Best Resources After Selling A Company
Life after selling your business can be a confusing process.
Some jump right back into running another business. Others don’t know what to focus on. Along with communities, I have found this ongoing list of reading materials to help transition over the past 3yrs.
If you’ve got resources you’ve enjoyed, share them in the comments!
A Dozen Questions to Consider After Selling Your Business
“We encourage post-exit entrepreneurs to pause and do nothing for at least six to twelve months. Just to decompress and let go of the beloved company. This can feel like a mourning process…”
The Entrepreneur’s Epilogue and the Paradox of Success
“A four-phase framework to help entrepreneurs process their epilogue and emerge in a new, vibrant chapter: Pause, Reflect, Operationalize, Think.”
Tony Hsieh, Purpose, and The Dark Side of Selling Your Company
“The other thing that helped me was to allow myself to be comfortable with uncertainty. At some point in the future – maybe measured in years or maybe measured in decades – I’ll leave the company I founded. I don’t yet know what I’ll do next. I’ve realized, however, that I gain no psychic benefit by beating myself up over a lack of a plan.”
Who shows us how to live — Federer or Ronaldinho?
“It is a skill not to move the goalposts as success pours in, to avoid invidious comparisons with what other people have or do. It is a skill to ‘not worry about the possibility that there might be something better’, as Schwartz puts it.”
It is a skill not to move the goalposts as success pours in, to avoid invidious comparisons with what other people have or do. It is a skill to “not worry about the possibility that there might be something better”, as Schwartz puts it. What disappointed fans see in Ronaldinho as waste or indulgence is itself a kind of mental discipline — perhaps the highest kind.
Naval’s Most Important Things in Life
“A fit body, calm mind, and house full of love are things that can not be bought.”
The 3-Step Plan to Figuring Out What You Want
“High achievers get really anxious when they don't have an “answer” for what they’re going to do with their life. This causes them to prematurely commit to something - anything.”
The Days Are Long but the Decades Are Short
“Making money is often more fun than spending it, though I personally have never regretted money I’ve spent on friends, new experiences, saving time, travel, and causes I believe in.”
MoneyWise Podcast
Great podcast series with post-exit founders. One of my favorites is a guest, Jeff, who has dedicated his new life to maximizing experiences and zero work.
Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life
“We all have at least the potential to make more money in the future, we can never go back and recapture time that is now gone. So it makes no sense to let opportunities pass us by for fear of squandering our money. Squandering our lives should be a much greater worry.”
The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness
“Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is such a powerful and universal drag on happiness. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, pays the highest dividend that exists in finance.”
Life After an Exit: How Entrepreneurs Transition to the Next Stage
“Wealth managers advise that the first and most important questions an entrepreneur should ask after a wealth creation event are: What do I want as my future and my purpose, and how can this money help me achieve my goals?”
Life After Selling a Business
“Will your post-sale lifestyle represent a mini-transition that allows you to largely continue your pre-sale life, with a few key modifications? Or will you embrace a complete reinvention?”
Dealing with the Emotional Fallout of Selling Your Business
“Make sure you consciously accept that this will be a process of transition and reinvention, and that it won’t always be peachy. Mourning and drift may be part of the journey, and getting back to “flow” may take longer than expected.”
Super grateful for your sharing this.
Great recommendations. The only ones I hadn't seen were the Federer/Ronaldinho + Sam Altman ones. Some other suggestions:
- The 2nd Mountain, by David Brooks
- Working Identity, by Herminia Ibarra
- What Happens When You Get What You Want, by Rick Eigenbrod