Now 5 years later on...

What has happened since selling up?

By this point, the business was doing well

It might be a slight exaggeration to say we’ve got the world at our feet, (credit to, The Human League and Don’t You Want Me, the best pop song ever), but selling our business was a great decision, which came with many positives.

A more recent change in direction by Mrs H. and an article by Anu Atluru, Pursuits that can’t scale got me thinking about the last five years since we sold. Atluru’s point that an entrepreneur’s dream is to successfully grow and sell a business before opening a coffee shop immediately chimed. The contrast would have been stark in our case, switching focus from monthly software licensing revenues to balancing the daily croissant delivery, aiming to stay on sale until 5:00 pm without a pile of slightly stale leftovers when it’s time to cash up. (Do shops even do that these days, cash-up I mean?).

The point is that the sold-up entrepreneur still hankers to do something, but is turned off by starting another roller-coaster, growth-driven, time-sucking monster. The inference being they want a simpler existence, more freedom to enjoy the moment and choice to do other stuff, which includes being a barista in your own caff, if that froths your cappuccino.

Looking for more thought-provoking insights on what to do when you’ve sold up, wasn’t enlightening. Everything seemed to polarise towards the practicalities of selling a business, protecting your hard-earned pot from the taxman, and getting in touch with the articles’ writers, who conveniently offered mentoring services and easy access to more venture capital.

All this reflection made me question why and when my entrepreneurial urges began? Was it with my first paper round? Probably not. More instructional was watching my father’s career never quite make it at the hands of Unilever. Lacking belief and going with the flow, as he had a habit of saying, made sure it instilled a backbone in me and a healthy disrespect for the companies I later spent time working for.

His loss became my gain. You didn’t need to be Alan Sugar, to realise, that inefficiently run organisations with poor management were a regular occurrence which I encountered during my twenties and thirties. I was also a cocky know-it-all that was firmly put back in my box, when my first company with £15,000 of my parent’s hard-earned money, went bust within six months. It had been underfunded along with a litany of other significant errors. The only consolation is I learnt what not to do if there was a next time and paid my parents back every penny over the next three years. I had no choice, dues were owed, lessons learnt.

I also wasn’t premiership material, if I’m being honest, although, in later years, I worked for several companies owned by WPP and Omnicom where I was surprised to find more evidence of poor operation and a general lack of nouse and direction.

Despite that first setback, the entrepreneurial flame had not become a damp squib. I was ready to bust again, and this time, Mrs H joined me. It ran for longer and we even managed to raise a bit of capital before folding.

I think the phrase third time lucky, probably has something to do with the lessons which should have been learnt from what has gone before. Fortunately, that turned out to be the case. Having successfully built and sold on the third attempt, I found myself blessed with time and choice. The flame that had burned quite brightly for much of my life had blown out, the monkey on my back nowhere to be seen. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

It might explain why I turned to the classic cliché of retirement golf and why Mrs H turned to house hunting and what soon became four years of study and a master’s in psychotherapy.

It’s only recently dawned on me that Mrs H likes nothing better than a project. Fortunately, she’s decided to postpone the start-up she was considering and focus on her non-executive responsibilities. She’s concluded that she can comfortably manage this, keep an eye on her investment and learn to speak French in two years.

This has now created a significant problem for me. I expect I could comfortably have become one of those old English duffers, who parleys a little French, never quite grasping the nettle. The outcome is now looking quite bleak. I may have lost my monkey but I’m a competitive sod and can’t bare the thought of Mrs H babbling beautifully, while I sit there with a glazed expression on my face. Non merci.

Worse still, I’ve got a golf handicap to resurrect, this weekly missive and a memoir to juggle with. To even stand a chance of keeping up with the machine that quietly sits next door conjugating verbs, I must now dedicate several hours a day to Gallic pedantry and all their nonsensical irritations. Merd.

Part of the enjoyment of the last five years has been sharing some holidays with our children. They’ve grown up with summer camping which I’d recommend to everyone, but it’s also been fun to take them to more grown-up destinations where the only canvas is in the odd gazebo. It’s also been a rude awakening on any thoughts we might have had about financial de-coupling from them pre or post-university. We’re now helping them more than we ever did when they were in school uniforms.

I’ve recently discovered another writer on Substack called Carlos Greaves. In a recent article, A Kid Who Loved to Draw, I was reminded that as adults, much of what we do is expected to have a purpose. It was very clear to me that having my own successful business was essential to my fulfilment, even though I didn’t know what that would really look like until it happened.

I’m not saying I regretted what I did. I loved my job. I accidentally became reacquainted with a love for writing, albeit marketing blurb at the time, plus the buzz from making a difference for all the people we employed.

But it’s also given me the freedom to do stuff like this. Sit here on a Thursday afternoon, writing these last few words before I schedule for tomorrow. I don’t need to make a living, this is more about exploration and learning a new skill without the pressure.

Like my golf. How good do you think you can get at 62? I don’t know, who cares? But I’m still interested in discovering new tricks.