Your Business Failed. What’s Next?

You’ve done your operations and financial analyses, exhausted traditional and social media advertising (whichever is used by your customers), looked at diversified income streams and ultimately tried your very best (right?…. RIGHT? 😉) but still, sadly, your business has failed. 😖

Cue tears of frustration, anger, disappointment, regret and fear. What do you do now? How do you go forward?

Take a breath.

I’m here to tell you that it’s okay. YOU’LL BE OKAY. Really.

How ‘okay’ you’ll be depends on your next steps – you can wallow indefinitely, trudge along and fall into whatever you do next OR you can proceed in a way that’ll make you better. Stronger. Smarter.

Here are some tips that’ll help you get there:

1. Take time to grieve. You were probably emotionally attached to your business, so take a few days to cope with all the emotions you are feeling (and even allow for those feelings that you aren’t as aware of).
   
   
2. Recognise you aren’t the first and won’t be the last person to have a failed business. It happens to 99.99% of entrepreneurs. Failure is not only par for the course, but almost necessary in making you a better entrepreneur. Some even consider failure as a right of passage for entrepreneurs.
   
   
3. Recognise that your business failing is also not necessarily YOU failing. You might be busy studying how you look more than anyone/anything else. Doh be shame, cus no one on you so. As much as we like bacchanal and comess, the Caribbean 9-day memory pretty much guarantees that people will forget about you by the time next weekend comes around. So doh take it personal.
   
   
4. Understand why your business failed. Try to analyze what happened from an outsider’s perspective. What circumstances, events or moves lead to the failure? Was it a lack of customers? Did your pricing strategy not cover your expenses? Did you consider ALL of your expenses? Did you market to the wrong people? Etc.
   
   You need to ask yourself some hard questions here but this is all for your own benefit. Write your learnings down. Remember them. You often learn more from failure than you do from success and the knowledge you gain here is one of the main reasons you’ll be a better entrepreneur post-failure.
   
   

Tune in next time for further helpful tips on your post-failure period. Until then, you can take a look at these links:

10 Strategies for Entrepreneurs Dealing with Failure

How to Cope with a Failed Business

When the Dream Dies: How to Deal with Business Failure, Dust Yourself Off, and Emerge Stronger Than Ever