Articles & Publications

By Ilan Mochari | inc.com
Published: Januray 15, 2014

set-for-life-and-sad

The following is an excerpt from: inc.com

"Someone handed me a check that set me for life," recalls serial entrepreneur George Jacobs, "and I was miserable."

The year was 1998, and the check was for $20 million. Jacobs, 50 years old at the time, had just sold American Limousine--the largest limo company in the country--to Carey International. But something felt wrong. With the lucrative check in hand, he walked the streets of his native Chicago for an hour and a half. "I should've been overjoyed," he says, "but I wasn't."

What ailed Jacobs that day--and for the next seven years--was the entrepreneurial equivalent of postpartum depression.

"I have seen so many people go into such deep depression after selling," says Judith Glaser, an executive coach and communications specialist who has counseled many entrepreneurs through transitions.

 

Postpartum Blues

The misery, she says, often increases when founders stay aboard to run their former businesses. That's because new management often takes the business in a different direction.

For founders, says Glaser, this is like someone "taking your child and performing plastic surgery on it. You believe they're destroying the beauty of this thing you've spent your whole life creating."

Read the full article here: http://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/postpartum-blues-emotional-toll-of-selling-your-business.html

 

 



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