The Airport Bookstore Lie

Fellow steward,

I walked into a classic mother culture message at O'Hare recently.

Front and center in the airport bookstore, strategically placed to catch every entrepreneur's eye:

Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat.

The implication was clear: This is the truth. This is the path. This is success.

But family businesses have the opportunity to write a completely different story.

Instead of starting over every decade with an exit, what if our title read:

Start. Scale. Steward. Compound.

The right family business approach is about so much more than financial capital.

There are multiple forms of capital worth compounding if you want to build something that transcends decades.

Financial capital is obvious (it’s most tangible and easy to count): money and growth. It's the oxygen of business.

But for family businesses, there are a few more qualitative forms that matter even more:

Human Capital: The individuals who make up your family and organization. People are the point.

Intellectual Capital: Knowledge, skills, and wisdom accumulated over time to make better decisions tomorrow than we made yesterday.

Social Capital: Relationships with others and community. Because relationships run the world, and life is meant to be shared.

Spiritual Capital: A common purpose bigger than yourself that enhances everyone's journey.

(I'll dive deeper into each of these in future journal entries — it's a lifelong exploration.)

All forms of capital are relevant not just in business, but in EVERY family.

All of us can foster these forms of capital in our immediate families for those who come next.

Financial capital isn't the end game. I believe it's often the by-product of intentionally growing the other forms hardly ever talked about.

It might be a more fruitful journey that way.

As Bob Marley stated and I love to repeat: “Imagine being so poor that all you have is money.”

Compare that to the compounding of relationships, partnerships, teammates, and processes for decades.

Imagine the power (or competitive advantage) of having a foundation built on decades rather than years.

Our mother culture puts messages in front of us constantly that might not be the best path for our businesses, our careers, or our families.

It's worth questioning whether a sale for the sake of an exit is really worth it. Maybe you don’t need chips off the table. Maybe you don’t need a second bite at the apple.

There's something to be gained by thinking of your career as your life's work. There’s something to be said about sticking to something for a very, very, very long time.

Not something to escape from, but something to steward.

To compound.

And to pass on.

Onward,
Matt

P.S. The next time you're in an airport bookstore, take a look around. What messages are being sold as truth? And more importantly, what story do you want to write instead? What is your life’s work?