How to Bounce Back After a Catastrophic Business Failure

How to bounce back after a catastrophic business failure:

I guess I’m lucky that I haven’t had an entire business collapsed around me (touch wood).

But it has happened to my friends. And some of them have bounced back, bigly.

They had a stellar plan, investors, work ethic, a great team, everything.

But, do you want to know an unfortunate truth about business?

Sometimes luck just isn’t on your side. Somehow, everything falls apart, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The important thing is that you bounce back. Stand back up, dust yourself off and get back on the horse.

I understand there may be things you need to do first.

You may have to restructure your entire mind, learn a whole new way of thinking, develop brand new skills, completely change industry, associate with a new bunch of people…

You may even have to take a freelance job or desk job while you sort everything out. You may not like that. You may have to stoically grin and bear it.

Though you should treat everything you do as building a new solid foundation for your awesome comeback.

When you are ready to dive back in, here’s my advice:

Keep it simple. Maybe temporarily suspend concepts like “startup”, “MVP”, “investors”, “growth strategy”, “blue ocean”, “market disruption”. You’ll get there, but maybe wait a bit.

Start with online service agency. Sell a valuable, standardized service that is already in demand. A service that you already have the skills for.

That’ll be enough to get you out of the job phase, and back to your confidence, so you feel ready to crush it again.

Before you know it, you could have 3-5 clients paying you a reasonable monthly fee, and you’ll be back in business. Don’t give up – you’ve got this!

– Aleksander Vitkin