wattsnextpx - The Snapshot Isn't The Story

Nineteen years ago I started wattsnext Group.

Fewer than half of all new Australian businesses are still trading by their third anniversary. In the US, only around one in five makes it to 19 years. I've now founded two companies across two countries and kept them both alive through almost two decades of change - a global pandemic, two economies, three teenage boys, and a move to New York.

And yet, when I sat down to think about what this milestone meant, my brain went straight to the to-fix list. The gaps. The cash position. The sales pipeline. The projects I wanted to have finished by now. I was about to let a snapshot of anything that needs fixing right now overshadow nineteen years of the whole picture.

A peer at an event this week shared something his therapist told him - and it inspired this blog.

You are not your ups and downs at work.

It sounds simple. It isn't.

The Identity Trap

Every founder I know does this. We tie our sense of self so completely to the state of the business that a hard month becomes a personal failing. A slow quarter becomes evidence that we made the wrong choices. A long to-do list becomes proof that we're not cut out for this.

We forget that the business is something we built. It is not who we are.

The business has bad weeks. You don't have to. The business has gaps and things that need fixing. That doesn't mean you are broken.

Taking a snapshot of today when you should be celebrating a major milestone is like judging a twenty-year marriage by the argument you had last Tuesday. It misses the whole story.

The Whole Story

Here's what nineteen years actually looks like when you zoom out far enough to see it properly.

A spare bedroom in Australia. A baby beside me. No safety net, no business experience, and genuinely no idea whether any of it would work. Years of building when building felt impossible. A decision to move to New York and do it again with wattsnextpx - new country, no local network, no local reputation. A second company. Two economies. A pandemic. Three boys who grew up watching their mother back herself over and over again.

This week I am on vacation celebrating my 50th birthday. Both businesses are running without me. That was always the plan - written on a piece of paper in that spare bedroom nineteen years ago.

That is a life's work. And it deserves more than a glance at this week's problems.

The Question That Changes the View

If you stripped away today's problems - what would the whole picture of what you've built actually look like?

Because there's a version of your story that has nothing to do with this week. A version that starts with the day you decided to back yourself and includes everything you've navigated since then.

You are not your ups and downs at work.

You are the person who kept going anyway.

P.S. - Sometimes the milestone isn't the number of years. Sometimes it's the thing you said you'd build finally working exactly the way you planned.