There is enough read about making it big in business. And no matter how many precautions you take, how many risks you take, how much knowledge you apply, sometimes things don’t work out.
Insolvency might be the biggest nightmare for any businessman, especially if you’re one who has struggled for a long time to be able to start. As important as it is to focus on winning, it’s important to dwell in the sadness in order to come out stronger.
A failed business is like any other failure in life. An exam, a relationship, a game, etc. all can fail, and you may have felt it to be easier to cope with those than with the business. The fact of the matter is that almost all start-ups fail within the first 5 years. The best way to prepare yourself for failure is to acknowledge the possibility of it happening that soon.
Donald Trump talks about dealing with business failure:
Tip 1: Downtime
When your business has been officially shut down, take all the time you can to get yourself back together. Emotionally the shock or idea must be too painful, monetarily it must have weighed heavily on your pocket, your family suffers too, and you’ve put in a lot of physical work as well. So try to relax and let all of it out, before trying to “fix” it.
Tip 2: Legal Work
Once you’re out of your down phase, it’s important to get all the legal paperwork completed. This is the wisest thing you can do, get in touch with your lawyer or CA, and sort out all the legal mess.
You don’t want anything to come back and haunt you later. Make sure all taxes and payments and clear, and documents are submitted at the right places, information is up to date and all files that are needed to be closed are closed.
Tip 3: Think
This is the right time to ponder upon what went wrong, it could’ve been something major like the world financial crisis, or something deeper like laziness, bad employees, wrong ideas, unexpected problems, unsubstantial market research, a hitch that you ignored, etc.
Make a list of those points, the idea of this exercise is to bring to focus on the problems & not dwell in them in negativity. Once you have them all jotted down, try to figure out what you can do now to solve those problems if they were to arise again, in your next venture. This is a positive growth process, the aim is to learn and move forward.
Tip 4: Vacation
Nothing needs hard work as much as starting and maintaining a new business. And like any entrepreneur you too have been busting your life behind your venture. If you can afford to take a mini-vacation away from the home of your former business and spend time with family and loved ones. Relax and get into another zone that will rejuvenate your senses to be able to think positively and get over the trauma.
At the end of it all, it’s about the work you put in that matters, your perseverance, your ability to take the risks that you did. No matter how many people laugh and point at you, they don’t know squat about starting a business as you do. And chances are next time (and there will be a next time), you will kick all business problems out of the way!
