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If your small business has closed, know you’re not alone. According to AdvisorSmith, approximately two-thirds of small business owners fail during their 10th year of operation—while 50 percent close after just five years of business. And that’s in the best of times.
Whether because of the pandemic or other factors, making the difficult decision to close a small business can be an emotionally and financially exhausting ordeal. Here are a few things you can do to bounce back from this loss and regain the motivation to move on to something new.
Grieve Your Loss
After you’ve devoted so much time, money, and energy to getting your small business up and running, you may find yourself passing through the five stages of grief as you mourn the loss of your business and think about what you’re going to do next. Known as the entrepreneur’s grieving period, The Guardian notes you may experience feelings of denial, blame, and self-flagellation before you begin to learn from your mistakes and regain the motivation to start anew.
Furthermore, some experts believe you could bounce back from entrepreneurial disappointment in just 24 hours if you allow yourself to be nothing but angry, depressed, and upset during this time. While you may need more than 24 hours to bounce back from this type of failure, the most important thing is that you give yourself some time to sulk and be upset rather than avoiding your negative emotions altogether.
Accept Your Failure, Make Time for Yourself & Start Anew
After you’ve accepted the failure of your small business and have given yourself some time to mourn, it’s essential to surround yourself with supportive loved ones and give yourself the space /time to focus on your interests, hobbies, and any causes that you support.
Since entrepreneurship takes up so much of your time, this is the perfect opportunity to focus on your friends, family, and anything else that you may have overlooked or neglected since the start of your small business.
Use this opportunity to reassess your priorities and rid yourself of unnecessary items and distractions. A critical step is to work on creating a more positive space at home. This can involve organizing, decluttering, and letting in more natural light. This ensures that you have a firm foundation on which to work.
Moreover, this is an excellent time to reach out to members of your personal and professional networks, especially if you’re looking for a new job. Instead of immediately pursuing a new business idea, reentering the workforce will give you some time to pay off debt, earn an income, learn from your mistakes, and create a fresh plan for your next business venture.
Start Your Next Small Business
If you’re still feeling entrepreneurial after reentering the workforce and you believe that you’ve learned from the past mistakes you’ve made, it may be time to invest in a new venture of your own. There are a ton of startup ideas to explore. To avoid making mistakes, however, Talkroute notes it’s important to learn everything you can about the areas that contributed to the failure of your business—whether the industry, market, funding, product, management, or pandemic was to blame.
Unless you’ve already secured startup funding, you’ll need to think about how you intend to get your operation off the ground. An increasingly popular way for small businesses to generate capital is through crowdfunding.
You’ll also need to think about how you’re going to build your team of business professionals. Suppose you can’t afford to run your business, earn a living, and hire a team of employees. In that case, you might choose to utilize freelancers, especially in industries such as technology, design, accounting, marketing, and healthcare. You can find freelancers on through word-of-mouth, referrals, or sites such as Upwork or Fiver, who can build and manage your new company website or write content for your blog and social media channels. In addition, freelancers are available to assist you with tasks such as these:
- Sales.
- Art and design.
- Administrative work.
- Writing and editing.
- Web development.
- Marketing.
The Bottom Line
Deciding whether to close a business is rarely simple, especially after you’ve invested so much of your time and money into getting the business up and running. Hopefully, this guide has touched on things that will help you recover both emotionally and financially—allowing you to bounce back more quickly and regain the motivation you need to pursue your next great venture.
Author:
Ted James,
tedknowsmoney.com