From the outside, life after an exit looks deceptively simple.

You sell the company. You gain freedom. You slow down. You enjoy the fruits of your labor. The story writes itself neatly, and people project onto it whatever version of “made it” they happen to believe in.

My experience was not like this at all. It was quieter, stranger, and far less linear.

The exit didn’t end momentum. It removed the structure that had contained it. What followed wasn’t relief so much as a prolonged recalibration – a period where the questions changed faster than the answers. The exit didn’t solve my life. It simply removed the constraints that had been organizing it for decades.

What came next unfolded slowly, unevenly, and not at all the way I would have predicted.

Year 1: Relief, Noise, and a Machine That Wouldn’t Shut Off

The first year after the exit was defined by excitement and relief – but only briefly.

There was real gratitude in finally exhaling. The pressure lifted. The stakes softened. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t wake up with a backlog of urgent decisions waiting for me. That alone felt like a gift.

But almost immediately, something else became apparent: I didn’t know how to stop.

Just a couple of months after the sale, I started another business. Not because I needed the money – that part was no longer relevant. And not because I had a particularly clear idea of what I wanted to build next. I did it because it was what I knew. For nearly thirty years, I had hustled hard. Building, fixing, pushing forward had been my default operating system. Turning it off didn’t feel like an option. At the time, it barely even felt like a choice.

Intellectually, I understood that I didn’t have to work anymore. Emotionally and behaviorally, the machine kept running. The rhythm of building, problem-solving, and momentum had been ingrained too deeply to disappear overnight. The idea of simply stopping felt foreign, almost impossible to imagine.

So I kept going.

In hindsight, that first year wasn’t really about direction. It was about inertia. About discovering that freedom without structure didn’t immediately translate into rest – it often translated into motion without clarity.

And at the time, I didn’t question it. I didn’t even recognize it as something to be questioned yet.

Year 2: Unfocused Drift and Intellectual Sprawl

If the first year was defined by inertia, the second was defined by curiosity = unchecked, fun, undisciplined curiosity.

Suddenly, everything looked interesting.

With no single operating mandate and no externally imposed constraints, my attention scattered. New ideas surfaced constantly. New industries looked compelling. New technologies promised leverage and reinvention. I was like the proverbial kid in a Lego store, surrounded by infinite pieces and convinced that I could – and maybe should – build everything.

I explored broadly. I experimented freely. I started things, paused them, revisited them, and layered new ideas on top of unfinished ones. Nothing felt obviously wrong, but very little felt anchored. Without realizing it at the time, I was substituting motion for direction.

The absence of urgency was liberating, but it also removed a natural filter. When everything is optional, discernment becomes the real work – and I hadn’t learned how to apply it yet. So I kept playing. Building. Testing. Tinkering. Always moving, rarely committing.

In retrospect, that year wasn’t wasteful. It was exploratory. But it was also unfocused. Intellectual sprawl crept in quietly, disguised as curiosity and experimentation. I was learning a lot, but not necessarily moving toward anything coherent.

At the time, it felt like freedom. Only later did I recognize it for what it was: a necessary but messy phase of recalibration, where breadth preceded clarity.

Year 3: Fading Relevance and Finding a Voice

By the third year, something subtler began to happen.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no single moment I could point to. But gradually, unmistakably, my professional relevance started to fade. The calls slowed. The steady flow of emails thinned out. Zoom invites, once routine, became occasional. Then rare.

No one pushed me out. No bridges were burned. I simply wasn’t needed anymore.

That realization landed more quietly than I expected, but it lingered longer. For decades, my identity had been tightly coupled to being in the middle of things – making decisions, solving problems, being relied upon. Without that gravitational pull, something felt oddly weightless.

It was around this time that I started writing.

Not because I’m particularly good at it – I’m not – and not because I had ambitions of becoming a writer. I started writing because I still had things I wanted to say. Ideas, observations, and experiences that didn’t seem to have a natural outlet anymore. Writing became a way to stay in the conversation when the conversation no longer came to me automatically.

It was also a way to test whether my voice still mattered.

That question sat just beneath the surface for much of that year. Was I still relevant if I wasn’t running something full-time? Did my experience still have weight if I wasn’t attached to a title or a growing org chart? These weren’t existential crises, but they were real, and they were new.

In hindsight, Year 3 wasn’t about output or experimentation. It was about identity. About separating who I was from what I had built, and learning – slowly – that relevance doesn’t always announce itself the way it used to.

Sometimes, you have to claim it quietly.

Year 4: Clarity, Selectivity, and Finally Feeling at Home in It

By the fourth year, something finally shifts.

There’s no dramatic breakthrough, no announcement, no sense of having “figured it all out.” Instead, the noise recedes. The signal becomes clearer. The things that actually matter begin to stand out on their own, without effort.

I know now what’s important to me – and just as importantly, what isn’t.

That clarity takes time to earn. It doesn’t arrive through hustle or experimentation alone. It comes from letting enough things fall away that the remaining ones can be seen properly. The unfocused drift of earlier years gives way to something quieter and far more satisfying.

I still feel like the kid in the Lego store. The curiosity hasn’t gone anywhere. The desire to build, experiment, and create is very much alive. The difference is that now I have a plan. I don’t reach for every box. I don’t feel compelled to try everything. I choose deliberately.

I say no far more often than I say yes.

I still do meaningful work. I still surround myself with exceptional entrepreneurs and builders. I still serve on Boards. I still experiment and stay intellectually engaged. But I do it without pressure. Without the grind. Without the sense that every idea needs to be pursued immediately or every opportunity must be captured before it disappears.

If something doesn’t get done today, that’s fine. It will still be there tomorrow.

For the first time in my professional life, everything happens on my time, my schedule, and my priorities. Not because I’ve lost ambition, but because I’ve refined it.

And sitting in that place – after years of recalibration – feels better than I would have expected.

It feels earned.

What Actually Changed – And What Didn’t

Looking back across those four years, the most meaningful changes weren’t external. They were internal, structural, and largely invisible from the outside.

What changed was how I relate to work. I no longer confuse activity with progress, or breadth with ambition. I don’t feel compelled to manufacture urgency or chase momentum for its own sake. Time, once scarce and constantly under pressure, is now something I allocate deliberately. Focus has replaced volume. Precision has replaced accumulation.

What also changed is my tolerance. I’m far less willing to accept unnecessary complexity, misaligned incentives, or work that expands simply because it can. Scale is no longer a default aspiration. It’s a tool – useful in the right context, destructive in the wrong one.

