Over time, more alligators begin to show up. It seems the longer we live on the island and the bigger the fish we reel in, the more alligators we attract. Long gone is the fantasy of sipping drinks from coconuts and basking under the ocean sun. Instead, each day brings a new assault and a greater struggle to wrestle these alligators away. The cost of maintaining life in paradise is to spend a greater portion of each day wrestling these unwelcome intruders. And to make matters worse, it seems that when one gets a bite, it attracts even more!
Fed up and tired of being surprised day in and day out, we decide to find the home of these alligators and deal with the problem head-on. That means leaving the beach and entering the jungle. If it can keep our beach safe, it’s worth the effort. Trudging through the dense brush, we find the swamp the alligators call home. There’s little choice but to jump in and start wrestling, and this is how we spend the majority of the day: resolving client concerns, answering emails, returning phone calls, reconciling bank accounts, filing taxes, finishing projects, fixing projects, looking for new projects, scheduling travel, building a website, invoicing…the list of alligators is nearly endless. But we wrestle them one by one, even though it means returning to the beach later and later each day. What’s strange is that we actually become quite good at wrestling alligators and keeping them off the beach, even though it’s a beach we see less and less of.
This isn’t where we wanted to be when we left the comfort of a stable job. We wanted to be in a place of freedom, flexibility, wealth, praise, and excitement. Well, we got the excitement for sure. We’ve entered our personal version of Groundhog Day: wake up, wrestle alligators, go to bed, repeat. It’s exhausting and doesn’t feel like that magical island we sacrificed everything to move to.
“Alligators: The urgent demands and important tasks incumbent to running your business and which can’t be ignored.”
Entrepreneur’s Island is made up of an idyllic beach where you wanted to spend your time, a thick jungle with a swamp full of alligators you were forced to wrestle, and several tall mountains in the distance you hardly noticed (if at all). So after months (or years) of wrestling alligators, it’s time to make a choice: swap your title from “entrepreneur” to “alligator wrestler” and learn to accept the reality of your work life, or find a smaller section of beach, less inviting to alligators, where you can downsize and go back to a simple (smaller) life. Or reject both those options and choose a third alternative. For me, this is when the words of my friend Greg started resonating in my head: There is a better way. Stop wrestling alligators.
If you want to stop wrestling the alligators, you must “drain the swamp.” Because, once you drain the swamp, the alligators will leave on their own. But it isn’t easy. As the saying goes, “It’s hard to drain the swamp when you’re always eye-to-eye with an alligator.”
So, how do you break free and escape? First, you have to recognize the why behind your alligator wrestling. And it begins with the fact that you are the expert and that becomes your identity. I’ve seen entrepreneurs hold tightly to being the magazine editor rather than the magazine owner, the brilliant programmer rather than the brilliant business person, the game-changing engineer rather than engineering an incredible company. Most entrepreneurs hold tightly to the identity of being the best in the world at building a product or offering a service, rather than being the best in the world at building a company. But being the expert means you have to be the person performing the tasks every day. People love you for it, and you love the feeling of creating something amazing. But in reality, this is diving into the swamp.
Because you’re the expert and actively engaged in alligator wrestling, you’re essentially doing everything by yourself. Trust me, I get it. I know the feeling of producing something that has never been done before. I know how fulfilling it is to produce something beautiful, creative, and exceptional. The trouble is, as long as you are the one producing the product or service, you have no time to drain the swamp. The way out is to create systems and processes, including training others to create the product or deliver the service as well as you do, so you can create a business equally as amazing as your product. More on that in future chapters.
The paradox is that these talents and skills were what brought you to the beach in the first place. These are the things that served you in creating your company but now are holding you back and keeping you stuck. These are the things you have to let go of in order to be able to take a step back and figure out how to drain the swamp.
Marshall Goldsmith coined the phrase, “What got you here won’t get you there.” In entrepreneurship, what got you here will actively prevent you from getting there. It will be so dominating in your life that you won’t even be able to see that there is a whole new world of possibilities beyond the swamp. It’s time to redirect your passion for the product or service you create and focus it toward building a sustainable business free from nightly keyboard imprints on your face.
Part of changing your identity is acknowledging that you are not your business. Although your business is a living, breathing organism, and has a life of its own, many entrepreneurs will take the identity of the business upon themselves. Here’s an easy survey to assess whether you’ve assumed your business’s identity:
•Did you name the company after yourself?
•Do your bank account and the company bank account share the same number?
•When your business is doing well, do you feel like you are succeeding?
•Is your business defining you?
•Does every success feel like it is your personal success?
•Does every business failure feel fatal to you, personally?
You are not defined by your business, and the healthiest and fastest way to grow your company is to disassociate your identity from the identity of the business. You are a piece of your company. Arguably the most important piece, but still just a piece. If the business were a person, you’d be the heart and often the brains of the company, but you are not the company. Be willing to let the business have its own identity independent of you. Set up a separate bank account. Think about rebranding your company with a catchy descriptive name that is not your own. Surrender the fact that your company can and needs to thrive without your direct labor. With this mindset, you will grow faster, be healthier, and see the results you are looking for.
You must let go of these two parts of your old identity (I am the best in the world at my craft, and me and my business are the same) and take on a new one. I am independent of my company and not afraid to let others take over tasks that are meaningful and important; I am the business builder and no longer the product builder. Instead of you being the most skilled at travel, interactive technologies, programming, guitar building, video games, or whatever you identify with, you’ll need to stop the full-time job of fighting alligators and focus all of your attention on being the business builder—the one who drains the swamp. This means you will need to:
•Build a team. Hire a full-time assistant and other skilled individuals you can offload tasks to. Look into hiring or recruiting interns as well, as many universities provide a mechanism to trade work experience for credit. Many of them can transition to employees as they graduate, and you’ll already have a positive and effective working relationship.