When making your wedding vows, the idea of having an affair or mistress is not at the forefront of your thoughts. I will also suggest that many entrepreneurs have never considered being unfaithful to their spouse. However, the “love affair” or romance that an entrepreneur can have with their business can result in misplaced priorities.
Consider Charles Dickens’ literary anti-hero Ebenezer Scrooge. In a very sad and painful scene, Belle declares that she has been replaced by another idol.
For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”
“What Idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.
“A golden one.”
“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”
“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?”
“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.”
She shook her head.
“Am I?”
“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”
“I was a boy,” he said impatiently.
“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.”
“Have I ever sought release?”
“In words. No. Never.”
“In what, then?”
“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!”
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think not.”
“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, “Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.”
He was about to speak; but with her head turned from him, she resumed.
“You may—the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will—have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!”
She left him, and they parted. (1)
Entrepreneurs may forget the main reasons that they pursued being in business for themselves. Stephen Covey’s 2nd habit of highly successful people is, “Begin with the end in mind.” The earthly end of all of us leads to only one place. I have not seen a tombstone that showed the last 5 years of financial statements or cash available in the bank. Nor have eulogies focused on the rapid growth of the business or market share obtained. Tombstones discuss family. Eulogies will include business; however, they too are focused on family. Therefore, “beginning with the end in mind” focuses the entrepreneur on the importance of family and what trade-offs are acceptable and which ones are not.
As in Dickens’ text above, the entrepreneur must be on guard when he/she declares that they are running the business and making sacrifices for the benefit of the family. This is a dangerous and narrow path. At some point, the entrepreneur becomes so self-absorbed that their end goal changes unwittingly.
What should an entrepreneur do?
1. “Begin with the end in mind.” Write out the reasons for being an entrepreneur.
2. Make sure that family is part of your daily thought processes and priorities.
3. Commit to being at significant family events – this also means commit to NOT MISSING family events. By the way, your family should tell you what is important.
4. Do not bully those you love into justifying the reasons that the business becomes your mistress.
I can only wish that all of us “be happy in the life you have chosen!”
About the Author: Jim Lindell, CPA, CSP, CGMA is a best-selling author and speaker. Jim is a TEC Chairman (The Executive Committee), which is the Granddaddy of CEO coaching organizations and with its’ Vistage Affiliation is the World’s largest peer group for CEOs and Senior Executives. Jim has been Coaching CEOs through TEC since 2001. His website is www.thorstenconsulting.com.
(c)2015 Jim Lindell and Thorsten Consulting Group, Inc.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
(1) Excerpt from Dickens - Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol, n.d. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm