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Too Close To See. What Do You Do When the Company You Built Becomes You?

Too Close To See. What Do You Do When the Company You Built Becomes You?9 Sept1 h 00 min

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What do you do when the company you built becomes you?And what happens to your identity when you sell the company you built? In this conversation, John Hutchinson shares practical strategies he implemented for "zooming in and zooming out" of his business which led to successful business and a subsequent exit. John co-founded CARE Counseling with his wife Andrea after a third of her doctoral cohort left the profession within two years of qualifying. The company grew roughly 70 percent a year for a decade with no debt and no outside equity, reaching more than 300 employees serving 60,000 clients before it was acquired by Optum, a UnitedHealth company. Along the way it earned recognition from Inc. 5000, Fast 50 and Best Places to Work. Today he is a Venture Partner at Headwater Ventures and the author of the forthcoming Forbes book, The Nuance Effect. In this conversation, we explore why a founder cannot see his own company from the outside, what it costs to find out, the deliberately strange things John did to borrow other people's eyes, and how he worked out which group of people the whole business actually rested on. In this conversation, we explore: <ul><li>Why he told his competitors what had failed, to the irritation of his own leadership team</li></ul> <ul><li>What happens to a service business when average tenure goes from eighteen months to thirty-six</li></ul> <ul><li>Why he spent five years taking acquisition calls he had no intention of accepting</li></ul> <ul><li>"It's kryptonite and a superpower." What a company becoming your identity gives you, and what it takes</li></ul> <ul><li>Why Jersey Mike's is the business he points to, and what "compound interest is a gift from God" means for a founder</li></ul> <ul><li>Which group in a service business quietly carries everything, and why favoring them leaves everyone else better off</li></ul> "What do you do when the company you built becomes you?" is not only a question for founders who have sold. It's also a question for anyone still building who can already feel the work taking up more of them than they meant to give. And it is worth sitting with if you run something you have not been able to step away from for two weeks. If you are building a company you hope will outlast you, this conversation is about the part that rarely gets said out loud. Not whether the company can survive without you. Whether you can. CHAPTERS 00:00 What Do You Do When the Company You Built Becomes You?03:29 What Would Make Your Best People Quit the Profession?11:58 Is Work Part of Your Life… or Part of You?18:17 How Long Before a New Hire Pays You Back?20:23 Would You Tell a Candidate What You're Bad At?22:39 What Happens If You Give the Answer Away?28:16 Do You Sell When It's Right… or When You're Done?33:09 Would You Let a Buyer Audit You Five Years Early?38:13 Which of Your People Actually Moves the Needle?45:08 Where Can You Actually Win?50:29 How Big Does Your Company Actually Need to Be?55:08 Who Tells You What You Don't Want to Hear?56:21 Who Are You Once It's Sold? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Episode Show Notes and Deep Divehttps://www.awayre.com/too-close-to-see-founder-identity-blind-spot/ Connect with John Hutchinson🔗 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-j-hutchinson/🌐 Headwater Ventures: https://headwater.vc/🎙️ The Nuance Effect, John's podcast and the research behind his forthcoming book about how the smallest, most human leadership moves produce the biggest business results.https://www