The doubt more entrepreneurs are saying out loud

“Why would I still put my children through this?”

Ten years ago, you rarely heard that question.

Today, you hear it surprisingly often.

Not only from small entrepreneurs. Also from family businesses with dozens of employees, healthy revenues and a history spanning several generations.

The doubt is often not about the company itself. It is about the climate in which entrepreneurship has to take place today.

Many entrepreneurs experience that running a business is less and less about building, and increasingly about defending.

And that is exactly where an uncomfortable question arises:

Entrepreneurial pessimism is no longer just a feeling

The uncertainty among entrepreneurs is confirmed by multiple studies.

A survey by VNO-NCW showed that many entrepreneurs believe the investment and entrepreneurial climate in the Netherlands has deteriorated.

CBS figures also show that entrepreneurial confidence is under pressure. Especially in sectors where costs, labour, international uncertainty, permits and margins are felt directly.

Rabobank has also warned in economic analyses about structural pressure on productivity, the labour market and the earning capacity of businesses in the Netherlands.

Research and publications on family businesses also show that many family firms explicitly struggle with succession issues, continuity and the attractiveness of entrepreneurship for the next generation.

But perhaps we romanticise the past

There is a risk here too.

Many entrepreneurs compare today’s climate with a past that, in hindsight, seems more orderly than it actually was.

Previous generations also had to face difficult periods.

• The oil crisis.
• Extremely high interest rates.
• Globalisation.
• Cheap production from Asia.
• Financial crises.
• Waves of bankruptcies.
• Large-scale reorganisations.

Historically, entrepreneurship has rarely been comfortable.

Only responsibility used to feel more self-evident.

Today, entrepreneurship more often seems to need defending. As if making profit, taking risk and being an employer have almost become suspicious.

Are we protecting successors, or making them vulnerable?

And that is where the real tension emerges.

Many entrepreneurs want to protect their children or successors from stress, pressure and uncertainty.

Understandable.

But what happens if a generation no longer learns how to carry responsibility?

Every generation benefits from sacrifices made by earlier generations.

So perhaps the question is not:

“Should we protect successors from responsibility?”

But rather:

“How do we better prepare successors for responsibility?”

The new generation does not need to work harder. It needs to lead sharper.

The solution is probably not a return to the old generational culture of endless hours.

But neither is it the avoidance of responsibility.

The future probably requires a different type of leader.

• Understanding what is happening financially.
• Being able to bring people along.
• Learning to think strategically.
• Daring to set boundaries.
• Being able to build culture.
• Dealing with uncertainty.
• Carrying responsibility without losing yourself.

The real question behind business succession

Many succession processes are about tax, shares and structures.

But beneath the surface, something else is often at play.

• Doubt.
• Fear.
• Responsibility.
• Identity.
• Loyalty to family.
• The question of whether the sacrifice still outweighs the freedom.

In many companies, that conversation is hardly ever held.

What we see at Ei Openers

Within the programme Leaders of Tomorrow, we discuss this tension explicitly.

Not only:

“How do you eventually take over a company?”

But especially:

• Why would you want to in the first place?
• What responsibility comes with it?
• How do you deal with pressure?
• How do you remain entrepreneurial without losing yourself?
• How do you build further without blindly repeating the same pattern?

Because the future probably does not need fewer entrepreneurs.

It needs more mature entrepreneurs.