In 2013 I stopped going into the office. I sold the bulk of my shareholding in the company I had founded 13 years ago to my partner, Richard. I kept a small share which I hoped would provide me with a modest passive income and agreed that over the next few years I would extract the retained profits from the business.
But there was a risk to that approach. What if Richard fucked it up?
If he did then I wouldn’t get all of my retained profits and my passive income would be gone.
Richard was and is a great guy. But he was always my second. It was me who ran the business. Richard was an awesome rainmaker, but for him accounts were a foreign language and staff issues were his stuff of nightmares. And Richard really wasn’t a details person.
Richard wasn’t me. What if he missed things? What if standards slipped? What if clients simply weren’t happy without me in charge? All these things could have derailed my little (gravy) train.
Despite these fears I chose to let go. But I made sure Richard knew that I would always be at the end of the phone if he needed me to parachute in to rescue things.
Ten years on and Richard is in charge of a business five times the size it was when I left him to fly solo. And the business is still growing.
In that time the phone has never rung.
We are all different. But different doesn’t mean worse. Different often means better.
I was scared that Richard might fuck it up. Not once did I consider that he might just 10x it.
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