what would you do if you had to leave?

My brother-in-law is closing his business because it’s time for a change.

Well, no, he’s trying hard to not close his business. While many businesses dig in their heels and fight to stay alive, he’s deciding how to walk away from his profitable business.

It’s a service business. Selling it isn’t easy because he’s the one customers want doing the work.

Two things hit me while chatting about how he’s going to do this:

1. The first thing he thought about (or at least mentioned) was his customers. Who can help them best? What can he do to make this change as smooth as possible? This way of thinking is why he’s still in business despite the next point.

2. You can love serving certain people while not loving how you serve them. Sometimes the product is the problem. In this case, there’s no joy left in doing the work. But many of the customers are close friends.

I hadn’t thought about how to leave a business if not through the normal channels:

* Got fired

* Got a better offer

* Retire and exit stage left

* Sell up and walk away with cash in hand

My brother-in-law wants to leave his customers better off than when he found them.

This got me thinking about motivation, or why we do what we do. Business is about making money. But it can take on more meaning than that, of course.

That’s the point of this little mental exercise: what would you do for your customers if you had to leave?

Would you search high and low for an alternative for them?

Would you work hard to find them someone else to lean on?

And how appealing is it, when you think about leaving even in this little exercise, to actually do it? To leave?

I’m still excited about what we’re doing at Accoil. I don’t want to find replacements or even to think about walking away.

But maybe one day I will and I’d like to think that I’ll be like my brother-in-law. Ready to go but still focused on customers first.

So, what would you do if you had to leave? And what does that tell you about what you really feel about your work?

Peter

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