What it’s like to start your business again

11 months ago I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I decided to shut down my business. Why did I shut my business down?

I had taken some risks and the risks didn’t pan out. I’d invested in online marketing training, but hadn’t effectively followed through because I kept jumping around, moving from tactic to tactic, while at the same time losing track of my audience. It didn’t help that I had multiple businesses and I was trying to apply what I learned to each business at the same time.

I ended up with some debt and I needed to take a full time job so I could start paying off that debt, but I also realized I needed to use the job as an opportunity to think, reflect and recover. I was so close to my problems that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. So I quit my business, shut it down, and went to work.

Closing my business was hard, because so much of my identity was wrapped up in it, but it proved to be a good decision. I know that you see so many articles, videos, etc., where business owners share how they persisted, how they came so close to running their business to the ground, but they found that last minute solution or something changed for them, but while those stories can be true, I think they also create an unrealistic expectation that every person can manage a last minute save of their business.

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you can’t pull off a last minute save.

And knowing when to stop, to pull back, to recover, reflect and do whatever you have to can be as valuable a lesson as persisting, because when you have time to reflect and learn from what happened you get far enough away from the problem that you begin to see what happened and how you got where you came to and then you learn from it.

So here I am 11 months later, working full time, and a bit wiser I hope for my experience. And I’ve decided I’m going to start my business again.

Why?

I miss my freedom. I miss working with people and helping them solve their problems. I miss working on projects full time that have meaning to me.

But because I’ve had time to reflect, I’m approaching this much more carefully. I’m not in a rush and I’m just focusing on one business right now. I’m going to share my journey here, through Medium, through daily posts. Tomorrow I’ll start with where I’ve been and then proceed from there to where I’m going. If you want to follow along, click follow and join me on my journey to rebuild my business as I share what I’m doing to start all over again.