George Brooks: Build the Company. Get Out of the Way.

George Brooks (bio below) built Crema almost by accident.

Then, 18 years later, he did something that may have been even harder:

He left it for two months.

Completely.

No email. No checking the pipeline. No “just one quick question” from the founder.

And when George returned from his sabbatical, the company was doing just fine.

Actually, better than fine.

That created a much bigger question:

If the company can thrive without you, who should you be when you come back?

George’s path to entrepreneurship was hardly textbook. He left college, taught himself design, worked a job he hated to support his wife through nursing school, and eventually started freelancing largely because he needed to stay close to his premature daughter, who spent the first seven months of her life in the hospital.

Then came one of my favorite startup stories.

A potential client asked George to propose a redesign of a massive healthcare website. He did some back-of-the-napkin math, slid a proposal across the table for $400,000, and they said yes.