Most founders face at least one dark night of the soul.

The journey usually looks like this:

• You’re smart and talented.
• You value freedom/autonomy.
• You don’t like working for others, so:

You start a consulting business. You’re great at what you do. The business grows, then:

• You can’t handle all the work.
• You hire people to help you.
• They don’t do it as well.

You get frustrated every day. Why can’t they do it right? More business comes in. Soon, you’re past the $1M mark.

• You hire more people.

• Overhead goes up.

• Cashflow goes down.
• Your stress increases.

The business gets more complicated. You have less freedom.

• You don’t want to manage it.
• You’re not even sure how.
• It feels like it’s suffocating you.

But you can’t quit. It’s your business. Besides, what else would you do?

Plus, you have commitments. Clients and a team counting on you. There comes a turning point. Either evolve or crash and burn.

It happened to me around year 10. I came face-to-face with the question: Do I have what it takes?

The answer was yes, but I had to evolve to stop trying to prove how much smart I was and how much pain I could tolerate.

I took a step back, start thinking like an investor and see my business as an asset.

I thought about what I really wanted:

1. Exit and cash out?
2. Keep it and scale?
3. Hire someone to run it for me?

I learned that all 3 required similar steps:

• Stop billing by the hour

• Generate recurring revenue
• Turn down one-time projects
• Convert services into products

• Set up the business to run without me.

I decided to exit. But in the end my business was running so well I could have kept it.

The real hero’s journey was realizing I deserved to be happy. I didn’t need to prove my value as a person. You don’t either.

Your business is an asset. It’s not who you are. Treat it that way and get the freedom you’ve earned.