What didn’t change is just as important.

I’m still a builder. Still curious. Still intellectually restless. I still enjoy hard problems, thoughtful people, and the quiet satisfaction of designing systems that work. I still care deeply about creating things that are well-constructed and durable – businesses, tools, relationships, and ways of working.

The difference now is selectivity.

I don’t need to prove anything through motion anymore. I don’t need to fill my calendar to justify my time. I don’t need to say yes to remain relevant. The work I choose to do is enough on its own.

Four years after the exit, life hasn’t become simpler in the way people imagine. But it has become clearer. And that clarity – earned slowly, unevenly, and without shortcuts – has turned out to be far more valuable than the freedom I thought I was chasing in the beginning.

That, more than anything else, is what life after the exit actually looks like.

The post Life After the Exit (4 Years In) appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

From Consultant to Creator

For years, I was perfectly happy as an SAP consultant. I was good at what I did, billed top rates, traveled the world, and worked with some of the biggest companies on the planet helping them implement and configure SAP software.

But once I got married, the constant travel started to wear thin. That’s when my good friend – and fellow SAP expert – Kent Bettisworth told me about a company in Europe that had just started offering online SAP training. This was around 2006, and back then, even SAP itself didn’t offer online training. The idea was unheard of.

Naturally, I had to check it out. What I found wasn’t impressive – the execution was clunky, the content uninspiring. But the spark was undeniable. The idea was right. They just weren’t doing it well. And that’s when it hit me: I could do this better.

So I dove into a world I knew nothing about: online education and authoring tools. I experimented with formats, failed repeatedly, and eventually landed on a model I liked. To my surprise – and relief – people responded well. I built one course. Then another. Then another.

At first, it was just me, in between consulting gigs. But I wanted to test the idea that I could create a revenue stream not tied to my time. By the time I’d created 20 courses, the writing was on the wall: it worked. The business had legs.

From there, I hired SAP experts to draft scripts, instructional designers to build lessons, and voice-over talent to record audio. What started as a side project grew into the world’s largest independent SAP training platform – until SAP itself finally entered the market, knocking us down to #2.

What began as a personal experiment had turned into a scalable company.

Step 1: Start Small and Validate

Looking back, the smartest thing I did was start small. One course. That’s it.

I didn’t spend months writing a business plan. I didn’t raise money. I didn’t build a giant website with dozens of features. I just created a single course and put it out into the world to see if anyone cared.

They did. And that’s when I made another. Then another. Each course was a test. Each one taught me something about what worked, what didn’t, and what people were actually willing to pay for.

The beauty of starting small is that the risk is minimal. If nobody had bought my courses, I’d have wasted some nights and weekends – nothing more. But because I tested early, I discovered a viable business model while keeping my downside limited.

It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get paralyzed, waiting for the “perfect” idea or obsessing over a 40-page business plan. My advice: don’t. Launch early, fail fast, iterate often. That’s how you validate.

Step 2: Build Systems, Not Dependencies

After the first 20 courses, I hit a wall. There was no way I could keep creating everything myself while also running consulting projects. If the business depended on me, it wasn’t scalable – and certainly not sellable.

So I started building systems. I brought in SAP experts to write lesson scripts. Instructional designers to build the actual courses. Voice actors to record audio. Later, a customer service team to handle support tickets. Every piece of the puzzle that once lived in my head was broken down into a repeatable process that someone else could execute.

That shift – from dependency to systems – is what turned my side hustle into a company. Without it, I’d have been stuck in the freelancer trap, just with a fancier product. With it, I had a machine that could scale far beyond me.

This is the difference between running a business and owning a job. If your business stops when you do, you don’t really have a company. You have a dependency.

Step 3: Evolve the Model

At first, the business was simple: I sold individual courses to SAP professionals. It worked – but it was still small scale.

Then I started thinking bigger. What if I could sell bundles of courses to entire companies? That’s when I built a B2B sales team and hired account managers. The shift paid off. We sold a lot of corporate training packages, and revenues climbed fast.

But the real breakthrough – the move that put the company into overdrive – was switching to a SaaS subscription model. Instead of one-off course sales, everything became a recurring contract. Customers signed up once, and their access renewed automatically until they canceled.

That single decision doubled the value of the business. It gave us predictable revenue, steadier cash flow, and a multiple that investors couldn’t ignore. SaaS wasn’t just a new model – it was the turning point that made the business scalable and highly attractive for acquisition.

Step 4: Prepare for Exit

Growth is exciting. But if you ever want to sell, growth alone isn’t enough. Buyers don’t just look at your revenue; they look at how your business runs without you.

That’s where preparation made all the difference. I spent over a year making the company “exit-ready.” Every agreement, every contract, every financial statement was organized and accessible. Processes were documented, teams were trained, and I deliberately made myself less important.

By the time we went to market, the company didn’t need me anymore. And that’s exactly what buyers want to see. They’re not buying your personality or your hustle; they’re buying a machine that will keep running long after you’re gone.

Because we had recurring revenue, clean financials, and a business that ran on systems – not me – we attracted serious buyers quickly. And when the right deal came along, we were ready.

Preparation wasn’t glamorous. It was tedious, detail-heavy, and sometimes felt like a second job. But it paid off in multiples when it came time to exit.

The Playbook for Productizing Expertise

Looking back, the path from consultant to SaaS founder to exit wasn’t magic. It was a series of very deliberate steps:

1. Start small and validate. Don’t wait for perfect. Ship something, see if people care, and learn by doing.
2. Build systems, not dependencies. If the business relies on you, it’s not a business. Process everything.
3. Evolve the model. One-off sales might pay the bills, but recurring revenue builds enterprise value.
4. Prepare for exit. Get your house in order early. Clean financials, documented processes, and a business that runs without you make all the difference.

That’s the framework. It works whether you’re selling training courses, SaaS, or any other form of productized expertise.

The biggest trap experts fall into is clinging to the billable hour. The biggest opportunity is turning what you know into something that scales without you.

I did it in SAP training. You can do it in your industry.

The post How to Productize Your Expertise Into a Scalable Business appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

Why TomcoCapital Went AI-First

At TomcoCapital, we made a decision early on: whenever we face a business challenge or need, we ask a simple question – can an AI-first company solve this faster, smarter, and with less friction than a traditional team? The answer, more often than not, is yes.

