Keeping yourself motivated after 30 years in the same firm

Long-term firm owners stay motivated by evolving the business, mentoring emerging leaders, and staying close to the action.

While this week’s issue of The Zweig Letter is devoted to “emerging leaders and young professionals,” a thought occurred to me. You – as the firm’s founder or primary owner – won’t be able to motivate those up-and-comers unless you can keep yourself motivated! Owning the same AEC firm for 30-plus years can make that task challenging. By that point, you’ve seen every cycle the industry has to offer. You’ve survived recessions, booms, staffing shortages, staffing gluts, fee compression, fee growth, and at least five different waves of “new technology” that will “change everything.”

You’ve hired hundreds of people. You undoubtedly had to let some go as well. You’ve dealt with every kind of client imaginable and every kind of employee-related problem known to man. After a while, very little surprises you. And all of that creates a new challenge – staying motivated.

Early in your career, it’s easy. You’re trying to survive. Making payroll and feeding your family is motivation enough. Later, it’s about growth. You want to build something significant that has value and will hopefully outlast you. But after three decades, when the firm is long-established and the surprises are fewer and far between, the job can start to feel a little bit overly familiar.

Some owners respond by mentally checking out. Others sell their business and disappear to the golf course and start planning 4 p.m. dinners out with their spouse. But there are plenty who stay energized well into their fourth decade of ownership and beyond. They tend to do a few things differently, including:

1. They keep changing the game. If the business you run today looks exactly like the one you ran 20 years ago, no wonder you are bored. The long-term owners who stay motivated constantly introduce new challenges. They open a new office, enter a new market, add a service line, acquire another firm, or invest in technology their competitors are afraid of. They treat the business like an ongoing lab experiment. When things start to feel too predictable, they change something just to keep it interesting.
2. They keep score. Nothing kills enthusiasm faster than feeling like every year is the same as the last one. Owners who stay engaged track the numbers closely. Revenue growth, profit, backlog, utilization, labor multiplier, sales pipeline, new clients, repeat clients, and cash. They want to know how this year compares to last year, and how this quarter compares to the last one. It becomes a personal competition. Improving the numbers – even slightly – keeps the game alive. It’s like going on a road trip with my wife driving (she usually insists on it). She plugs in the destination to GPS and finds the estimated arrival time. Then the rest of the trip is a competition with herself to beat that time by as much as she can!
3. They stay close to the action. Some owners think the ultimate goal is to remove themselves entirely from the business so they can “work on their business versus in it.” In theory, that sounds great. In reality, it can lead to boredom and excessive time spent reading emails about problems you used to solve yourself. The motivated long-term owners stay involved. They work. They sell. They visit clients. They do projects. They review projects. They walk around the office and talk to people. They know what’s going on. Being in the middle of the action beats sitting in an office wondering why you’re there.
4. They build people. One of the most satisfying parts of owning any business for decades is watching your young people grow up professionally. You hire someone at 24 who doesn’t know much about anything. Twenty years later, they’re running a major market sector or leading an office for you. That process never really gets old. Projects get finished. But developing the best of these young professionals is a long-term investment that pays dividends in ways that are hard to measure.
5. They maintain a little healthy paranoia. I live by the mantra that paranoia keeps me out of trouble. The most dangerous thought in business is believing you’ve got everything figured out. Plenty of firms that once dominated their markets eventually disappeared because they assumed their position was permanent. Owners who stay motivated keep a certain amount of worry in the back of their minds. They worry about competitors, about losing key clients, about new technology, and about what their younger employees are thinking. It’s not panic. It’s awareness. And it keeps them sharp.
6. They redefine what “winning” means. Early on, winning means survival. Later it means growth. But after 30 years, motivation often shifts toward something else: legacy. What will the firm look like when you’re gone? Will it still be thriving? Will the culture survive? Will the people you mentored take it further than you did? These questions have a way of renewing an owner’s sense of purpose, particularly when they realize the answers depend heavily on them and what they do every day.
7. They reconnect with why they got into this business or profession in the first place. Most founders didn’t start their firms because they loved looking at financial reports, having meetings with HR, or providing information for their professional liability insurance renewals. They got into it because they enjoyed designing things, solving problems, seeing things get built, and developing people. Over time, the bureaucracy of running a company can bury that original excitement under layers of management responsibilities. The smart owners periodically dig that excitement back up. They spend time with clients, look at projects, talk strategy, and involve themselves in the creative side of the business once again.

After 30 years in the same firm, motivation probably doesn’t just show up automatically every morning the way it once did. But the owners who stay engaged eventually discover that running a business when you finally know what you’re doing can actually be more fun than running one when you don’t!

Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.