My Business Failed. Now What?
Entrepreneurs don’t start businesses because they want to fail, but they do. Most begin full of hope and enthusiasm. They believe they have a plan in place that will lead their business to success.
They planned, trained, saved up money, worked hard, and set their eyes on the horizon. Then the company fails. The clients just weren’t there. They created a buzz that fizzed.
Failed businesses are not uncommon. According to the Small Business Administration, only about ten percent of new companies last longer than ten years. Business owners who find themselves among that number should take heart, though. Start by arresting those negative thoughts and keeping them in perspective. A failed business is not the end of the world. And if you do it right, you can often bounce back stronger than you were before. Here are five things you can do as an entrepreneur to bounce back and empower yourself to move forward.
5 Ways to Bounce Back After Failure
1) Take time to process what went wrong and learn from it.
Perhaps you want to rebuild, but before you do, you’ll need to take some time to reflect. Accept your journey as a valuable learning experience that will help you avoid the same mistakes for your next business venture. Failure can be a great teacher if you allow it to be.
2) Refuse to become bitter.
You worked hard to start your company, but the customers didn’t show up, or maybe you ran out of funding before turning a profit. There could be a myriad of reasons your business was unsuccessful, and you may have lost money in the process. Understandably, you would have a lot of negative emotions, feelings of disappointment and frustration, or maybe you feel like a failure. But, anger won’t help.
3 Start over.
If your business idea is still something you believe in, you don’t have to give up. Successful people were not always successful; some failed multiple times before finding their success. The key to their eventual success is that they didn’t give up. You must fight off fear. Fear of a second failure can rob you of the needed energy to keep plugging away at your dream. When fear talks to you and reminds you that you failed, talkback and say, ‘you mean that learning experience? That gave me the information I needed to make this one work.’ And, keep it moving.
4)) Do you need business training?
Before starting, ask yourself if whether or not additional training could help improve your chances of success. Perhaps you discovered you didn’t know enough about a particular area of business. You could seek out someone more experienced in that specific area to bring on alongside you, or if you are not going to hire someone with that knowledge and skill set, then maybe you should take a few courses yourself.
5) Finally, remember those that supported you.
These are your stalwarts who were in the trenches with you. They believed in you because they knew you could be successful. Take a cue from them and believe in yourself as well.