After selling my last business and getting a clean slate, I had zero interest in rebuilding the same human-heavy, slow-moving org chart. The world has changed. AI isn’t a gimmick anymore – it’s the competitive edge. That’s why every new portfolio company we launch, acquire, or scale starts with this mindset: automate first, hire later (if at all).

The difference isn’t just about efficiency or cost. It’s about building companies that are leaner, more adaptable, and fundamentally prepared for the business landscape that’s already here – not the one we left behind.

We don’t default to human resources for operational problems. We default to AI. Only after AI has hit its limit do we assign a person—whose time is then focused on strategy, relationship-building, and high-leverage creative work.

The net result: our companies move faster, spend less, and scale smarter. In a market defined by volatility and relentless competition, this isn’t just a cool tech experiment. It’s how you win.

Inside the AI Team – What Our Agents Actually Do

The real power of an AI-first company isn’t just that AI can handle simple, repetitive work. It’s how broad and deep the capabilities now go across our entire business stack.

At TomcoCapital and our portfolio companies, our AI agents aren’t just running social or cranking out blogs – they’re actively replacing or augmenting roles you’d normally need to hire for. Here’s a snapshot of what our AI team manages every week:

• Copywriting & Content Marketing:
  AI writes, edits, and optimizes web pages, ebooks, case studies, and even technical documentation. Our “AI copywriter” can handle everything from product pitches to long-form guides – faster and often with fewer errors than a human.
• Website & Product Updates:
  Want to add a new feature, fix a bug, or update pricing tables? AI writes the copy, generates the code, and often pushes changes live to production. What once took days now takes minutes.
• Customer Support & Service:
  Incoming emails and support tickets are automatically triaged, answered, or escalated – 24/7. The AI doesn’t sleep or get frustrated. Simple inquiries are resolved instantly; complex cases are flagged for a human, who now handles far fewer tickets.
• SEO & Analytics:
  AI reviews all outbound content for SEO performance, suggests improvements, and analyzes traffic/usage logs. We know what’s working and what isn’t, in real time, with actionable recommendations – not just reports gathering dust.
• Sales Operations:
  AI agents help update pricing, research prospects, draft outreach emails, and follow up on leads. Our sales pipeline is more active, more organized, and less dependent on human error.
• Marketing Automation:
  Newsletters, nurture campaigns, and social posts are scheduled, written, and A/B tested by AI. Marketing email copy is customized to audience segments, then launched and tracked – all hands-off.
• Business Development & Research:
  AI finds and analyzes potential business opportunities, identifies new partners or acquisition targets, and even does preliminary due diligence.
• Ecommerce & Product Management:
  Inventory, pricing, and product descriptions are managed by AI. Site changes, promos, and updates go live without waiting for a human bottleneck.
• Personal Productivity:
  My own “virtual assistant” AI manages my calendar, flags key emails, and even prompts me to hit my health goals or follow up on critical projects.
• Recruiting & HR:
  Our recruiting agent can source candidates, screen for basic qualifications, and schedule interviews, though, ironically, we haven’t needed to use it yet.

Bottom line:
Nearly every role below senior leadership can now be at least partially replaced, accelerated, or supported by AI. Our “team” is a real, dynamic roster of digital employees – always on, always learning, and immune to office drama.

What’s Left for Humans (and Why That Matters More Than Ever)

Does this mean people are obsolete? Not even close. The reality is, in an AI-first company, the bar for human contribution gets higher – not lower. AI crushes the grunt work, the repetition, the tasks that used to chew up your best people’s time and patience. But it can’t replace vision, strategy, leadership, creativity, or the human touch required for high-stakes deals and nuanced judgment.

Here’s how we deploy our human capital now:

• Strategy & Vision: Humans set direction, make bets, and decide which mountains to climb. AI can analyze data and suggest tactics, but it can’t replace gut instinct or experience.
• Relationship-Building: From investor relations to key partnerships, trust and persuasion are still deeply human skills.
• Complex Problem-Solving: When a situation is ambiguous, political, or requires cross-domain thinking, you need people—not just pattern-matching algorithms.
• Innovation & Big Ideas: True breakthroughs – whether in product, business model, or go-to-market – rarely emerge from code alone.
• Final Accountability: At the end of the day, a company needs real leadership. Someone has to take responsibility for the big calls AI isn’t built to make.

By freeing humans from busywork, we let them work on what actually drives value and competitive advantage. In fact, our team is smaller, but every person is working closer to the top of their skill stack.

This isn’t anti-people. It’s pro-talent. When you let AI handle everything it’s good at, you can finally let your best people focus on what only they can do.

Lessons Learned & Advice for Founders and Investors

Here’s the truth from the trenches: building an AI-first company is not a theoretical play – it’s a competitive necessity. And it’s moving faster than even the tech press is reporting. Most leaders are either sleepwalking into irrelevance or tinkering at the edges while their competitors are quietly eating their lunch.

What I’ve learned:

• Don’t wait for perfection: If you hold out for flawless AI, you’ll be left behind. Deploy, test, refine – iterate weekly, not yearly.
• Audit ruthlessly: Every process, every workflow, every department. If an AI tool can do 80% of the job, that’s 80% of time and cost back in your pocket.
• Upskill your humans: The people who thrive here are the ones who can direct, supervise, and quality-check AI. You want operators who treat AI as leverage, not as a threat.
• Expect resistance: You’ll get pushback from people invested in the old way. That’s fine – progress doesn’t wait for permission.
• Measure the right things: Speed, adaptability, and margin matter more than headcount or legacy org charts.

My advice:
Stop thinking of AI as “tech support” and start thinking of it as your operations backbone. Build around it, not on top of it. The companies that win in the next decade will be those who made AI their core operating system, not a bolt-on afterthought.

If you’re still hiring armies for jobs that AI can do better, faster, and cheaper – you’re not building for the future. You’re just adding risk and friction.

The New Playbook – Are You Ready to Compete This Way?

The landscape has shifted. The old metrics – headcount, square footage, layers of management – don’t mean what they used to. The winning formula now is simple: fewer people, more leverage, relentless automation, and the courage to let go of how things “have always been done.”

If you’re a founder, operator, or investor and still building companies the traditional way, here’s your wake-up call. Start treating AI as your first hire, not your last resort.

Audit your processes, challenge your assumptions, and get uncomfortable.
It’s not about being trendy; it’s about survival and having a real edge.

