Founder Friday is a weekly guest post written by a founder who is based in or hails from the Silicon Prairie. Each month, a topic relevant to startups is presented and founders share lessons learned or best practices utilized on that topic. May’s topic is knowing when to make a career move. 

About the authors: Bill Goedken is CEO and co-founder of idea5 in Omaha, a software startup serving financial institutions.

Crazy. Insane. Out of my mind. That’s what I was called when I came out of retirement to start yet another company. So why do I feel so lucky?

Quick background: I founded an Omaha-based software and service company called Profitstar in the ’80s. My team and I built up a worldwide clientele. Over time we went from No. 48 to No. 1 in our market, and our clients loved us. As the saying goes, life was good.

Then I faced one of the major decisions every entrepreneur faces: when to move on. 

When you start a company, build it up, are profitable and have great people and clients there will be a decision to make—Do I want to exit? The answer is actually pretty simple. When any employee contemplates leaving a company, they ask themselves two questions: Do I want to do something else? If yes, can my current company accommodate it? 

A no answer to the second question then begs a third question: How do I exit? For an owner of a company, that is not an easy question to answer. In my case, when I sold Profitstar I was not married and had no children to pass the business on to. Various attempts at exploring an ESOP and a management-led buyout did not work for a variety of reasons. But it was time to have my employees take the reins. At Profitstar I had accomplished all I could and wanted the employees to take the company to another level. The way you exit a business—especially one you have founded and built up—is a larger topic for another day. 

OK, you’re “retired.” Now what?

If you “retire” too early in life you start to learn a few things. First, with some time on your hands, you find out you will never be very good at golf or tennis. Second, your relationship with friends and family turns a bit into a love/hate relationship.

Then you start to volunteer your time only to find that you want to micro-manage the volunteer organizations. The CEO in you comes out like a parent trying to fix things.

Getting back in the game

And then it grows on you like an itch you can’t get rid of. You need to get back in the game. It doesn’t come suddenly, but it will come. Trust me, I have been down this road several times, and a number of my fellow entrepreneur friends who have “retired” are in the same boat. The truth is starting, growing and running a business is in your blood, so get used to it. idea5 is actually my sixth company and I still feel like I am a rookie.

What usually happens is this: First you get an “idea” of doing another startup that has a lot of potential. Right about the same time a number of your former employees will want to work with you again and start a new business with you. It is amazing how these two things happen at the same time, almost like some divine force planned it that way. And then on the golf course after you shoot a round of 102, you realize you just won’t be any good at golf and you might as well go back and start a new business.

To get started, six of us (several former employees and even a client) went to an “entrepreneur weekend” in Tampa to hash out a number of ideas. After much alcohol, great food and cigars we got to the fifth idea (hence the name idea5) and concluded the weekend by deciding to continue to explore the concept. We took almost a full year to do our homework, refine our vision and work on financing. That year was invaluable because most of the founders kept their current job while we “moonlighted” on exploring our idea. In our case, “look before you leap” really paid off. 

How to learn from your first company

The real advantage of starting up another company is you can learn from your former attempts. Almost all of your administrative procedures—employee handbooks, marketing plans, insurance—can be improved upon, but you have a base to start with. Many of your business support firms such as attorneys and accountants are familiar with you and can help you with the new venture.

If you have some of your former employees come to work with you again, you already know their work habits, styles and motivation factors. For example, I know that dark chocolate has become a very inexpensive motivation tool for many people at idea5. 

And here is another tip: If your new venture is a totally new concept, but your market is the same as the old company, you have a huge advantage. At Profitstar, we dealt with banks and credit unions worldwide. At idea5, our first market also is aimed at banks and credit unions, but our product line is very different. Many of our contacts are known and they also know us personally—this gives you a big head start for sales. 

Even though some things can be easily modified and built on practices from the prior venture, there are others that you want to start with a totally clean sheet of paper. One is the concept of having fun. At idea5 we have almost daily “Nerf wars.” Everyone (and I mean everyone) has a Nerf gun. At any time of the day someone in the office will “start a war” and the Nerf bullets start flying.

One of the biggest rewards entrepreneurs have is the knowledge and satisfaction of actually creating something. It is not just the product we are creating; we are creating a unique culture, jobs and a sense of purpose. That feeling is a high you cannot experience in a corporate environment. One of the other rewards you get is to work alongside really innovative, cool, smart and motivated people. There is no real “in and out box” on your desk. You get up in the morning and collaborate with your team, create and refine your vision, and then execute.

One final piece of advice to entrepreneurs

When it is all said and done, there is one piece of advice I have to all entrepreneurs contemplating starting a business. If you are young enough and/or have the will and energy to start something, then do it. You were given talent on this earth, and you can find awesome people to form a really good team. In the end, you and your team will create something special to help make this world a better place. That may sound cliché. but it is so true. Do good, and then do more good. Yes, we are crazy. But we are the luckiest people around.