I've noticed something curious about the most successful business owners I work with. Ask them about their business and they can talk for hours, detailing every pivot, every client win, every lesson learned in the trenches. Ask them who they are outside of it and watch them struggle.
The pause that follows isn't shyness. It's the sound of someone reaching for a self that's been buried under a decade of hustle.
This is the identity trap, and if you've been building a business for any meaningful length of time, you're probably standing in it right now.
The Slow Disappearing Act
It doesn't happen all at once. You don't wake up one morning and decide to become your business. It's more like water wearing down stone, imperceptible until suddenly the rock has a different shape entirely.
You skip a few dinners with friends because you're launching something. You stop reading fiction because business books feel more productive. Your hobbies quietly slip away, one by one, until you can't remember what you used to do for fun (or worse, you can't imagine doing anything that isn't somehow tied to growth, revenue, or impact).
Eventually, the business becomes the answer to every question. Who are you? The founder. What do you do? Build the company. What do you want? More success, more growth, more proof that all the sacrifice was worth it.
And somewhere in there, the actual human being, the one who existed before the LLC was formed, starts to fade like a photograph left in the sun.
Why This Feels Like Devotion (But Isn't)
The tricky part is that total immersion in your business feels like the right thing to do. It feels like commitment. Like focus. Like what separates the serious entrepreneurs from the hobbyists who dabble and wonder why they never break through.
We celebrate the founders who sleep under their desks. We admire the ones who talk about their business like it's their first child (sometimes more lovingly than they talk about their actual children). The mythology of entrepreneurship is built on stories of obsession rewarded.
But there's a difference between devotion and disappearance.
Devotion means you show up fully for your work, bringing all of who you are to the table. Disappearance means there's nothing left of you outside the work. Devotion creates energy. Disappearance depletes it, slowly at first, then all at once.
The business owner who has lost themselves in their company isn't more committed. They're more trapped. And the trap tightens every year because now the stakes are higher, now there are employees depending on them, now walking away (even mentally, even for a weekend) feels like abandoning a child in a parking lot.
(I've had clients describe taking a vacation as "abandoning" their business. Let that sink in.)
The Questions That Start to Haunt You
At some point, if you're honest with yourself, questions start surfacing that you'd rather not answer.
What would I do if this ended tomorrow? Not financially, though that's terrifying enough. Who would I be? What would fill the hours? What would I talk about at dinner parties? Who are my friends who don't also serve as networking opportunities?
These questions tend to arrive around the same time as success, which is its own cruel irony. You spend years building something, sacrifice relationships and hobbies and sleep, finally arrive at the destination, and then think: Wait. Is this it? Is this all I am now?
The scariest part isn't not knowing the answer. It's realizing how long it's been since you even asked.
Rebuilding a Self (Without Burning Down What You Built)
I'm not going to tell you to sell your business and find yourself on a beach somewhere (though if that's what you need, don't let me stop you). The identity trap doesn't require escape. It requires expansion.
The goal isn't to care less about your business. It's to become more than your business.
This starts with tiny acts of reclamation. Finding one thing, just one, that has nothing to do with work and doing it without justifying how it makes you a better leader.
Reading a novel. Taking a class in something you're bad at. Having a conversation where you don't mention your company once.
These feel almost embarrassingly small, like they couldn't possibly matter against the weight of everything you've built.
But identity is built in small moments. It eroded in small moments too; you can rebuild it the same way.
The harder work is internal. It's untangling your worth from your revenue. It's learning to introduce yourself without your title.
It's sitting with the discomfort of being someone who doesn't have all the answers, who isn't always optimising, who sometimes just exists without producing anything at all.
The Freedom on the Other Side
Business owners who escape the identity trap don't become less successful. In my experience, they become more effective because they're no longer running on fumes and fear.
They make better decisions because they're not terrified that a wrong move will annihilate their entire sense of self. They build more sustainable companies because they're not trying to fill an existential void with growth metrics.
And they're more interesting. They have stories that don't involve quarterly targets. They have friendships that aren't strategic.
They have a life, messy and imperfect and distinctly their own, that exists whether the business thrives or fails.
That's not abandoning your company. That's finally having something worth coming home to.
Start Here
This week, answer one question honestly: Who were you before this business existed? Not what you did. Who you were. What you cared about. What made you laugh.
Then find one small way to reconnect with that person.
The business will survive an hour of your attention elsewhere. You might not survive another decade of being nothing but the founder.
If you're navigating questions about what's next for you and your business, I'd love to help. Learn about CEO Evolution - my 3-month program for established business owners figuring out their next chapter.