This is exactly what I work on with our portfolio founders and with a select group of coaching clients who are serious about building lean, AI-first businesses that scale with less risk and more upside.

If you’re ready to leave excuses behind and actually transform how you build, book a call with me.

The post Building an AI-First Company: Why We Start With Automation, Not Headcount appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

Hi, I’m Thomas Michael, and I’ve spent over 25 years in the business world, navigating the tricky waters of hiring top-notch talent. When I started Michael Management Corporation, we were a small fish in a big pond. Yet, we managed to build a team of smart, motivated professionals who helped us become the 2nd largest SAP training provider in the world.

How did we do it? It all boils down to three key principles: interviewing for skills, hiring for experience, and keeping for culture. These principles helped us identify the right candidates who not only had the necessary skills but also fit seamlessly into our company culture. In this article, I’ll share how applying these principles can help you build an amazing team, no matter how small or unknown your company might be.

Principle 1: Interview for Skills

When it comes to hiring, the first step is to ensure that candidates have the skills required for the job. This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how often this gets overlooked. My philosophy is simple: if it starts hard, it ends hard. This means that if a candidate’s resume doesn’t clearly demonstrate the necessary skills, they’re not worth considering. It’s ruthless, but it’s effective.

During the resume collection and the first round of interviews, I focus exclusively on the skills required for the position. I don’t get distracted by charming cover letters or impressive but irrelevant accomplishments. Instead, I zero in on the key competencies needed for the role. If a resume doesn’t match up, it’s out. No exceptions.

For example, when we were hiring a new software developer, we received hundreds of applications. Many were from highly educated, well-rounded individuals. But if they didn’t have the specific programming skills we needed, their resumes went straight to the rejection pile. It might sound harsh, but it saved us a lot of time and ensured that only the most qualified candidates made it to the interview stage.

By focusing on skills from the get-go, you set a solid foundation for the rest of the hiring process. It’s a strategy that weeds out unqualified candidates early and keeps the process efficient and effective.

Principle 2: Hire for Experience

Once we’ve identified candidates with the necessary skills, the next step is to focus on experience. We want people who have successfully done the job elsewhere. Experience is a crucial factor because it means they’ve already navigated the challenges and pitfalls that come with the role. They know what success looks like, and they know how to achieve it.

Our hiring process includes 2-3 rounds of in-depth interviews, both with me and with members of our existing team. These interviews are designed to dig deep into the candidates’ past roles and achievements. We ask detailed questions about their previous jobs, the specific tasks they handled, and the outcomes of their efforts. We want to know about their successes and how they achieved them, as well as the challenges they faced and how they overcame them.

For instance, we once needed to hire a Channel Partner Manager. We had many applicants who were successful salespeople, but we ultimately hired someone who had built a partner organization at their previous company. This candidate had the exact experience we needed. They had already been there and done that, which meant they could hit the ground running with minimal training or oversight.

Hiring for experience means not getting swayed by candidates who are smart, nice, or otherwise impressive but lack the specific experience needed for the job. It’s about finding those who have a proven track record in similar roles. By doing this, we ensure that new hires can contribute effectively from day one.

Principle 3: Keep for Culture

This is the most critical principle of all: keeping people who fit the company culture. Skills and experience are essential, but if a new hire doesn’t mesh with the company culture, it’s a recipe for disaster. Culture is everything in a business, especially a small one. Every business has a culture—either by design or by default—and maintaining it is crucial for long-term success.

During the final stages of our hiring process, we pay close attention to how well candidates align with our company’s values, work style, and team dynamics. This involves not only formal interviews but also informal interactions, such as team lunches or casual meetings. We observe how they communicate, collaborate, and respond to the existing team members.

One bad hire can ruin what took years to build. I’ve seen it happen. A new hire who doesn’t fit the culture can disrupt team harmony, lower morale, and negatively impact productivity. If you notice that someone on your team doesn’t click with the culture, cut them fast. It never gets better, and performance improvement plans rarely work in these cases. Be quick and be ruthless.

For example, we once hired a highly skilled developer who had excellent experience. However, it quickly became clear that their way of working and interacting was at odds with our collaborative, open, and supportive culture. Despite their technical prowess, the mismatch in culture caused friction and stress within the team. We made the tough decision to let them go, which ultimately preserved the harmony and productivity of our team.\

By following this principle, we have been able to maintain a strong, positive culture that supports our team’s success and growth. It’s not just about finding people who can do the job, but finding people who can do the job in a way that aligns with and enhances your company’s culture.

Building the Team

By adhering to these three principles—interviewing for skills, hiring for experience, and keeping for culture—we’ve managed to build an exceptional team. This team wasn’t just any team; it was a group of smart, motivated professionals who were aligned with our goals and values. Together, we grew Michael Management Corporation to become the 2nd largest SAP training provider in the world.

The process wasn’t always easy. It required discipline, a clear vision, and the courage to make tough decisions. But the results speak for themselves. Our team was able to innovate, collaborate, and deliver outstanding results because they had the right skills, relevant experience, and a deep connection to our company culture.

Watching our team grow and succeed has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. We didn’t just build a company; we built a community of professionals who supported each other and worked together towards a common goal. This strong foundation allowed us to navigate challenges, seize opportunities, and achieve remarkable success.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it—my philosophy on hiring top-notch people for a small, unknown company. By focusing on skills, experience, and culture, you can build a team that not only excels at their jobs but also fits seamlessly into your company’s environment. This approach helped us grow from a small startup to a major player in the SAP training industry.

Remember, hiring the right people is about more than just filling positions. It’s about building a team that will drive your company forward, uphold your values, and contribute to a positive and productive work environment. So, be ruthless in your initial screenings, thorough in your experience evaluations, and uncompromising in maintaining your culture.

With these principles, you too can build an amazing team that will help your business thrive. Here’s to your success in creating a team of top-notch professionals who will take your company to new heights!

The post How I Built a Top-Notch Team for a Small, Unknown Company appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

A few months back, I saw a familiar name pop up in my LinkedIn messages – Thomas Michael wanted to know if I could jump on a quick call. 

Thomas and I have worked together since 2018, and I’ve always loved working for him/ respected his entrepreneurial endeavors. It was a very welcome surprise to see that he wanted to connect again. I was in between projects so his timing was perfect. I went into the call with an open mind, unsure of what he wanted to chat about. 

