Really enjoyed this post! It's cool that you took an investment risk tolerance assessment before committing to searching. Did you also take any behavior / personality assessments with the intent of seeing how compatible your personality is with searching, and most importantly, being CEO?
Also, you bring up a great point about the risks of a) dragging your partner to a new city, or b) bearing the loneliness of the search without dating or c) culturally fitting into a new city. All things someone must considering depending on their situation...
Something I think a lot about is that (at least academically), it's proven that investing in ones social networks is BY FAR the most effective individual happiness strategy, whereas achieving self-employment and financial freedom (which I argue are the two primary reasons anyone pursues an EtA career path) are NOT very effective long term happiness and fulfillment strategies.
Regardless of how many cities a searcher has lived in before searching (6 is a lot!), I suspect searching commits most searchers to living in *at least* two more cities... the city they acquire the business in AND (then +5 years down the line) the city they want to grow old / raise a family in. For some searchers, if they're lucky, those two cities are the same, OR they decide to stay in their "searchco city" after selling, but it's still worth asking:
Is it harder to sustainably invest in your social networks when you move far away from family and friends? (I think the answer is obviously yes). If so, do you see yourself establishing an equally vibrant social network in your searchco city? How much are you willing to sacrifice at the cost of atrophying your current social network and how will this effect your (and your partner's!) long term happiness?
My wife and I (26) just moved to Richmond VA (from NYC) for my EtA career, it's a lovely small city and we're happy here, but it makes me wonder where we'd *really* be willing to move to. We're far from most of our long-time friends and our families and I'm not sure I'd feel the same way at 31ish with a kid or two, especially if it meant moving to Lexington KY or Lubbock TX (for example).
On the other hand, I've talked to plenty of searchers who say "Sam, once you have kids it really doesn't matter where you raise them. As long as there's a good school system, friends, and extracurricular activities, they'll be happy pretty much anywhere." I've met happy people from all over the U.S., so of course this is true, but I also don't have the experience to judge the validity of that yet.
Also find it a bit amusing that searchers claim to have long term orientations and are interested in building "multi-generation family businesses" (assuming they either hold onto their searchco via a divided recap or they buy / invest in more companies after exiting), but then they also end up buying and growing businesses (or settling down) in a city with negative net migration where their children will inevitably want to move out of instead of taking over their business anyway.
Really enjoyed this post! It's cool that you took an investment risk tolerance assessment before committing to searching. Did you also take any behavior / personality assessments with the intent of seeing how compatible your personality is with searching, and most importantly, being CEO?
Also, you bring up a great point about the risks of a) dragging your partner to a new city, or b) bearing the loneliness of the search without dating or c) culturally fitting into a new city. All things someone must considering depending on their situation...
Something I think a lot about is that (at least academically), it's proven that investing in ones social networks is BY FAR the most effective individual happiness strategy, whereas achieving self-employment and financial freedom (which I argue are the two primary reasons anyone pursues an EtA career path) are NOT very effective long term happiness and fulfillment strategies.
Regardless of how many cities a searcher has lived in before searching (6 is a lot!), I suspect searching commits most searchers to living in *at least* two more cities... the city they acquire the business in AND (then +5 years down the line) the city they want to grow old / raise a family in. For some searchers, if they're lucky, those two cities are the same, OR they decide to stay in their "searchco city" after selling, but it's still worth asking:
Is it harder to sustainably invest in your social networks when you move far away from family and friends? (I think the answer is obviously yes). If so, do you see yourself establishing an equally vibrant social network in your searchco city? How much are you willing to sacrifice at the cost of atrophying your current social network and how will this effect your (and your partner's!) long term happiness?
My wife and I (26) just moved to Richmond VA (from NYC) for my EtA career, it's a lovely small city and we're happy here, but it makes me wonder where we'd *really* be willing to move to. We're far from most of our long-time friends and our families and I'm not sure I'd feel the same way at 31ish with a kid or two, especially if it meant moving to Lexington KY or Lubbock TX (for example).
On the other hand, I've talked to plenty of searchers who say "Sam, once you have kids it really doesn't matter where you raise them. As long as there's a good school system, friends, and extracurricular activities, they'll be happy pretty much anywhere." I've met happy people from all over the U.S., so of course this is true, but I also don't have the experience to judge the validity of that yet.
Also find it a bit amusing that searchers claim to have long term orientations and are interested in building "multi-generation family businesses" (assuming they either hold onto their searchco via a divided recap or they buy / invest in more companies after exiting), but then they also end up buying and growing businesses (or settling down) in a city with negative net migration where their children will inevitably want to move out of instead of taking over their business anyway.