Every start-up has passionate leaders who build their company and brand and focus on every detail to perfection. At the start, the company is an extension of their career, abilities, passion, and work. Every new start-up CEO with an idea is attached to how it all goes, especially in the beginning. They’re bringing their concept out to the world and ensuring their vision is executed as they’ve always imagined. We need entrepreneurs to bring innovative ideas to the world, and it takes great courage to be one!
As the idea and company grow and employees and customers buy into the vision, the CEO/Founder has some critical choices about the path forward. They should ask themselves: “Am I continuing to build my career, or am I creating a business with a legacy?” We encourage them to definitively answer whether the company will outlast their lifetime or will it all end when they do.
There’s a turning point, sometimes organic or intentional, where the company is no longer about the founder and their vision exclusively. This is when the company shifts from being someone’s career to a business with the potential of creating a legacy.
”A business is built to succeed beyond the survivability of the founder. It's a separate entity, more significant than the people who have created it.
A business is built to succeed beyond the survivability of the founder. It’s a separate entity, more significant than the people who have created it. What is the blue-sky creation for one year, five years, and beyond? Which employees, and maybe even customers, are you letting into that creation conversation? Creating a legacy requires multiple perspectives to achieve broader buy-in and opportunity, both financially and innovatively.
Of course, there are many examples, from Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne creating Apple, to Jeff Bezos creating Amazon. Our favorite example is Oprah. She started her career as a news reporter and made an intentional turning point to become a business in 1986 with the creation of Harpo Productions. Now, Harpo’s team creates the annual list of Oprah’s favorite things, and she endorses what her team has discovered. Her team now embodies the characteristics of a brand, not Oprah alone. Harpo has its hands in a variety of business channels that will outlast the lifetime of Oprah Winfrey.
Building a business and a legacy is done by design. It cannot be left to chance. We see founders initially grapple with their company turning point when they are no longer the epicenter. We see this evidence when the experts they’ve hired leave the company after a short time, or all decisions must be routed through the founder’s office.
What type of a founder are you? Who do you want to be, and what do you want to create? A company that dies with you as a founder or a powerful business continuing to generate a legacy impacting hundreds or even thousands of lives in perpetuity?
At Watershed Moment, we design a powerful future for a company in collaboration with its leaders, employees, and sometimes even customers. We create the decisive moment when a legacy starts to be built with a powerful team in place. It’s one thing to have a vision, but it’s quite another thing to have the operations support the legacy vision and engaged employee culture to pull it off. Founders, this is your watershed moment.
