A couple of years ago, I was attending a Small Business Association (SBA) class that was specifically designed to prepare the CEOs of government services companies to graduate from being a small business and enter “no man’s land,” as described by Doug Tatum. As the conga of CEOs who had successfully navigated the “too big to be small, too small to be big” waters talked to us, one made a comment that was not, as I saw it, directly related to main topic of the class. But it struck me square in the forehead. He said, “if you wait until you’re already tired to transition out of your CEO role, you’ve waited too long.” It wasn’t long until I realized that the comment was, in fact, quite directly related to the topic at hand.

When I started AVIAN in 2006, I was my own first employee. I worked eight-hour days in support of a government customer, and spent my nights and weekends working on the company trying to make it grow. I worked non-stop. It took five years to reclaim my evenings, seven years to get my weekends back, and a decade to find some semblance of work-life balance. By year 12, the company was running smoothly, allowing me to spend more time with my family. It felt like I had “broken through,” we had made it, and the company was secure. Then came year 17, and the realization that small business graduation was fast approaching.