Ownership is not a casino table

I have witnessed the same thing dozens of times. An owner makes the longed-for exit, buys or builds a big summer house and starts thinking about what comes next. The money has to go somewhere, so the companies offering financial services and their hospitality become familiar. Yet an exit can be an existential crisis that lasts for years. It is hard for an entrepreneur to learn and understand a new role as owner and investor. At worst, ownership becomes a burden that takes the joy out of life.

Owners seem to stay loyal to their own expertise, and that is good. Brewing families still dream of the beverage industry. Game makers invest in games and start-up founders in each other. The probability of success should be better when the investor has both competence and a competitive edge.

How do you learn a new profession as an owner?

Starting out as an owner is, at its best, the same kind of process as founding a new company. You come up with a new idea or set out to renew a traditional operating model and build a lasting environment around it. Ownership is a new identity, business model and toolkit. It should be seen as a profession, a skill and a slow process that matures over the years. The spice of ownership is a constantly changing environment and the skill of creating new successes.

The dream that wealth is some kind of finish line that turns debts into receivables is wrong. Money does calm and ease life, but entrepreneurship is replaced by new problems that are worth modelling, seeking peer support for, and developing yourself as an owner to meet. For me the ethos of ownership comes from a simple model: 1) why I own, 2) what I own and 3) how I own.

A motivated person is unstoppable. An owner who lies at the finish line and stops developing is a huge risk to themselves and their surroundings, not to mention future generations. Ownership is a new, difficult phase of life that starts in deep snow with the search for your own calling. Defining, recognising and building your own path eventually brings peace and fulfilment to your own life and to those around you. We learn as long as we live, especially in managing wealth, in ownership and in running our own lives.

By Ville Tolvanen. Originally published in Finnish: Omistajuus ei ole kasinopöytä. More in English: Aura Boards — start here.