Dealing with New Responsibilities That Come With Success

by Exit Planning Institute on January 13, 2025

Success, as any motorsports executive or sports analyst will tell you, is fleeting.

Sure, in sports, it’s hard to see how a hot streak will ever end. Dynasties feel immortal when you’re in the middle of one. Even for organizations that experience success—placing high year after year, turning profits, and engaging fans—it is sometimes unfathomable to imagine the good times will ever end.

But in sports:

Great coaches move on.

Great players retire.

Support staff find promotions elsewhere.

Once-revolutionary strategies become commonplace and countered.

And, bit by bit, the success fades. Championships become middling seasons. And you’re struggling to make it back to the top. In reflection, success was fleeting—and tied to a particular strategy that worked at the time or a piece of talent that was generational.

The truth is, even for highly successful franchises, it is challenging to develop lasting significance.

What Type of Business Owner Are You?

Business is not a sport, even though we can learn some lessons from our favorite franchises and athletes. Still, you may have found some hard truths about your own business in the description above.

There are two types of business owners: Lifestyle Business Owners and Value Creators. Both usually make good money, because let’s be honest: if you’ve been a business owner for a while, you’re likely feeling successful from an income standpoint.

But that’s where the comparisons end between Lifestyle Business Owners and Value Creators. When Lifestyle Business Owners exit their businesses, their success will fade. The income will stop. And even though the day-to-day of being a business owner sometimes makes it impossible to consider, there is one ultimate truth in business.

One day, you will exit. Which is why you really want to be a Value Creator.

Value Creators: The Responsibility of Success is Significance

Value Creators know that their most significant asset is their business, and they do everything during their ownership period that they can to increase the value of their business. This allows them to harvest that wealth later, while also creating a legacy that outlives their ownership.

Value Creators understand that an exit will come at some point, and the value they create ensures that the exit happens on their terms. The timing of the exit is irrelevant: Value Creators are always poised for growth or exit.

Success is not the same as significance. To have a significant company, it needs to be highly valuable, transferrable, attractive at any point, and aligned with your business, financial, and personal goals. The value can’t be about you and your ideas. It needs to be value that persists after you’re gone.

Is Your Business Significant or Merely Successful?

It’s tough to be honest with yourself. That’s why you need a team of advisors—led by a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA®)—to guide you through the Value Acceleration Methodology and drive the value of your company. You can find a CEPA at the Exit Planning Institute® website.

But before you get started, it’s important to take stock of your own business.

Is my business dependent on my operational leadership?

Is my business dependent on my personal relationships with customers or clients?

Do the intellectual property and processes of my business exist solely in my head?

Does my company’s culture depend on my personal leadership?

If you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions, then your business is at risk of being merely successful. Eighty percent of the value of a business is based on intangible capital: human capital, customer capital, structural capital, and social capital. And if you’re not building value in this capital—and decentralizing yourself from your business—then it’s not attractive to a potential buyer. That means when an exit comes—and it will come—you’re leaving money on the table and sacrificing your own wealth.

The question remains: do you want your company to be significant? Or do you want to experience mere success?

Interested in learning more about Value Acceleration? Visit Amazon to buy a copy of Walking To Destiny: 11 Actions An Owner Must Take To Rapidly Grow Value & Unlock Wealth by Christopher Snider.

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