She Said No to Branson's Island Because Her Business Needed Her. It Didn't.

Richard Branson, the billionaire businessman, invited Codie Sanchez, an entrepreneur who buys and runs small businesses, to his private island. Sanchez admired Branson for building large companies while living an adventurous life, including travel by hot air balloon.

The trip included water biking, hanging out, and multiple days without a phone. Sanchez said no. She told herself she did not have time, and that if she left, the business would fail.

The company, she said, was probably doing about $5 million a year at the time. It was growing and profitable, with no crisis to manage. She now calls her excuse a total lie she told herself, that the business had to be centered on her.

She said friends who went did business deals and met power players. She describes those as gains that do not show up in spreadsheets, and she missed them because she stayed home.

She calls the belief behind her decision the hero complex, the idea that a founder must be the savior in everything. For about five years, she said, she lived with stress over whether the business could go on without her, even while it was growing faster than ever. She says that strain likely contributed to her struggle to get pregnant for a long time.

Codie Sanchez now uses a simple test for that trap. She puts it this way: "if you're self-employed, that means that either the fulfillment of the product, the sales of the product, or the distribution of the product falls entirely in your hands." If none of those three jobs depends completely on her, she calls that being an owner.