The Single Step to Not Letting Your Business Screw Up Your Life

The following is adapted from The No B.S. Small Business Book by Casey Graham.

An aspiring entrepreneur hired me to be his CEO coach. We spoke often, and every few months I asked him, “What’s your Owner’s Intent?”

That’s fancy for asking, “What do you really want?”

I asked that question often because he was a waffler.

• One month, he wanted to scale his business to $10 million.
• The next month, he wanted a lifestyle business.
• The next month, he just wanted to be a bestselling author.

It became apparent that he was missing a crucial ingredient for not just creating success but creating anything. He was too close to his business. He couldn’t see it.

Nobody can really see their own stuff. Nobody can see their deepest problems. As you’ll see, I was late to the game myself.

Learning how to do this is a huge step in the direction of winning at business and in life because it’s a step where others often fail.

But since it’s really easy to see what’s wrong with someone else, I let him waffle. He was always changing his mind, so I gave him conflicting suggestions every time we spoke.

After about six months, he got frustrated and said, “Casey, I’m paying you all this money, and you keep changing your advice!” Finally, he’d caught on.

“Because,” I gently responded, “every couple of months you tell me you want something different. Until you know why you own your business — what it means to your life — and exactly what you want out of it, I can’t help you.”

Call it harsh. I was real, raw, and honest. (No B.S. allowed, right?)

Then, like Obi-Wan Kenobi giving up the fight to Darth Vader, I stopped swinging my lightsaber and said, “You should fire me.”

He did.

Zaaaaap!

By letting him fire me, I also became more powerful than he could ever imagine. Because after a few weeks, he called me and said, “I’ve never understood what you mean by the Owner’s Intent. But now I get it. Until the owner knows what he wants, the operator can’t give it to him.”

Bingo.

So who’s the operator?

Same guy.

Most business owners and operators are the same person. Certainly at the beginning. And this gets them very messed up. One day, they’re thinking at thirty thousand feet, and the next day they’re thinking through the weeds.

The owner doesn’t know who they are, and they forget the job they should be doing under the mind-bending responsibilities. They never calm down to answer definitively why they’re doing any of it. Why they’re “doing” business.

Because when you’re the owner, you want to change the world. And when you’re the operator, you simply want to order takeout.

Get it?

Owners and operators have totally different agendas. Simply put, they absolutely cannot be the same person.

That’s why not knowing what you want as the owner is one of the primary reasons most businesses don’t work. Without a strong why, your operator self will take over because operations are how you stay afloat.

Your operator self will fire your wishy-washy owner self and proceed to work you to the bone.

Crazy, right?

While I don’t have the hard stats to back this up, I have had hundreds of conversations with owner-operators.

I suspect 98 percent of the business owner-operator’s thoughts, learnings, and actions center around running the business — not owning the business. They’re working on goals that have nothing to do with why they started.

Most of the frustrations business owners face are because the operation doesn’t give them what they want. What they really want.

Rarely do people take the time to create what I call Owner’s Intent. I wish I could take credit for this term, but I can’t. My friend Brian can. My mentor introduced me to him. Brian took a company from $2 million in sales to nearly $1 billion.

I flew to Dayton, Ohio, once to meet Brian and learn from him. I was also looking for funding. After seeing my ridiculous slide deck, he said, “You have no idea how to be an owner.” That’s not exactly what he said, but it’s what I heard.

Over some brisket and pulled pork, he took pity and offered to meet with me and Renee, my co-founder and business partner-in-crime for eighteen years. Without her, I would probably be homeless and smoking crack. To this statement, she will say, “OMG, you’re so extreme.” (But it’s true.)

Brian and I fought tooth and nail in a coworking space for eight hours while Renee patiently let us duke it out. I kept wanting to talk about the business. But this successful leader kept saying, “I don’t care about your business. Until you know your Owner’s Intent, nothing else matters.”

Owner’s Intent?

“Casey, why do you own this business, and what is your intention with the business? Is it to be a lifestyle business with high profit? Is it to be the next tech unicorn? Is it to grow it and sell it? Five years from now, what do you want out of the business?”

I didn’t know. I couldn’t answer.

“Why” is a hard question because it feels impossible to answer. Your reptile brain questions everything: “How can I know the future?” and “What if I pick wrong?”

It took me about sixty days and a lot of conversations with my wife, Renee, and the Holy Spirit of Gravy, Joe. Finally, after two months, I was able to develop my Owner’s Intent for Gravy. Even though Gravy is a payment recovery solution for recurring revenue companies, my Owner’s Intent puts so much more value into what Gravy is really for.

Here is my Owner’s Intent, word for word:

To build a company my adult kids would want to work at someday if they so choose.

This one statement is my Owner’s Intent. It changed my life. (Thanks, Brian.)

For more advice on running a successful business, you can find The No B.S. Small Business Book on Amazon.

Casey Graham is a lifelong entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Gravy Solutions, the first and only payment recovery solution for subscription-based businesses. Graham founded and sold three companies prior to launching Gravy in 2017. Most notable was Graham’s successful exit of The Rocket Company in 2015 after making the Inc. 5000 list three years in a row.

Graham prides himself not only on achieving unconventional success that owners can emulate but on being best known as a family man. He’s been married to his wife, Kacie, since 2004, and they have two children: Darby and Gage. When he’s not actively leading Gravy, you can find him fishing, enjoying a good cigar, or watching Alabama football.