Recently, and for the umpteenth time, I heard the story of a local entrepreneur who completely gutted and reorganized his company over what amounted to a three-day weekend.

“He just went ahead and DID it”, one of his ex-employees told me. “There was no consultation with his key managers, his high-producing employees, or even his world-class board members”. “Instead”, he continued, “He just came to the office one day and announced, ‘this is our new company’, kind of a, ‘love it or leave it type thing’”.

Because no one could make sense of his “new” company, the company’s stock price shot up to about twenty times what it is today. But less than six months after that, the price of their stock fell like bricks from the Eiffel Tower. The appropriate term was, I believe, “It cratered”.

Regular TAE listeners know that I often use the phrase, “everyone’s weakness is in his strength”. And, the strength of this particular CEO was and probably still IS, his intellectual brilliance and his willingness to see a market from a completely different perspective.

In fact, this is precisely how he built his only successful company in the first place.

But, and as many entrepreneurs have already learned, “Round Two” ain’t at all like “Round One”. And to a high degree, this is because the entrepreneur by him or herself is simply just not in the same “viewing position” as the first time.

Think about it. When you start your very first enterprise, it is YOU. Y-O-U, you. And you are all alone at the top and bottom of that enterprise. So, you see and feel everything. From the tiniest hiccup to the largest “boom”, you are right there … in the front lines, if you will … experiencing every ramification of every mid-course correction.

But in order to grow, you need to add staff. And for every single addition to staff, you add another layer of insulating FAT. And it is this avoirdupois that both makes your heart work harder and prevents sentiency. All entrepreneurs have felt this. In time, we lament the fact that, “We just can’t get accurate input anymore”.

Which is why many entrepreneurs begin to distrust key employees at the exact same time that these employees should be most trusted! Remember, Mr. Entrepreneur, these are the guys who replaced you in those same bloodstained trenches. Thus, these are the guys whom best know how to deal with current challenges.

But the simple fact of the matter, Mr. Entrepreneur, is that your day in the sun has now passed. Your war stories about the “start-up days” are enchanting, but they are also over. And while your colleagues are deeply grateful that you took the original risks, there are now new people to handle new issues … issues that you really know very little about!

The trick, of course, is to now get the founder entrepreneur to “manage the managers” … his colleagues must now keep him engaged in useful things (remember, entrepreneurs have boundless energy!) … Which means that employee/colleagues must take difficult and challenging business problems to him each and every day.

Because if his brain in engaged in solving the NEW problems, he is much less apt to stay in his home for five days, only to emerge with a complete blow-up and re-do of your bell weather products, procedures, and personnel.

And don’t think for a minute that your owner is inured from sending his own company into a “death spiral”. Entrepreneurs will do this, and they will do it for reasons that only a psychologist can fully explain.

So, and to all of you entrepreneurs (especially you first-time entrepreneurs) who see a bit too much of yourselves in this tale, I want you to STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN. And listen and listen and then listen some more.

Because you are so revered … and therefore you are so dangerous.

And to the minority of entrepreneurs who are having a hard time figuring out what it is that I am saying here, I say, “congratulations” --- because you have a dynamite combination of maturity, drive, and common sense that most first-timer entrepreneurs simply lack.

And for the rest of US (yes, I went through this phase of learning and growing myself), never forget Walt Kelley’s famous line, “We have met the enemy, and he is US!”