LTB #2: Your identity ≠ Your company! Here is why...

As I stepped back from Overly, I am taking a bit of a break from everything and learning to code. So, I do not have much to share from my journey right now, but I am eager to share a lot of what I have learned from Overly.

While writing the previous post, I started noting other topics on which I would love to share my take. This was a big “aha” moment for me that changed everything, and I wish I had realized this seven years ago.

Here is what I am covering today:
1. Why is it not a good idea?
2. Why that happens?
3. How not to fall for it?
4. My story

TL;DR

Linking your identity to your business can supercharge your drive and make you unstoppable. But watch out—it's not all roses. When things get rocky (and they will), the drawbacks can hit hard. You might find yourself obsessing over business outcomes as if they were personal slights, struggling to delegate, and fearing failure like it's a personal apocalypse. This all-in mentality is often fueled by startup culture's hustle hype, which isn't as glamorous as it sounds. If you don't balance it out, you could end up in a vicious cycle of burnout and identity crisis. My advice? Get a mentor, start questioning how closely you're tied to your business, and remember to take care of yourself. It's okay to step back. Don’t learn the hard way like I did!

Why it is not a good idea?

I’ll start with the good. 

There are benefits to linking your identity to the company, and those are very powerful (part of the reason we go extremes here):

• Higher drive and persistence when founders see the company as an extension of themself.

• The authenticity that the founder brings to a company shapes the brand and company culture.

• Alignment of the founders' vision with the company vision can also bring a sense of purpose.

• Legacy - often, the company is perceived as a personal Legacy to the world.

The trick here is balance. If you can balance these out so that they do not overtake everything, then you can stop reading this, but in most cases, it goes to extremes. And, to be honest, while everything goes good in business, mostly there are no issues with extremes, but once something goes off the rails (and that always happens sooner or later), then it can become complicated.

In a nutshell: When you merge your identity with business, it becomes about you, not the business.

Here are the reasons it can get nasty:

• Pressure to succeed - now, it is not only about the company but also about your self-worth (your worth depends on how much the business succeeds or fails), so the vision gets blurred, and decisions are biased - because it is about you.

• Fear of failure - fear is good in limited doses, but when it concerns your own identity, it is a catastrophe you cannot allow to happen. Now you are doing more than needed. Highway to burnout, depression, and other challenges.

• Criticism - now, every criticism of the company becomes a criticism of you, and you take it very personally. That does not benefit you or your business as you are unable to take it openly and see it clearly.

• Letting go of role - it gets much harder to let go of your role in the company because your self-worth is tied it. You are less ready to delegate tasks or your position to others, because if they mess up, it is not only company they mess up, it is your identity.

• Letting go company - if you are close to the point of letting go, you will have sacrificed a lot for the company, and it is even harder to let go as other parts of your identity do not exist or are cripled. Your safe space and ‘worth’ is the company, what is left if you let it go?

Why that happens?

It happens very organically - especially for founders. To start or scale a business, you have to be all-in, and you have to “live” your idea to persuade the team, investors, and customers to come along. So naturally, founders have a lot of Emotional and Physical stake in the company which can blur the line between personal and company identity easily.

The startup culture and hustle culture we have at the moment only enhances and supports this. Glorifying long working hours and griding against the grain, so it is very counterintuitive and unsexy to think about “balance”.

We are inspired by all the impressive startup founders who have taken companies to sky-high levels—just like in childhood, we all want to be superheroes. Entrepreneurs, if they have at least decent success, get glorified in society, and that is a great feeling but very addictive.

These are the most common reasons, but not all, yet these mechanisms help founders cope with delayed gratification they have to deal with - the results of what I am doing now, the feeling I have to suppress now, the isolation I have to live for a moment so that I can get gratification (success) in a few years. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not, but how do we keep the balance and not fall for it?

How do you not fall for it?

This is a tricky question, and I might not be educated enough to answer it, but as I fell for almost everything I wrote before, I can share what helped me.

The first thing you must accept is that you are not seeing the whole picture - we have so many limiting beliefs we have grown up with and learned while running a business - we do not even notice them. I learned this the hard way.

Here is what worked for me:

• Mentor - If you can, find someone to challenge you and ask uncomfortable questions - it can be a Mentor, Therapist, Other founder, or Advisory board. The important thing is that they are professional mentors or professionals, people you look up to in the area of your work. And listen carefully - that is the hardest part. We are happy to invest in training for employees, but not for ourselves (because we know everything). Think about it - who is the most important employee in your company? Mentor is the best thing you can get for growing yourself as a founder/leader.

• Ask questions - not ready for a mentor/therapist, start by asking yourself questions. Start here → Take the reasons I wrote about why it is not a good idea to merge identity and turn them into questions toward yourself. For example, Criticism, ask yourself, how do you take criticism of your company? How does the failure/success of your company feel for you? Do they affect your self-esteem? and so on…

• Take care - This one should be first, but it is so trivial that I wrote it last. There is so much to this topic that I will not dive into it, but you get the idea. There are many things to think about, especially for founders: Do not delay life, put yourself as a higher priority than business, and let go when you are unhappy. Sacrificing your “personal” life and losing yourself in business/work, in the long run, is not good for anyone - not you, not business.

Why I am writing about this? (my story)

I fell into this trap myself and thought I should share.

1. Went all-in - when I found AR I went all in and decided that this is my thing and I will become successful no matter what. In the first years managed to get a lot of attention from the media, conferences, and events. Society placed me in the “visionary” box, which I Loved - ego boosted, and merging my identity with the Company began. I made many promises about what I would deliver and change the world. (I know cliche)
2. Two years later (2017) - I could not deliver the promises. Even worse, I started to realize that AR, in general, is not working out. BUT, my identity is already merged with my Company/AR. Now it was more than just about tech and company, it was about me delivering on promise and proving my visionarity. Naturally - started to grind even harder, spent most awake hours working.
3. Sacrifice - with all the hours spent working, I had to sacrifice something, so life outside work, friends, relationships, and social life in took a toll. And this is an infinite loop - the more it gets cripled, more you compensate that in working harder and harder, to justify sacrifice. Welcome burnout! ← will touch on burnout in upcoming newsletters.
4. Got trapped - business that is not working out, but only thing I have left to hold on to or find self-worth. If I give it up and remove from my Identity, all I have left is cripled social life and relationships with dents. Also not a great place to be. Even if the business were working out, I would face this issue later on.

The learning here is this - If my identity hadn't intertwined with my business, I could call it a day in 2017/2018. I know we are always smart after the war, but this is what I want to take away from this - check in with yourself and check for signs when it has become personal rather than professional. Check when you start to ignore clear signs that something is not working out. I am not saying that you have to quit, but you can take action to make this attachment less personal.

The results in 2017 and Today are completely the same - I just delayed the result by 7 years. I still need to face personal issues from which I was hiding in business, I have to deal with failure and learn to make distinction between failed business model and failure on personal level, rebuild social life and my Identity without the business. I needed to burn out to learn this, but maybe you don’t.

As grim as it all sounds, the result is good, and I would not have learned this other way, unfortunately (I am that stubborn). There were a few grim years, but I am happy now with all the wisdom I got from this lesson.

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