TO: Founders and CEOs
FROM: The voice inside your head
SUBJECT: Permission to move on
You are not married to this company
Not to the role.
Not to the title.
Not to the vision you scribbled on a napkin five years ago.
You do not owe forever to anything that no longer feeds you.
This isn’t ‘til death do us part. This is: show up, build what matters, and know when to walk away.
Leadership isn’t loyalty.
Leadership is guts.
Guts to pivot when it’s inconvenient. Guts to quit when it’s time. Guts to admit you’ve outgrown what you once prayed for.
The old model says endure.
The new model says evolve.
Endurance is a myth. A slow, polite death.
You don’t get points for staying too long in something that stopped working.
You get regrets.
You get resentment. You get teams who lose faith because they can smell when you’re faking it.
You are not a martyr. You are not a statue carved in “Founder Since.”
You are a force. A spark. A cycle-breaker.
And the moment you mistake staying for strength?
You’ve already started losing.
Say it louder:
You are not married to this.
You are leading it—until it’s time to let it go.
And when you do?
Do it boldly. Do it clean.
No apologies. No guilt.
That’s what real leadership looks like.
Let’s make passing the torch to the next person the norm. Not staying until the life is drained out of you.