I’m writing this from Spain.

A few months ago, I accidentally booked our summer trip over the Fourth of July—America’s 250th birthday.

At first, I didn’t care. Actually, that’s not true. At first, I convinced myself I didn’t care. I had all the reasons.

I’ve seen 41forty one years of fireworks. The crowds would be overwhelming. Everything seems political these days. With tensions around the world, massive public gatherings feel increasingly vulnerable. And honestly, after spending years building a company, the idea of voluntarily inserting myself into traffic jams, packed streets, and chaos sounded more draining than inspiring.

The logic was sound. The conclusion was wrong.

The day before I left, I stopped by my friend Garrett’s house. He asked if I was disappointed about missing the Fourth.

I unloaded my list of reasons. When I finished, he just shook his head.

“Man, that’s lame.”

I laughed.

Then he said something that followed me all the way across the Atlantic.

“It’s not about the fireworks. It’s about the people.”

For entrepreneurs, that can be a difficult lesson to hear. Because building something from nothing requires a certain amount of isolation. You have to ignore doubters. You have to spend nights and weekends working when everyone else is relaxing.

You have to become comfortable carrying burdens that most people will never see. The problem is that the same walls that protect your vision can eventually imprison it.
Over time, we become experts at justifying our separation from others. We’re too busy. Too focused. Too disciplined. Too committed to the mission. We skip the barbecue because we need to work. We leave early because we have a meeting tomorrow. We pass on the trip because productivity might suffer. We convince ourselves that we’re sacrificing for something greater.

Sometimes we are. But, sometimes we’re just forgetting why we started building in the first place.

A company can become a wall. Fitness can become a wall. Success can become a wall. Even self-improvement can become a wall.

The pursuit of becoming your best self is admirable. But there is a point where optimization begins to crowd out connection. Where efficiency starts replacing presence. Where the life you’re building slowly becomes the reason you’re no longer living it.

The irony is that when most entrepreneurs reach the finish line they imagined years earlier, they rarely wish they had attended one more meeting.

They wish they had spent more time with the people who mattered.

Because when the dust settles, nobody remembers the extra email you sent. They remember who was sitting around the fire. Who was at the table. Who shared the moment.

The older I get, the more I believe that success isn’t measured by the walls you build. It’s measured by who remains inside them. Businesses are built through sacrifice. Lives are built through relationships. Confuse the two, and one day you may find yourself standing atop everything you worked for, wondering where everyone went.

So this Fourth of July, wherever you find yourself, remember that the people in your foxhole matter more than the fireworks overhead.

The celebration was never really about the event. It was about the gathering.

And if you’re fortunate enough to have people willing to stand beside you through the victories, failures, risks, and uncertainty of life, don’t make the mistake of building a wall between yourself and them.

After all, what good is building an empire if there’s nobody left to share it with?

PS: If you happen to be in Barcelona on July 4th and hear Toby Keith echoing off a balcony somewhere in the Gothic Quarter, don’t worry. It’s probably just one homesick American realizing what he missed.

— John Radzwilla
CEO & Editor-in-Chief
Hook & Barrel Magazine