Epitaph for an Entrepreneur

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Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

Steve Blank has posted an amazingly honest and powerful statement, perhaps even a testament, on the difficulties he faced being a husband, father and entrepreneur. Like all personal stories, it will resonate with different people in different ways, but what I took from his life story of being a serial startup entrepreneur and a father of two daughters was three things.

The first was confirmation of what I already knew: it’s tough to balance work and family as an entrepreneur.

The second was his take on an epitaph. Thinking about what you want people to say about you when you die is a great way to establish your own priorities. Blank talks about how he found that visualising the kind of epitaph he wanted was one way of putting his work/life balance into a perspective that ensure he made the right decisions in both areas. The step beyond that is to turn your life priorities into your personal mission statement and to work on that with the same dedication and integrity as you do with your business plan.

The third thing I took from his statement is the value of personal support. I’ve found it essential to have peer support, to share learning and to bounce ideas and situations off a selection of people who know what the world of entrepreneurship is like. I get my peer support at the Entrepreneurs Organization and believe it’s invaluable to have an organisation that works with, for and in line with entrepreneurs and recognises their needs and what drives them.

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