Knowing When To Say When When It Comes To Your Business

Building a successful business is hard.  We pour our blood, sweat, and tears into it.  We sacrifice much…money, time, energy, and sometimes even relationships to make a business work.  We want it so badly that everything else in our lives becomes second…or third.  We talk the business, we walk it, we sleep it, we eat it, and it consumes us.  We are willing to give up everything to make this business successful.

But what happens to us when, regardless of circumstance, we collapse from exhaustion and see that this business just isn’t going to work?

Sometimes when we take a step back we realize that we have become the business and the business has become us.  Our identities are so wrapped up in the success of this venture that we really don’t know who we are without it.  Sadly, this makes us so determined to make it work that we just won’t let it go…no matter the cost.

The fear of failure is so strong that we’re willing to give up everything, including who we are, to see the business succeed.  We listen to our doubters and the nay-sayers who said this would never work and we just want to prove them wrong.

Although it is our hope that you never have a business fail, it does happen so it’s important for us to think and talk about.  And it’s important to ask “when is it time to pull the plug?”

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to making the decision to close a business.  That answer depends on many factors: the business, the owners and investors, the viability of the product, finances, the pulse of the market, etc.

And there are many things an entrepreneur or small business owner can do before having to completely shut a business down:  Sell the business, sell the product rights, find new investors, invest in more technology, increase or decrease production, or update the product to meet changing demands from consumers.

The point is that we, as the owner, entrepreneur, or inventor, sometimes hang on to something so tightly that we can’t let it go…and we go down with it.  When maybe if we let it go, we could healthily move on to something else that is alive and thriving.  Sometimes we’re not willing to give up that “thing” that we consider our baby.  That “thing” that we have given up a part of ourselves for…a part of our identity.

It’s critical for us to keep a check on ourselves and make sure we’re not “over-investing” in our dream….that we are still okay as a person without this and that we will survive.  Living out our passion and our purpose in life is more than just building a successful business.  It is about finding peace in all parts of our lives: personal, professional, internal.

And sometimes that means letting something go before it brings us down…before it becomes toxic to our souls.

What hasn’t worked for us may just work for someone else so don’t be afraid to sell an idea, a business, or rights to a service.  The end of one business doesn’t mean the end of us…it may just mean it’s time to move on to better things…better things for us.

Building a strong network of mentors and peers who will support you through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship is the key to your success.