You Don’t Need to Build an Empire

Somewhere along the way, entrepreneurship became synonymous with scale. Start the company. Hire people. Hire more people. Raise money. Grow. Open another location. Build the empire. Exit.

That is one perfectly legitimate version of entrepreneurship. It isn’t the only one.

I decided not to rebuild that way

I had employees earlier in my career. When I moved back to New York from San Francisco, I made a deliberate decision not to rebuild my business that way. I didn’t want employees.

Not because employees are bad. Not because teams aren’t valuable. But because I understood the responsibility that comes with employing people, and it wasn’t compatible with the life I wanted to build.

Employees depend on you for their livelihood. Payroll has to happen whether you had a good month or a terrible one. There are benefits, taxes, management, questions, performance issues, vacations, coverage and a thousand other responsibilities.

Some people thrive on building organizations. I discovered that I thrive on building businesses where I can stay close to the work. So I designed accordingly.

I work directly with clients. I bring in partners and specialists when a project requires them. I use technology aggressively — AI has increased what one person can accomplish dramatically. And I retain the freedom that was one of the reasons I wanted to work for myself in the first place.

Could I build a larger company? Probably.

Would it automatically make me more successful? No. Success is not an org chart.

The better question is: what are you building the business to do? Do you want to maximize enterprise value? Build a team? Create jobs? Sell someday? Work four days a week? Travel? Stay hands-on? Make a particular amount of money without managing 25 people?

Those are different goals, and they produce different businesses.

“There is no prize for having the most employees. Build the company that supports the life and work you actually want.”

Otherwise, you may eventually discover that you built yourself a very demanding job — and somehow became your own least favorite boss.