In 2010, we almost sold Guidant, the company I still run today.
We had just dug our way out of debt and back into profitability after the Great Recession. The future felt uncertain. It wasn’t clear whether new legislation or regulations would affect people’s ability to use retirement funds to buy or start a small business, and that was the core of our business. So when someone approached us about a sale, we got pretty far down the path.
The Deal That Fell Through
I’m still here running the company today, so it’s no secret how that story ends. The deal fell through. What surprised us at the time was why. The buyers were worried about exactly the same thing we were: that a piece of future legislation could pull the floor out from under the whole business.
That sent us back to the drawing board. Up to that point, I thought of Guidant as a company that helped people use retirement funds to start or buy small businesses. That’s technically true. It’s still what we do. It’s an easy enough answer at a cocktail party.
What I didn’t see was how that description had quietly become a limitation. Only so many people at any given time want to buy a business and have enough retirement savings for it to pencil out. As technology kept changing the world around us, that narrow definition was capping how much we could grow and evolve.
It forced us to think hard about the problem we actually solved, not just the mechanism we used to solve it. That’s what led us to the vision statement we’ve used for the last fifteen years: to increase the number of people who succeed in small business.
The Question Most People Skip
That vision still holds, even if 401k plans don’t exist in twenty-five years. Our bet is that what won’t change is people wanting to pursue ownership. It gives them more control. They get to claim a bigger share of what they help create. And they get to see the direct impact of their work in their community.
Once we clarified that, new technology stopped being a threat and became an opportunity instead. It’s part of why we recently launched an AI coach to help aspiring business owners clarify what kind of business they want to explore, then keep them on track figuring out whether they’re ready. That tool wouldn’t have been possible five years ago. If we’d stayed stuck in our 401k lane, we wouldn’t have even thought to build it.
I bring up this old story because the anxiety I felt back then isn’t exactly the same as what I hear from people today, but it rhymes. A lot of people come to me driven by a fear of AI, worried about losing their job and their financial security. Business ownership is one way to take back some of that control.
But then I watch them tie themselves in knots trying to find a business that won’t also get disrupted by AI. At its core, that isn’t a new problem. It comes down to how you make big decisions when the future is uncertain.
What Bezos Got Right
In a famous 2012 fireside chat, Jeff Bezos said he’s frequently asked what will change in the next ten years, but almost never asked what won’t. He argued the second question matters more, because you can build a strategy around the things that stay stable.
I think that’s why boring businesses are so hot right now. Laundromats. Plumbing companies. HVAC. People are looking for the things that won’t change. That’s the right question. But almost everyone asks it about industries, and industries aren’t the only place to look.
Another place is what people will keep wanting, no matter what happens to the industry currently serving them. That’s Bezos’s real insight. People will always want lower prices and faster shipping. Amazon didn’t bet on a specific technology or trend. It bet on a constant.
What We Bet On Instead
The deal falling through for us turned out to be a blessing. It forced us to stop living in fear of what the future could bring, and it helped us define the foundation we could actually build on.
We went looking for a way out. We found a way forward.
Maybe that’s how you bet on a future you can’t see. Not by predicting exactly what’s coming. By figuring out what won’t change, and building on that instead.
Maybe there’s a similar path for you.