Thomas unveiled some of the ideas he’d been cooking up since he sold his company, and it took me all of about 2 minutes to say, OMG I’M IN. Since then, we’ve been in full-fledge, nitty gritty, Silicon Valley tv-show, start up mode. 

I can’t reveal tooooo much, but this blog will highlight a few of the projects we’ve been working on over the course of the past few months. 

While we’re still working out all of the details, I will say, I think the end result will be a game-changer. 

Tomco AI

Thomas and I are both fascinated by all things AI-related, so working on projects supported by AI has been challenging, eye-opening and downright cool. 

Our first big project together was simply creating content. I’ve always gravitated towards content creation and more creative projects, so I was excited to start to learn about leveraging AI for marketing copy and blog creation. While I still feel strongly that creative flair and editing should come from humans, I have been AMAZED by the capabilities of AI for writing projects. 

We played around with prompts and wording to ensure that AI was able to deliver the type and caliber of content that we were going for. And once we had that down, it was an AI-palooza of new blogs, website copy, social media posts. It really is an art, and Thomas has been great in sharing his expertise to get me up to speed.

While I know AI is available to everyone, it’s been fascinating to watch someone learn its capabilities and limitations, and how to leverage that into real-life applications. I have not yet mastered the AI art form, but I’m sincerely enjoying the learning process. 

PS: I know I’ve talked a lot about AI blog content creation, but this blog is written by a plain old boring human – me! 

In addition to blogs, Thomas and I have spent countless hours creating AI templates. Again, I won’t get too into the weeds, but learning how to work with AI and create templates has been incredibly interesting. 

We’re set to release soon and I’m excited for you to see what we’ve come up with! 

ERPlingo

Some of you reading this may have already chatted with me about ERPlingo, but let me just say this: we are updating it continuously and I truly believe it will redefine how we work with and learn SAP applications. 

We have developed an AI-powered SAP solution that allows SAP users to search millions of SAP error messages, transaction codes and keywords/terms and get answers to their questions in seconds.

Additionally, we are working on training an SAP coach that puts intelligent SAP support within the reach of every SAP user. I am very excited and optimistic about the effect it will have on the SAP community. 

At this stage we’re looking for beta testers, so if you’re reading this, reach out and we’ll get you set up on the site! We’d love to hear thoughts, feedback, critique, love, etc. 

And this is just the first rollout, so keep checking back in to see what we’ve updated! 

What’s next?

What’s next you may be wondering! 

Well first and foremost, Thomas and I will be having our first in-person meeting. Shockingly, after more than 5 years of working together, we have never actually met in person. A mixture of Thomas and I both having wanderlust and a global pandemic has made our past meet ups impossible. That’s why I’m really looking forward to actually seeing him IRL. 

Additionally, we’re working on official rollouts of both websites and working on getting our first 100 customers. After that, we shall see! 

Every day new ideas come out, so stay tuned. 

Cheers,

Claire
Director of Strategy
Tomco Capital Corporation

The post Well, well, well – Look who is working together again appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

Do I buy an existing business – or build something of my own again?

This question is not abstract anymore. It’s not a thought experiment or a conversation over drinks. It is real. It’s here. It’s happening now. Weeks after selling my own company, after the transition period slowed down and the calendar went quiet, I’m staring at this fork in the road in full daylight.

I’ve had capital. I’ve had experience. I’ve worked with due diligence teams on my own sale. I’ve lived through buyer questions – twice. I should be well-positioned to acquire something that’s already running, and start from an operational leg up.

At least, that’s what I used to believe.

Reality – The Acquisition Search

Once I decide to explore the acquisition route seriously, the process accelerates quickly.

I start taking calls. Introductory conversations at first, then deeper discussions with founders who are actively looking to sell. On the surface, it feels efficient. These are businesses with customers, revenue, and some form of operating history. In theory, I’m buying momentum rather than creating it from scratch.

But almost immediately, the gap between theory and reality starts to show.

The early conversations are usually optimistic. The story is familiar: solid growth, loyal customers, a great product, and a founder who’s “ready for the next chapter.” I listen, ask questions, and nod along. I’ve told similar stories myself in the past.

Then I begin to dig.

I ask for financials. I ask for customer data. I ask how decisions are made, how work actually flows through the business, and what happens when the founder steps away for a few weeks. These aren’t trick questions. They’re basic questions – the same ones buyers asked me during my own exit.

That’s when things start to slow down.

Documents arrive late or partially. Numbers don’t quite reconcile. Metrics are described confidently but supported loosely. Answers become more qualitative than quantitative. What initially sounded like a business starts to feel more like a collection of habits held together by the founder’s daily involvement.

I’m not looking for perfection. I know better than that. But I am looking for coherence – a system that exists independently of the person telling me the story.

Too often, it doesn’t.

And as these conversations pile up, a quiet discomfort starts to replace the initial excitement. Not because the founders are dishonest or incapable – most of them are neither – but because what I’m being shown isn’t leverage.

It’s a lot of work.

What I Actually See Once I Look Closer

Once the conversations move beyond surface-level storytelling, a consistent pattern emerges.

The financials are often incomplete, or at least not decision-grade. Statements exist, but they don’t always reconcile cleanly across periods. Revenue is real, but the underlying drivers aren’t clearly articulated. Margins shift depending on how the question is framed. Simple follow-ups – the kind any serious buyer would ask – take time to answer, not because the data is confidential, but because it doesn’t exist in a usable form.

Operationally, things are even less defined.

Processes aren’t written down. Roles are loosely understood rather than explicitly designed. Job descriptions, if they exist at all, reflect intentions rather than reality. Knowledge lives in conversations, memory, and improvisation. When I ask how work gets done when the founder steps away, the answer is almost always some version of “we figure it out.”

Customer data tells a similar story. Lists are outdated or fragmented. Contracts vary by relationship rather than policy. Terms evolve organically. There’s no single source of truth. Sales activity happens, but without a consistent system behind it. Forecasting is hopeful rather than disciplined.

None of this makes the founders bad operators. In many cases, it’s exactly how scrappy businesses survive and grow.

But it does make one thing very clear: what’s being offered isn’t a clean handoff. It’s an ongoing obligation.

What I’m evaluating isn’t just a business. It’s how much reconstruction I’ll have to do before the business can even be managed properly, let alone scaled or sold again in the future.

And slowly, the realization sets in that buying something like this doesn’t save time. It simply moves the rebuild to a different starting line – one that comes with inherited assumptions, emotional baggage, and constraints I didn’t choose.

