Your business is not your baby

I’ve heard an analogy that growing a business is akin to raising a child. We conceive it by registering a company.

It starts to crawl in the same fashion as we sign our first customer. It learns to walk as we employ staff.

We love, nurture it, and devote every waking hour to growing it.

We give it the unconditional love as do mothers, no matter how ugly their baby.

I hear so many CEOs romanticise business as being like family. They try to instill a culture of unity and closeness, building a bubble of safety and unconditional love. They treat the business just like an extension of their real family. They think of their business as their baby.

Listen guys - this analogy is just plain wrong.

Your business is not your f****g baby!

Your real, human, walking, talking child is your baby. You should direct your love and attachment to them!

And as for the family analogy… well, if your family is anything like mine, they are dysfunctional…

It’s easy to liken our business to family. I get it; it is afterall a manifestation of ourselves. But I need you to stop being so damn precious.

I prefer to frame business as something less emotive and, frankly, less complicated.

To me, a business is a machine!

Act like an architect and start engineering the outcomes you want as a leader and owner.

Stop calling your business your baby.

Start calling it a machine.