Danielle Gualtieri

Wealth, Control, Mirage

Entrepreneurship. Big, gleamy, beautiful. Freedom.

It is usually presented as the road to wealth and independence. Start a business, grow it, make money – all while calling the shots.

Sounds pretty great.

But is it only a mirage?

In The Founder’s Dilemmas, Noam Wasserman argues that founders often end up choosing between wealth and control. This is a difficult reality for those of us who assumed we’d somehow get both.

The truth is that as a business grows, it needs resources. Investors, employees, expertise, and capital can all help a company grow, but those resources can also mean giving up some of the control that made entrepreneurship appealing in the first place.

Wasserman describes this as the “Rich” versus the “King.” The Rich founder prioritizes financial wealth, while the King prioritizes company control.

And when I think about the King, I think there is a type of founder we don’t talk about nearly enough.

The Sanctuary King

When we picture a King, we tend to picture someone building an empire. A founder with a huge vision, a huge company, and a strong desire to be the one calling the shots.

But what about the King who doesn’t want an empire?

Consider the wellness entrepreneur. A therapist. A massage therapist. A health coach. A functional medicine practitioner. A yoga studio owner.

I suspect many of them are Kings.

They may want to make good money and build a successful business, but that may not be the whole point. They may have started because they wanted more control over their schedule, their work, their clients, and their lives.

Their kingdom might be one practice. One studio. A full client roster.

And that is still control.

The difference is what they want to control.

One wants more. The other wants enough.

Neither is better. But knowing which one you are matters, because the choices that get you there are not always the same.

When Bigger Isn’t Better

This is where I think traditional growth advice can get a little weird.

Growth is good. More revenue is good. More customers are good. More locations, more employees, more services, more, more, more.

But what if you have enough?

I don’t think “enough” means the business should stop growing. I think growth can take a different direction.

Inward, not outward. Depth, not expansion.

Maybe the business needs better systems. Maybe the founder needs to raise their prices. Maybe profitability can improve without adding another client. Maybe they need to get some of the administrative work off their plate.

That is growth too.

We tend to treat scaling like it is automatically the goal. If a business can get bigger, then obviously it should. Hire more people. Take on more clients. Open another location. Scale faster.

But for a founder who values control over their life, bigger is not automatically better.

More employees create more management. More clients can mean longer days. A second location brings more operational responsibility. Eventually, the founder may spend less time doing the work they actually wanted to do and more time managing the business that was supposed to give them freedom.

The question is whether the trade is worth making. For the Sanctuary King – more is not always more.

Supporting the King

So how do we support the Sanctuary King?

First, we stop assuming that the answer is always to make the business bigger.

Then, we listen.

We’ve got to understand the goal before we can effectively build toward it. That means asking better questions before offering solutions.

What does this founder actually want? What are they trying to get from the business? What are they unwilling to give up?

And maybe most importantly, what does “enough” look like?

Maybe they want to grow outward. Maybe they want to grow inward.

Maybe they need to stop growing altogether for a bit while they find their balance again.

As dreamers and builders, we can see an opportunity to grow and immediately assume that means we should pursue it. But Wasserman’s framework reminds us that growth comes with trade-offs. We must be intentional about our pursuit selections, ensuring they are aligned with the strategy.

And that strategy should follow the founder’s definition of success, not the other way around.

That’s where I see opportunity to provide real value. Not by walking in and deciding what the business should become, but by figuring out what the founder actually wants, understanding if we can get them there, then offering our help.

The opportunity is in helping the King build the kingdom they want to rule.

A Different Kind of Wealth

What is wealth?

We usually measure it in revenue, profit, valuation, and exit potential.

Those things matter.

But so does time. And flexibility. And autonomy.

And these things matter at different levels to different people.

That is my biggest takeaway from Wasserman’s framework. The lesson isn’t that being Rich is bad or that being King is better. It’s that founders need to understand what they are actually trying to build before they start making decisions that could take them somewhere they never intended to go.

For some founders, success means building an empire. For others, it means building a robust financial portfolio. For others still, success is a lifestyle of simplicity.

None are superior. They’re just different dreams.

The beauty of entrepreneurship is that we get to decide which one is ours.