A business is never only the founder

It is everyone who believed early: the first customer, the first hire, the family who tolerated the hours. Lead as if you are holding other people's trust, because you are.

Founders like to tell the story backwards, as if the vision arrived complete and the rest was execution. The truth is untidier. Someone lent you credibility before you had any. Someone stayed late for a company that did not yet deserve it.

The ledger of a business has a second column that never appears in the accounts: who carried you, and when. Pay that column first. It is the only debt that grows heavier the longer you ignore it.