Redwoods, Chocolate, and the Death of My Mother
Redwoods, Chocolate, and the Death of My Mother
A redefining of success
This is gonna be a deep one, ya’ll.
A few things came together recently that made me stop and really think about my definition of a successful life. I’m finishing up my MBA, and I’m taking a class called Entrepreneurial Leadership. One of our discussion posts asked what makes an entrepreneur successful, and I had to sit with that one for a minute.
I had to close my chocolate business back in 2009 because of the recession. Chocolate had doubled in price, and I just couldn’t make it profitable. I felt ashamed of that for years. I grieved losing that business. It felt like someone in the family had died. I had poured so much time and effort into it, but it only lived for five short years. In the end, my chocolate business did not succeed, and I have carried that sadness ever since.
My mother died at the very young age of 32. She found a lump in her breast and in 1977 the doctors did what they always did and they sent her home, told her to wait six months and come back. By then, the cancer had spread too far. She died one month after my fourth birthday.
I miss her.
And yet at the same time, she’s always here. I felt sorry that she didn’t get to live out her full life. I hated that she didn’t get to experience the fullness of it. Part of me wanted to live my life “extra hard” to make up for the years she lost. How could she be considered successful at life when it was taken from her so early?
The other day my MBA professor asked me a profound question. I had shared in class about my unsuccessful entrepreneurial adventures from the late 2000s. He asked,
“Do you think redefining success in entrepreneurship could help more leaders feel fulfilled, even without ‘going big’?”
That question made me dig deeper. Was my definition of success rooted in “big”? Was it rooted in time? Was it rooted in financial gain?
Here’s how I answered:
Thank you for your feedback. My definition of an entrepreneur is probably as simple as someone who creates a business to make a profit. So the lemonade stand my kids started at the farmer’s market is enough of a venture for me to count them as entrepreneurs. Still, in the eyes of the public, I carried disappointment over having to close my little chocolate business back in 2009 because of inflation.
Thinking more deeply about your question, I wonder if we could define success in entrepreneurship the way we think about plants. My sons’ lemonade stand was like a little chickadee plant. It had a natural limit to its growth. My chocolate business was more like a large houseplant. It was tame and couldn’t handle the heat, so it needed to be housed in a smaller, safer structure. My brother is also an entrepreneur. His last business sold for over 100 million dollars to Alibaba in China. I think we might call his business a redwood tree. It towered high, was visible to the whole nation, and impacted many people in a positive way.
Each business has its own growth rate and growth limit. If we think of it through the lens of plant genetics, maybe we can say a business is successful if it fulfills its purpose.
Hmmmm…
That’s pretty profound.
Something is successful if it fulfills its purpose.
My chocolate business fulfilled its purpose.
My mother fulfilled her purpose.
Who am I to make the rules about what successful means? Who am I to say that a certain amount of money or a certain number of years on this earth are the measure of success?
If I let that idea settle into my soul, I can feel my grief shift. I can feel my foundation become a little more steady.
Success is not more materialism or beauty or the fountain of youth. A successful life is achieved by fulfilling my purpose and becoming who I am meant to become…
…whether I am a small chickadee plant, a houseplant, or a redwood.