Why Buying Starts to Feel Like the Wrong Kind of Work

At some point, the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.

Every potential acquisition begins to feel less like leverage and more like a deferred cleanup project. No matter how promising the surface metrics look, the underlying reality is the same: before anything meaningful can be built, a significant amount of foundational work has to be done. Systems need to be designed. Data needs to be cleaned. Roles need to be clarified. Processes need to be documented.

In other words, the real work hasn’t been avoided at all. It’s simply been postponed – and made more complex by the fact that none of the original decisions were mine.

That distinction matters.

I don’t mind doing hard work. I don’t even mind doing unglamorous work. What I do mind is spending my time unwinding other people’s accumulated shortcuts before I can apply my own judgment. There’s a subtle but important difference between building something deliberately and inheriting something accidentally.

Buying an existing business promises speed, but what it often delivers is obligation. You inherit not just customers and revenue, but also history – assumptions baked into the product, compromises baked into the org, and decisions that made sense at one moment but no longer do.

The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that this is not the kind of work I’m actually looking for.

What I want isn’t to retrofit order onto chaos. I want to design order from the beginning. To build systems that reflect how I think, how I like to work, and what I believe actually scales – not just financially, but operationally and psychologically.

Once I see that clearly, the original question starts to shift.

It’s no longer “buy or build” in the abstract.
It’s about what kind of work I want my days filled with.

And the answer isn’t pointing toward acquisition anymore.

Buy vs. Build – Reframed Through Experience

From the outside, the buy-versus-build decision is often framed as a clean trade-off.

Buying is supposed to be faster, safer, and more predictable. Building is supposed to be slower, riskier, and more uncertain. Those distinctions look neat on a whiteboard. They break down quickly once you’re actually in the process.

What buying really offers is immediacy – not simplicity. You step into a business that already exists, but you also step into every unresolved decision that came before you. The past doesn’t disappear just because ownership changes. It shows up in the data, in the team dynamics, in the product architecture, and in the operational habits that have calcified over time.

Building, by contrast, is slower in obvious ways and faster in subtle ones. You don’t inherit momentum, but you also don’t inherit friction. You make fewer decisions, but you make them intentionally. There’s no archaeology phase, no need to decipher why things are the way they are. The structure reflects your judgment from day one.

What surprises me most is how similar the effort curve actually is.

Buying doesn’t eliminate the need to design systems. It just delays it.
Building forces that work upfront – but rewards it later.

Once I see that clearly, the decision becomes less about risk and more about alignment. About whether I want to spend my energy untangling complexity I didn’t create, or shaping something clean from the beginning.

At this point, the answer is no longer theoretical.

I’m not trying to avoid work.
I’m trying to choose the right kind of work.

Why I Decided to Build Instead

By the time I reach this point, the decision no longer feels dramatic.

It feels obvious.

Buying an existing business might make sense for someone looking to deploy capital quickly or assemble a portfolio at scale. It doesn’t make sense for me. Not now. Not in this phase. What I’m after isn’t acceleration for its own sake, but authorship – the ability to design systems intentionally and build businesses that reflect how I actually want to work.

Building my own thing again gives me that.

It allows me to start with clarity rather than compromise, and to apply everything I’ve learned – about structure, discipline, and transferability – from the very beginning. It also lets me avoid recreating the operational sprawl and psychological overhead that tend to accumulate when growth becomes the goal rather than the outcome.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never acquire a business. It means I’m not forcing that path simply because it looks efficient on paper. The structure I’m designing gives me the freedom to build first, learn continuously, and make acquisition a choice rather than a default.

So I stop looking.

I stop taking calls. I stop reviewing decks. And I redirect my energy toward designing a container for the kinds of businesses I actually want to operate – small where they should be small, scalable where it matters, and built from the ground up with leverage in mind.

That decision doesn’t come with a detailed roadmap yet. It doesn’t need one.

What it comes with is conviction – not the loud kind, but the quiet kind that makes it easy to move forward.

Either way, wish me luck!

Thomas Michael

CEO

Tomco Capital Corporation

The post Buy an Existing Business or Build Your Own? appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

I keep replaying the same conversations in my head – the acquisition calls, the half-answers, the missing systems, the founders who want an exit but have never actually prepared for one. And layered on top of that is my own recent experience: having just come through a full due diligence process myself, from both sides of the table, twice over.

I know how unforgiving that process is. I know what gets examined, where pressure builds, and how quickly optimism collapses under scrutiny. I know how much discipline, structure, and advance preparation it takes to move through it cleanly. Most importantly, I know how rare it is to be genuinely ready.

That contrast is hard to ignore.

What I’m seeing isn’t a lack of ambition. These founders are driven, capable, and serious about what they’ve built. What’s missing is perspective – the kind that only comes from having been through the exit process end-to-end, not as an advisor or observer, but as the person whose company is under the microscope.

And for the first time since selling my own business, something begins to feel obvious.

There is a real need for experienced operators who have actually been there – not theorists, not motivational coaches, not people selling frameworks – but founders who understand what it takes to turn a running business into a transferable asset.

Not because it’s lucrative.
Not because it scales beautifully.
But because the intellectual challenge is real, and the work matters.

At the same time, another truth sits alongside it, equally clear.

I don’t want this to be the center of my professional life.

Coaching as a Response, Not a Destination

As the idea takes shape, it becomes clear what this is – and what it isn’t.

No, I don’t suddenly want to become a full-time coach. I’m not interested in building a practice optimized for volume, or in positioning myself as a public authority dispensing generic advice. That doesn’t appeal to me, and it never has.

What does appeal to me is the work itself.

Sitting across from an ambitious founder who wants an exit but doesn’t yet understand what that actually entails. Helping them see their business not as a personal extension of themselves, but as an asset that must stand up to scrutiny. Working through the uncomfortable questions early, before the stakes are existential and the timelines compressed.

That kind of work is intellectually satisfying. It’s precise. It demands judgment, pattern recognition, and honesty. And it’s work I’m unusually well suited for, precisely because I’ve just lived through it.

I know what buyers care about because I’ve been interrogated by them. I know where founders tend to overestimate readiness and underestimate fragility. I know which gaps are cosmetic and which are fatal. That perspective doesn’t come from reading about exits. It comes from being inside one.

So advisory and coaching start to make sense – not as a business to be scaled, but as a focused, high-leverage way to work with a small number of founders who are serious about where they’re headed.

Important, yes.
Central, no.

