The underlying problem is that the entrepreneur has become a kind of shell of himself—a shell of the person who first started the business. Usually, we come to our new businesses with a passion and the dedication of everything in us—our minds, our hearts, our ideas, our creativity. And we draw on all these resources built up previously—our ideas written in the middle of the night, our dreams of a better future, our hope to fulfill the meaning of our lives, our training and education. We draw on the full spirit of who we are and what we are meant to be. But by the time we confront our isolation, this fullness is gone. Rather than large, full beings defining a business opportunity and a dream for a life, often the business has begun to define us. It sets its limitations, defines the circumference of our community of relations, even tells us who we are through all the feedback mechanisms previously addressed. Hence, the isolation at the center of this problem is not so much isolation from the world and other people; the core is that we are isolated from ourselves. In essence, we have nothing left to give to our businesses.

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