$20M Exit Blues
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A story from Reddit's fatFIRE community about an entrepreneur's journey after selling his company for $20M.
"This person wrote a post about a year ago saying he sold his company and made $20 million. Until that day, he hadn't sold a single share. He wasn't living paycheck to paycheck, but was living a normal life. After the sale, he basically had nothing to do with the company. His wife kept working and would tell her friends he was working from home, but in reality he was just playing video games all day while their kids were at school.
Six months later, he was deeply depressed, hated his life, had nothing going on, and needed to see a therapist. Then 10 months later, he wrote another post saying this moment in his life is so good - he loves waking up, loves what he's doing all day, and feels camaraderie.
What changed was he went and started another company. Now he has 10 employees, it's cash flow positive, and while it's not huge yet, it's enough to pay for the employees. He realized he loved the hunt of building something.
Another person commented saying their exit wasn't nearly as large, but they had a similar experience - floating in their pool, playing video games, reading all day. After 3-4 months they were miserable. They then started a small business from one of their hobbies. It will never be as big as their previous company, but it has challenging problems to solve and they've never been happier."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.