well are not the ones who cared less. They’re the ones who had something to stand on that the company didn’t supply.
What actually stays the same
Which brings me back to the recliner, and the chocolate, and the house that is still a wreck.
What I was noticing in 2014, without quite having words for it, is that continuity of self doesn’t come from the big things. Not the degree, the companies, or even the losses. It comes from the unremarkable stuff that persists underneath all of them.
That’s worth protecting deliberately, because it’s the part that will still be there when the business isn’t — and it’s usually the first thing to get sacrificed when a company is demanding. The hours you keep for things that have nothing to do with work aren’t time taken from the business. They’re the thing that survives it.
I still miss my dad. That hasn’t changed either, and I wouldn’t want it to.
A note added later: reading this back, one line stands out — “I still need to lose weight.” I did, eventually. More than 210 pounds over the following seven years, which is over half of what I weighed when I wrote this.
What made the difference wasn’t willpower or a decision made on any particular morning. It was structure: time blocked on the calendar for eating, for exercise, for sleep, for my husband — treated as seriously as any client meeting, because otherwise they are the first things a growing business eats.
Which is really the same point the rest of this post is making. The things that persist through change are the ones you deliberately protect. Everything else gets absorbed by whatever is most urgent that week.
