- 07 Dec, 2025 *
My partner Candice and I have been discussing the idea of starting a business together one day.
Of course, I went off on every tangent imaginable: “Should we open a coffee shop?”, “What about a little corner café that just sells basics to the locals?”, “Ooo, let’s sell soap and other strange things!”, “We could totally do that, then invest in other shops and run twenty of them around town... it’d be great!”
I obviously loved the idea of starting something with her. But Candice, excited in her own way, said something I hadn’t considered: “I mean, why don’t we start a business that just stays the way it is?”
Talking through the idea, it became this:
Why don’t we start a business that is useful to people, pays its bills, employs its staff and pays them good sala…
- 07 Dec, 2025 *
My partner Candice and I have been discussing the idea of starting a business together one day.
Of course, I went off on every tangent imaginable: “Should we open a coffee shop?”, “What about a little corner café that just sells basics to the locals?”, “Ooo, let’s sell soap and other strange things!”, “We could totally do that, then invest in other shops and run twenty of them around town... it’d be great!”
I obviously loved the idea of starting something with her. But Candice, excited in her own way, said something I hadn’t considered: “I mean, why don’t we start a business that just stays the way it is?”
Talking through the idea, it became this:
Why don’t we start a business that is useful to people, pays its bills, employs its staff and pays them good salaries, has a positive impact on the community, and doesn’t need to endlessly “get bigger”. What if it simply did what it did, and that was that?
Recently, Herman published a piece on the parable of the Fisherman and the Businessman, exploring the idea of growing slowly and staying small. It really resonated with me. The best line was the ending: “a craft to practise.”
Throughout my career, I’ve applied the principles I learned in life, and, unfortunately, some of those lessons weren’t always healthy or useful coping mechanisms.
One of them being the belief that success is defined by how much money you have.
I’m older now. I’ve been hurt, shattered, happy, fulfilled, excited, and I’ve learned that money is simply a mechanism for making something happen, not a measure of success at all.
We define our own measure of success.
A future business one day, something I might build with Candice, or on my own, could be in advertising, in art, or maybe something completely unexpected… maybe soap.
My future is not defined by the money in my account, but by the communal impact I have on the world and the craft I practise.
My measure of personal success is my ability to practise in the first place.