Entrepreneur Owner-Managers: We Appreciate You

Most of us experienced a year of rapid change.  Our responses to it may have varied from Resistance, to Adaptive, to Creative. Some flourished, some thrived, others just survived. Regardless—if you own and lead a private enterprise, thank you for the generosity of your leadership.

The environment of uncertainty is permanent. Always has been. So, it takes massive generosity to lead.  Welded to courage. And lots more, but no leadership happens until someone steps up and generously offers it.

Entrepreneur Owner-Managed businesses are distinctively challenging. Let’s try a thought experiment. Say you take a human being, say you have them start and / or lead a business for years at a time, and then run it successfully for decades. Hire dozens of people. Borrow capital. Personally guaranty it. You are solely responsible and accountable for the success or failure of the enterprise for all of your constituencies. Day, after day, after day. Now, let’s see what breaks. It’s a torturous human experiment, right?

When you’re the EOM, when you’re sick, who do you “call in sick” to? If you’re worried about supply chain challenges, or human capital issues, who do you confide in, or complain to? We know bureaucratic rule followers think it’s just work, a job, even a career. They don’t have a clue of what it means to have our calling.

If you took the risk to quit a job (or got fired) and you go out into the arena every day to do your leadership thing and provide that generously for how ever many years you’ve been doing it; if you are out there trying to build and steward an enterprise—Mother Nature bless you. We don’t care what kind of enterprise you own and lead, it doesn’t matter how successful you are or aren’t, doesn’t matter what you do to bring value, what kind of service, or what kind of product—if you are going to stand up out there essentially all by yourself, and with your skin in the game, lead an enterprise, we just love you for doing it. You are the most powerful pro-social and pro-economic force on the planet. We are not going to criticize you, and we are not going to criticize anything you do—and you shouldn’t criticize yourself either. If you get up there and try to do it—it’s always a win. Even if we don’t reach what we are trying to reach—it’s still a win.

If you have flourished, if you have thrived, hell—if you have survived over the past year, you have crushed it. We get how hard it is to be you. You are not alone. We appreciate you.