Because alongside that clarity sits an equally strong instinct: I still want to build.

The Pull Toward Building On My Own Terms

The more I sit with the idea of advisory work, the clearer another truth becomes.

As much as I enjoy the intellectual challenge of helping founders prepare for an exit, I don’t want my professional energy to be spent primarily inside other people’s businesses. I don’t want to clean up inherited complexity or retrofit structure onto decisions I didn’t make. I’ve done that before, and I know exactly how much friction it carries.

What I want is authorship.

I want to build systems from first principles. To design the structure intentionally rather than reverse-engineering it later. To create products, platforms, and tools the way I think they should be built – with clarity, leverage, and optionality designed in from the beginning.

Buying an existing company increasingly feels like the wrong vehicle for that. Not because it can’t work, but because it starts with compromise. You inherit assumptions, habits, and constraints that shape everything that follows. Even when the business is sound, you’re still adapting to someone else’s architecture.

I don’t want to adapt. I want to design.

That realization settles quietly but firmly. The excitement I feel isn’t about acquisition anymore; it’s about creation. About starting with a blank sheet and building something that reflects how I want to work now – smaller surface area, higher leverage, fewer dependencies, cleaner systems.

At the same time, I’m realistic enough to know that I don’t want to build just one thing again. I don’t want another monolithic company that consumes everything around it. What I’m drawn to instead is something more modular – a structure that allows multiple ideas to exist, evolve, and compound over time.

That’s when the shape of it begins to appear.

Not a single startup.
Not a fund.
But a personal operating platform.

Designing the Container

Once I start thinking in terms of structure rather than individual ideas, everything begins to feel more coherent.

What I’m circling around isn’t a single product or a single company. It’s a container – a way to hold multiple ventures, experiments, and operating ideas under one roof, without forcing them into the same lifecycle or level of commitment. A structure that lets me build, operate, and evolve businesses deliberately, without recreating the sprawl and complexity I’ve worked hard to leave behind.

A personal holding company starts to make sense.

Not as a grand strategy, but as a practical response to what I now know about myself. A framework that allows me to launch and operate technology businesses on my own terms, while keeping optionality intact. Some ideas may grow into substantial ventures. Some will fail spectacularly. Others may remain small, profitable, and self-sustaining. A few may never make it past the prototype stage. That’s fine. The structure doesn’t demand that every experiment become a centerpiece.

What matters is that the container is intentional.

I don’t yet know what the portfolio will include. I’m not forcing a thesis prematurely. But I am certain of one thing: whatever I build next will be deeply shaped by technology – and increasingly by AI. Not as a buzzword or a pitch, but as an enabling layer that fundamentally changes what small, focused teams can accomplish.

AI shifts the leverage equation. It compresses time. It reduces the need for scale where scale once felt mandatory. It makes it possible to build systems that would have required entire departments not that long ago. For someone like me – drawn to structure, tools, and clean systems – that’s not abstract. It’s catalytic.

So the direction becomes clear, even if the details do not.

I’ll work with a small number of founders who want to prepare their businesses for an eventual exit, because that work is meaningful and intellectually honest. But the center of gravity will be elsewhere – in building and operating my own ventures, inside a structure designed for clarity, leverage, and longevity.

I don’t have a name for it yet. I don’t need one.

What I have is something more important: a sense that the next chapter won’t be about replacing what I sold, but about designing something fundamentally different.

And for the first time since the transition period ended and the inbox went quiet, that feels like enough to move forward.

Cheers,

-Thomas

The post I Stopped Looking – And Started Designing appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

On paper, this feels like the logical next step. I’ve just exited my own company. I have capital. I have experience. Acquiring an existing business should be faster than starting from scratch. Less risk. Less friction. A shortcut, at least in theory.

So I say yes to conversations.

At first, they’re polite. Optimistic. Everyone tells a version of the same story: the business is “doing well,” there’s “strong demand,” and they’re “ready for the next chapter.” I’ve heard these phrases before. I used them myself, once.

Then the questions start.

And that’s when things begin to unravel.

Simple things are missing. Financials that should exist don’t, or exist only in fragments. Numbers don’t reconcile. Revenue figures shift depending on how they’re explained. Basic metrics – customer counts, churn, margins – are answered vaguely, if at all.

I ask how the business actually runs day to day.

There are no written processes. No documented workflows. No clear ownership of roles. Job descriptions, if they exist, live in someone’s head. Customer lists are outdated or incomplete. There’s no real CRM – just inboxes, spreadsheets, and memory. Contracts are scattered, some signed, some unsigned, some “standard,” others improvised.

What I’m looking at isn’t a company ready for transition.
It’s a collection of habits held together by the founder’s presence.

And suddenly it’s obvious: this isn’t diligence yet.
This is archaeology.

The Reaction I Didn’t Expect to Have

What surprises me most is not the mess itself.

It’s how viscerally I react to it.

I’ve just come out of a full due diligence process on my own company – actually, two of them, but that’s for another blog post – so I know exactly what this looks like when it’s done properly. I know how invasive the questions get. I know how unforgiving the numbers are. I know how quickly vague answers get exposed.

So when I’m met with hand-waving, half-formed explanations, and an almost casual relationship with reality, something in me tightens.

At first it’s disbelief.
Then frustration.
Then a kind of dark, almost incredulous amusement.

How does someone expect to sell a business like this?

Not in theory. In practice. To whom?

Because what I’m being shown isn’t an asset ready to change hands. It’s a dependency disguised as a company. A fragile system held together by personal heroics, informal agreements, and the founder’s daily involvement.

I don’t feel excited.
I feel like running for the hills.

And I realize something uncomfortable: I don’t want to inherit someone else’s chaos.

Why This Isn’t Sellable – At Least Not to Anyone Serious

Stripped of optimism and storytelling, most of these businesses share the same underlying problem.

They are not designed to exist without the founder.

There are no clean financial statements that reconcile month to month. No consistent definitions of revenue, margin, or profit. The numbers don’t tell a coherent story because no one ever needed them to – as long as cash kept coming in.

Operations live in people’s heads instead of on paper. There are no standard operating procedures. No documented workflows. No clear handoff points. Knowledge is tribal, not transferable.

Customers are real, but the data isn’t. Lists are outdated. Contracts are inconsistent. Terms vary by relationship. Renewal logic is informal. There’s no single source of truth.

Sales happens, but there’s no system behind it. No CRM. No pipeline discipline. No way to forecast anything beyond hope.

