Here is the thing I learned most. First, it was not my first crash so It didn't destroy me
1. No one took my birthday away,
2. no one came to eat me. (this is a seriously common thing of entrepreneurs that I coach BTW)
3. no one pointed to me on the street and laughed
4. the people I have in my life care alot about me, and its a good way to weed out your fair weather friends, (because honestly those are not real friends)
5. your still alive, and that means your smarter and faster next time....
Now I was depressed for a little bit, but here is a trick for those of you who don't know this.
you HAVE to go trough a grieving process.
you cant go around it.
you cant skip it
you cant ignore it and expect to be able to get back on top with out dealing with it.
so here is the trick. if you are going to have to go through it. Dig in. Deal with it. treat it like a focused workout or a focused endeavor. its almost like a startup.
It will eat up almost all your time, and energy for a little while. deal with it. focus on getting to the next stage of the stages of grief. process it and get it done!
if you drag this out, you will be very ineffective for a long time. certainly not at the top of your game
But if you do that, you can go through the stages of grief pretty quick.
1st time i lost a biz, i was young and it took me 1.5 yrs to get over it.
the next time I lost an apartment complex it took me 9 months.
when I lost 18M within a week I had another business up and running.
dealing with a "Dead Deal" and the grief head on, I was able to get back to making money fast
This is one hell of a good post. Dale, I think you nailed something that is certainly not taught in school and is really REALLY an essential aspect of entrepreneurship-- you WILL fail along the way (at least in some way) and how you deal with failure is an essential key to making it as an entrepreneur.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs new to the game let the depression destroy their dreams. I've never really thought of it as a grieving process, but I think you are right on.
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