Much of what I write about on here has to do with how we get to success. The steps needed to launch your business, the potential liabilities that could occur when going to market, or the pessimism you might receive from those when you tell them what your working on. But what happens if you have spent countless hours, dollars, and sleepless nights getting your product or brand up and running and no one is buying it? You have tried different marketing strategies and special offers, you have devalued your brand to the point of selling your soul for success, and you still can’t get turn a profit. It’s time to give up-and that’s okay. You have to know when to sh*t or get off the pot.
Behind every successful person there is a story about how they faced adversity to get there. Very few people who have amassed anything of value in life didn’t work hard to achieve it. And I am not talking about monetary riches. Sure, does that help make life easier? Of course, but the ceiling continues to rise along with wealth. There are just as many stories about people who have lost everything as there are about people who have worked their way from rags to riches.
How we learn from what happened and move on to the next “big idea” will be the difference between successful entrepreneurs and the ones who just go back to their 9-5 jobs. I personally have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on businesses that we couldn’t get off the ground. Did we try everything we could? You bet! Did we stay in it to long at times? Most definitely. Did we convince ourselves that one more campaign, a different marketing agency, or a quick re-brand would fix everything? More times than I can count! What we didn’t do is know when to throw in the towel and move onto something different. What was really happening was the time that I was continuing to try and revive a dead horse, I was taking time away from the idea that would take off, that would allow me to be financially independent, that would make me a valuable part of society in creating jobs and inspiring other people to be their own boss.
I was once told that every person gets one great idea. What I wasn’t told is that there would be countless crappy ones along that road to success. We can’t predict the future and know which idea we have that is the “big one” but if we get stuck on the wrong one, we will never be able to work on the one that makes us successful. Part of being a successful entrepreneur is getting to the point at which you can recognize that it is time to move on-before you lose all hope and drive to succeed.
When the stock market crashed in 2009, there were countless people invested in JC Penney and Kmart. Never in a million years did they expect those brands to fail. They were household names, they grew up with them as kids, there was no way that they would ever go belly up. Well, we all know what happened, and they did. Many people lost their life savings because they didn’t know when to pull out. Had they have done so before they lost everything, they could’ve re-invested their money in ANY stock and made it back ten-fold during this epic bull run.
We, as entrepreneurs need to know when to pull out. It is not an acceptance of defeat, it is a demonstration of our ability to foresee that something bigger is on the horizon.