This is still a tough topic for me even though it was only by losing the last business that I discovered my true calling, coaching. The pain I experienced was invaluable to my ability to protect others from having to suffer as I did.
At the end of four years, my business partner and I ran out of capital. We couldn’t keep paying the legal fees to fight for the patent, which seemed futile because patent laws for internet technologies had changed after we initially filed. Without that patent, the big investors who had expressed an interest vanished. Or stole our idea.
Having survived this to come out even better on the other side, I can relate to the baggage entrepreneurs can be carried from their own business loss. It can stop them from moving forward or leave them in an agonized state of feeling like they are on the edge of losing it all again, even when they aren’t. Talking through debilitating feelings releases their grip, but people will rarely confide in someone they doubt will respect and understand them.
Almost every other day an entrepreneur will share with me a story of loss and its aftermath. Because it’s not just the financial loss that devastates but the sense of betrayal. It’s like the earth is moving under your feet, and it’s terrifying. All the blood, sweat, and tears you poured in for years now feel like a mockery of you, crafted by a dangerous, cruel world. This kind of soul-crushing defeat can destroy you. I can describe exactly how it almost pulled me under. I would try to be stoic, but by never talking I never exposed my near-fatal circular thinking: that I was already too far in to save myself. I can then tell you how just getting a fresh perspective followed by good coaching can keep you from falling into the hell-like abyss of business failure.
Having lost people and businesses to addiction, it comes down to a grieving process.
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