Years ago I had a call with a female entrepreneur.
Let's call her Kelly.
She's a serial entrepreneur and was working on her third company.
It was a platform that enabled collaboration with PDF files.
Focused mainly around an iPad.
She feared not being able to support her family financially.
She feared not being able to put her young son through college.
She feared not having money for retirement.
She was delaying doing what she wanted to do in the interest of her company.
Her company was the answer to her financial freedom.
She was on the fence with raising money or pushing through and bootstrapping.
She felt out of alignment with who she is and who she wants to be.
She wanted happiness and peace.
Her next company is what she defined as the Golden Ticket.
This was the company that would set her financially free and send her son to college and put money in the bank for retirement.
It meant everything to her.
She sacrificed who she was in the name of this company.
This is a behavior I have seen often and have done myself.
This internal pressure did not create a sense of freedom, which is something she values.
It trapped her.
The internal pressure created can be called "stress."
It weighed her down, the company meant everything!
I asked her a single question that fundamentally changed her experience of her company.
This question empowered her to adjust her schedule, create a new habit, and stick with that habit for years.
I wonder, if you run a company and you made it the "golden ticket," what do you get out of that?
What if you stopped seeing it as the "golden ticket"?
