If You Are Your Own Business, Who’s Running the Show?

If you were a company, would you invest in you?

Most of us operate like small, overextended startups — a bit of vision, a lot of hustle, and not nearly enough governance. We’re busy working in the business of our lives: fixing problems, meeting deadlines, running households, and trying to squeeze purpose into the margins. The inbox overflows, the groceries run out, and somewhere in there, we start to feel like employees in our own story.

But every business, even a one-person enterprise, needs someone who occasionally steps back to look at the whole operation. To ask what the point of all the activity actually is. To check whether the systems still work or if we’re just patching leaks and calling it progress.

The trouble is, it’s hard to be both the CEO and staff at the same time. CEO-you sees the bigger picture — the strategy, the values, the long-term direction. Employee-you is just trying to get through Tuesday. And when the latter runs the show for too long, the business starts drifting. We confuse movement for momentum.

Life, like any venture, gets out of balance. The spreadsheet of our days doesn’t always tell the truth about what matters most. Sometimes we’re overinvested in work and underinvested in rest, connection, or creativity. Sometimes our systems — those daily routines meant to keep things humming — quietly become cages. Efficiency can become its own trap.

There’s no quarterly report that shows when our energy is being misspent or our purpose diluted. But we feel it — the fatigue that lingers, the vague discontent that follows achievement, the sense that something’s running but not quite running right.

Maybe that’s the real work of adulthood: learning to run the business of being ourselves with a little more intention. To know when to act, when to step back, and when to close the laptop early because the brand needs rest.

If you are your own business, you are also your own investment. The returns depend on how wisely you spend your attention — and how often you remember who’s really in charge.