Becoming the Owner, Not the Main Character

When I talk about business, there is one experience I keep coming back to: my wedding.

I am not trying to define business in grand terms. It is just that the role I felt while preparing for and getting through my wedding resembles what I am learning now as I run one.

In “I Closed a Service After Six Months and Started Again”, I wrote that I was still learning to move from developer to business owner. This essay continues that thought. This time, though, it is less about what to build and how to run it, and more about who I need to be inside it.

I was the main character too, but I had another role

A wedding brings many people together: our own close friends, and the guests our parents on both sides had kept up relationships with for a long time. It was our marriage, but the relationships gathered in that room were far bigger than the two of us.

While I greeted guests and exchanged bows, there was always something else to look after. I had to check on the bride in the bridal room, and keep our parents and their guests in mind. The time each person was spending in their own corner had to come together as one wedding.

The bride was the main character that day, and so were our parents. As the groom, of course, I was too. But the position I felt I was in was a little different.

I was the one being congratulated, and at the same time the one who had to see that the occasion went well. More than the fact that I stood at the center, what mattered was what kind of day this wedding would turn out to be for everyone.

That was when I started to think about the words “main character” a little differently.

Being the main character of the day did not mean that every decision that day had to revolve around me. As the host of the wedding, what I had to keep at the center was the wedding itself going as well as it possibly could.

In the end, business is the same. What belongs at the center is not me but the business itself doing well, and that means making things go well for the customers and for the employees, myself included.

The wedding did not take place only inside the hall

Looking back, the wedding had already begun when we were preparing the invitations.

Choosing the venue did not end with finding a hall we liked. We had to think about our budget, and look together at whether the place would be all right for our parents’ guests to reach, whether parking was easy, and what the meal was like.

Seen one at a time, these look like separate tasks. But for a guest, arriving, exchanging greetings, watching the ceremony, finishing the meal, and heading home is all one experience. However far we thought our preparations went, they experience that whole day.

That was why we could not decide on our own taste alone.

Then again, we could not satisfy everyone’s wishes either. There was a budget and a schedule, and each of us cared about different things. We had to talk through what to keep and what to adjust.

In that process, there was one more thing to look after besides the schedule and the costs: people’s feelings.

If we had taken care of every task, but the couple and the families had been worn down the whole time we were preparing, could we call it a well-prepared wedding? I did not think the work of making a good day should exhaust the people who would share it.

Of course, this was not something I could do alone. The person I was about to spend my life with, and both families, each had to help and adjust from where they stood. The responsibility I felt was also different from a resolve to do everything myself. It was closer to noticing what was being missed while we all moved together, and helping different ideas line up in one direction.

What I do well and what makes the work go well are different

I feel a similar gap in business.

The wish to show what I can do, to make good work, and to be recognized for the effort does not go away easily. The habit of thinking around the things I am good at is still there.

I do not think that wish is wrong in itself. Making something and getting it started takes that kind of drive. But if it stays at the center of my judgment, then while I am looking at what I made, I can lose sight of the person using it.

How well I built something and how good the customer’s experience was are not the same question. Nor can I say that because I did a lot of work, enough of what the business needed got done.

Just as there were things I would not have seen at the wedding if I had only paid attention to how I looked, there are things in business that lie outside the work I want to do.

I have to look at what customers get, where they run into trouble, under what conditions the people building this with me are working, and whether this work can continue. Some of that will be work I am not good at, or do not particularly want to do.

That is why, to me, business is less about being the main character than about the process of becoming the owner.

The owner here is not someone who decides everything by their own will. It is someone who does not look away when what I want to do and what this work needs are different. It is also someone who does not assume the whole will run well just because their own share is finished.

It means finding my responsibility in making it possible for the customers, the value we are trying to create, and the people creating it with me to be the main characters.

What I mean by the lowest place

When I think of a business owner, two opposite images come to mind at once: the person who takes the lowest place, and the person who gains the greatest wealth.

It feels paradoxical that the desire to build wealth through business and the attitude of not putting myself first have to live in the same person.

The low place I mean is not one where I think little of myself or accept every demand. It is a place where, before asking others to recognize my ideas and my effort, I look at what other people are getting through this work. It is closer to an attitude of not pushing necessary work outside my responsibility, even when it goes unnoticed.

That does not mean a business goes well just because I lower myself. Good intentions alone will not cover costs or produce revenue. But the more I want to gain from this business, the more I think I need to separate the wish to stand at the center from the attitude of taking responsibility for the whole.

I, too, am someone who needs a good experience and real results inside this. I do not want to leave myself out of the people building it together.

It is just that being the owner does not mean I have to be the only main character.

What I know and keep forgetting

This difference seems like something to learn early when starting a business. But knowing it early does not make it easy to practice.

That is true for me. I tell myself to act like an owner, and then at some point I catch myself thinking like the main character again. There are moments when my own ideas and my own share come into view before what the whole needs.

That habit does not disappear after one realization. If anything, because I think I already know, I may be slower to notice when it comes back.

So I am writing this down. Not so much to explain what business is, but so that I, running one, do not forget.

At my wedding, I was clearly the main character. At the same time, I was one of the people who made that day, and someone with a responsibility to look after it. Both roles were given to the same person on the same day.

Whenever I find myself wanting to stand at the center, I intend to think back to that day.

Before asking how I look, I want to ask what kind of experience the work I am responsible for leaves with people.