Resilience as an entrepreneur? It’s a layered topic with a ton to cover — but I’m going to try to take a big bite out of it here.
Whether you are already deep in the trenches of entrepreneurship or merely considering the idea of striking out on your own, resilience is critical.
It’s about letting go of perfection, having the ability to bounce back in the face of setbacks and adversity, and welcoming feedback and failure.
Here are some key things to remember to become a resilient entrepreneur.
Defining Resilience: Failure Is Not Final
Too often, I think the reason why individuals struggle in entrepreneurship is that they believe failure is final. They think that the task of entrepreneurship is to do things perfectly without setbacks.
But, the thing about entrepreneurship is that failure is part of the journey.
Entrepreneurship and failure are a package deal: if you want one, you get the other.
If you’re not ready to make some missteps, learn from them, and carry on, you are in for a rude awakening. It is all part of the messy, beautiful path of entrepreneurship.
So lean in. It gets somewhat easier once you’re open to it, I promise.
Resilience Is a Muscle That Takes Time To Develop
Resilience is a skill set that you develop over time. It’s like a muscle.
And just like building muscle, it takes time, effort, and dedication to embody resilience in entrepreneurship.
It means asking yourself the following questions whenever you face adversity or perceived failure:
- How do I bounce back?
- How do I recover quickly?
In my opinion, Micheal Jordan is the true embodiment of resilience as an athlete.
If you are a fan, you might be familiar with MJ’s famous quote:
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Now, that’s resilience — knowing that you will miss so many shots, but you get out there anyway and keep trying.
Over time, your form will develop, your craft will improve, and you’ll look back and realize how far you have come.
Entrepreneurship Is an Experiment
Too many entrepreneurs have this perfection narrative. They think that if an idea, campaign, product, or concept is not immediately successful, they have failed, and there is no point in trying again.
No, Queen. That’s not how it works! Think of entrepreneurship as an experiment because that’s what it is.
It doesn’t matter how many books you read about entrepreneurship or how many strategies you’ve learned and applied; it’s all still a big experiment at the end of the day.
We can never know what is going to work or be successful because regardless of what you’re offering as an entrepreneur, it’s people who are going to buy from you, and people change.
People’s needs change, their ideas change, and the market changes.
An essential part of resilience is understanding that business is one big experiment. It is trying things, taking the data, making tweaks, and continually being open to change.
As an entrepreneur, my most significant growth has come from the lessons from my greatest failures.
When I look back on the past few years of the pandemic- that was a time where we all had to practice resilience.
As founder of The #BigMoney Movement, we have trained thousands of women experts to land five and six-figure corporate deals.
During the pandemic we had countless women who lost major corporate deals and the majority of their revenue due to canceled speaking engagements. We also had countless women who lost their jobs during the pandemic.
They came to us, determined to find another way to do business. They realized that their status quo was not going to work anymore and became curious about how they could be innovative. They listened to the market. They decided to be nimble and redefine how they did business to find success.
And to our delight and surprise, the majority of our clients had their “best year in business” based on revenue during the height of the pandemic.
That’s the power of resilience.
Allow Emotions To Move Through You
I love reading autobiographies or biographies from successful business leaders. I study them intensely.
And every single biography I’ve read of a prominent figure has been laced wth stories of tremendous obstacles that that leader had to overcome on their path to success.
In many cases, that leader was experiencing success and failure simultaneously. Failing in one area of their life while simultaneously being celebrated for the achievements in another area of their life.
I was taught that the word emotion has the word ‘motion’ in it for a reason.
To truly process emotions, you need to let them take motion and move through you. You need to document them (say, through journaling) and process them.
Because once you do this and avoid getting stuck in that negative narrative, you can look toward what’s next. This will gradually bring you to what I think is the crux of resilience.
Decision Making
As leaders, we’re not going to get everything right. But, if you want to be a successful, resilient leader, you do need to be able to:
- Make a decision
- Follow through on that decision to understand the outcomes
- Make another decision based on those outcomes
Whether you’re a solopreneur or you lead a team, decisions will always drive your business forward. The key to being resilient is not only your ability to recover quickly and to make forward-facing decisions. It’s about failing fast and failing forward.
As a fast-growing small business- there are many high-pressure decisions that need to be made in a small window of time. It doesn’t often feel good but as a team, we have to make decisions based on our best judgment at the time.
As business leaders, it’s not uncommon to experience decision-making fatigue. Can you relate?
Our team also avoids course-correcting before we have truly finished the “experiment”. If we make too many changes in a short period of time and waffle back and forth- we miss out on the true learnings from any single decision.
Decide. Then, follow through to completion.
Normalizing The Journey of Entrepreneurship in Community
I think entrepreneurship is one of the most amazing journeys to embark on, but it is also one of the most challenging journeys.
Far too many entrepreneurs are struggling on this journey in isolation. I don’t believe that this is a path that one should journey alone. Matter of fact, I think it’s dangerous to be in isolation as an entrepreneur.
A lot of these false narratives about business ownership tend to come from entrepreneurs trying to do it all on their own without any support.
Resilience also comes from community.
It’s being able to normalize the journey and to be encouraged and inspired through the missteps of others, whether it is people who have been through a similar journey or who are in the trenches with you.
If you’re looking to be more resilient, surround yourself with others who understand where you’re at and what you’re going through. People who can relate, empower you, encourage you, and hold space for you along the way.
Entrepreneurship brings a legitimate, real risk of mental health issues along with it, and I don’t know that we talk about that truth enough.
As an entrepreneur, I advocate for therapy and community. You have to do what is absolutely necessary to make sure that you maintain positive mental health and have relationships that edify you.
The word resilience means to “recover quickly from difficulties”.
And when things get difficult, there’s nothing like having a support system of people in your corner.
This journey will absolutely stretch you.
There’s a Mexican proverb I always turn to in difficult times that says,
“They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.”
I hope you bloom through this journey, Queen.
If you’re looking for strategies to land five and six-figure corporate clients, learn more at www.thebigmoneymovement.com.
Or, if you’re looking for language to engage with executive buyers, download three of my proven scripts at www.corporateclientscripts.com.
About The Author: Liz J. Simpson
Liz J. Simpson has been recognized by LinkedIn as a Top 15 Sales Influencer. She is a speaker, sales strategist and trainer.
She has been featured in NBC, CBS, SXSW, 40 under 40 and as a Hubspot INBOUND Fellow. She’s been recognized as a Demand Gen Thought Leader award winner as well as a SalesHacker Top Sales Leader and Female Speaker.
As founder of the sales consultancy, Stimulyst, her team specializes in empowering organizations to accelerate growth through personal branding, strategic relationship-building, and consultative new business development.
Liz is also the founder of The #BigMoney Movement, a global movement empowering thousands of women entrepreneurs across the globe to take up space, shatter gender disparities and close 6-figure corporate deals.
When she’s not out training professionals to become “fluent in #bigmoney talk”, you’ll find her at home with her husband and three children, aged 5, 16 and 17.
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