In short, these are not businesses you acquire – they are problems you absorb.

Someone might buy them, of course. But only one of two people:

A strategic buyer willing to rebuild everything from scratch.
Or a sucker who mistakes revenue for readiness.

I’m neither.

And the more of these calls I take, the clearer it becomes: buying a company like this doesn’t save time. It just delays the inevitable rebuild – with more risk, more resentment, and less freedom.

Which leads me to a conclusion I’m not yet fully ready to articulate, but can’t ignore:

If I’m going to clean up a mess anyway, it might as well be my own.

A Pattern Starts to Emerge

After enough of these conversations, it stops feeling coincidental.

Different founders. Different industries. Different personal stories. And yet, beneath the surface, the same structural weaknesses keep appearing. Not because these founders are careless or incapable, but because their businesses were never designed with transferability in mind.

They built companies to function, not to be inspected.

In almost every case, the focus was on forward motion: shipping product, closing customers, solving the next urgent problem. Processes evolved organically. Decisions accumulated informally. Knowledge lived in people’s heads rather than in systems. As long as the founder remained at the center, everything worked well enough.

Until someone like me enters the picture and starts asking questions that aren’t about survival, but about continuity.

Questions about financials that should reconcile across periods.
Questions about how work actually flows through the organization.
Questions about ownership, systems, processes, accountability, and repeatability.

And what becomes clear, again and again, is that the business doesn’t truly exist independently of the founder. It operates because the founder remembers, corrects, intervenes, and improvises. Remove that presence, and the structure starts to wobble.

This isn’t incompetence. It’s misalignment.

The founders I’m speaking with want liquidity, optionality, or an exit – but they’ve never been forced to think about their companies as transferable assets rather than personal vehicles. Running a business and preparing one for transition are related, but they are not the same discipline.

As this realization settles in, something shifts for me.

If this many capable, driven founders are this underprepared for scrutiny, then what I’m seeing isn’t a series of isolated issues. It’s a systemic gap between how businesses are built and how they are eventually sold.

I don’t yet know what to do with that insight. I’m not turning it into a plan or a product. I’m simply registering it, repeatedly, as it shows up across conversation after conversation.

Something here isn’t working.

I don’t draw a conclusion yet. I’m not ready to. All I know is that the acquisition path I thought might make sense feels increasingly misaligned with how I actually want to spend my time and energy. Buying someone else’s unfinished systems, no matter how well intentioned the founder, doesn’t feel like leverage. It feels like inheriting responsibility without conviction.

So for now, I stop taking calls. I pause the search. And I sit with the discomfort of a realization that hasn’t fully formed yet – but is becoming harder to ignore.

Cheers,

Thomas

The post This is not working appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

On paper, it was everything I had worked toward for years. The transaction closed, the wire arrived, champagne was opened at an hour that would have felt irresponsible in any other phase of my life. For a brief window, there was validation, relief, and the quiet satisfaction that comes from knowing you’ve finished something properly.

But then there was the transition period.

For one to two months after the sale, I stayed involved to help hand things over to the new owners. Operationally, it felt familiar. The calendar was still full. Emails came in. Calls were scheduled. Decisions were still required. In many ways, it wasn’t that different from being a CEO the week before the sale. The machinery was still running, and I was still part of it.

That continuity masked what was coming.

Because gradually – almost politely – the volume started to drop. Fewer emails. Fewer meetings. Calls that used to be weekly became bi-weekly, then optional, then unnecessary. Calendar invites stopped appearing altogether. The dependency unwound itself faster than I expected, and with far less ceremony.

And then one day, without anything dramatic happening, it became obvious:

I was no longer needed.

Not disliked. Not pushed out. Just… irrelevant. Professionally, at least.

It’s a strange sensation to go from being central to a system to being entirely peripheral to it – especially when nothing “went wrong.” The business was fine. The new owners were competent. The machine simply didn’t require me anymore because I had built it this way.

That’s when the real question surfaced – not the celebratory one, but the unsettling one:

Now what?

I find myself facing reality. What am I going to do with my professional life going forward? At my age, I’m too young to do nothing or play golf all day long.

The Itch to Build Something – Without Knowing What

Once the noise finally stopped, something else surfaced almost immediately.

Restlessness.

Not panic. Not regret. But a familiar internal hum – the urge to build, to create, to make something exist where nothing had existed before. That impulse hadn’t disappeared with the sale. If anything, it had been lying in wait, buried under the obligations of transition and handover.

I’ve never been particularly good at standing still for long. At my core, I’m a builder. That’s the identity that survived the sale, the title change, the inbox going quiet. The problem wasn’t a lack of desire – it was a lack of direction.

I wanted to start something again. I missed the early pulse of creation. The energy of shaping a system, designing a tool, solving a problem that mattered to someone. I wanted to feel that quiet excitement of watching something take form under my hands.

What I didn’t want was just as clear.

I didn’t miss meetings.
I didn’t miss administration.
I didn’t miss HR conversations, performance reviews, or managing ever-expanding teams.
I didn’t miss the slow creep of corporate process and political noise that inevitably comes with scale.

Those things had been necessary once. They were never the point.

When I stripped business down to the parts I genuinely enjoyed, a pattern emerged: I loved building systems. Applications. Tools. Solutions that removed friction and helped people do their work better. I loved clarity, structure, and leverage. I loved the early stages – the phase where intent is high and bureaucracy hasn’t yet arrived.

What I didn’t love was what happens after success – the overhead, the weight, the constant management of complexity for its own sake.

That realization was both liberating and unsettling.

Because it left me with a very honest but very uncomfortable truth:
I wanted to build again – but not the way I had before.

And I had no idea, yet, what that actually meant.

Closing

So this is where I am.

The company is sold. The transition is complete. The inbox is quiet.

I know I want to build again – that part is clear.
I know what I don’t want to rebuild – that’s even clearer.

What I don’t know yet is what shape the next thing should take, or what kind of structure would allow me to focus on the parts of building I actually enjoy without recreating everything I don’t.

For the first time in a very long time, there is no obvious next step. No default path. No externally imposed urgency.

Just space.

That’s unsettling and, if I’m honest, slightly exhilarating.

Something will emerge from this. I don’t know what it is yet, or how long it will take. But I can sense that this in-between phase matters more than it appears from the outside.

For now, I’m paying attention

With gratitude,

Thomas Michael

The post Yikes! I sold my company – now what? appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.