How Entrepreneurs Bounce Back Faster After Setbacks

The way to bounce back faster after a setback is to shorten your recovery time on purpose. Give yourself a set window to be frustrated, then put a new goal in front of you and take the next action. Wanting to quit now and then is normal. The goal isn’t to never get knocked down. It’s to get back up in minutes instead of days.

Is it normal to want to quit your business?

Yes. On a recent Tactical Tuesday, the live Zoom training MVMT members attend, one member said what a lot of people were feeling. The sacrifices it takes to grow were wearing him out. He was making progress, but it hadn’t shown up in the results yet. His question: how do you keep yourself from walking back down off the high dive?

Another member who runs a small business added her own version. Some days it’s clients being high maintenance. Other days it’s staff. The struggle on a regular day just wears her out.

Here’s what I told them. If you don’t feel like quitting about once a month, in your mind anyway, you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough. That feeling of “What am I doing? Why am I doing this?” is part of it. It means you’re stretching.

The question isn’t whether you’ll feel it. It’s what you do next.

How do you shorten your recovery time after a setback?

I tell people: jump off a curb, not a cliff. Pull over on the side of the road, get up on the curb, jump off it, get back in the car, and keep going down the road. Have your moment. Make a little fun of it. Then move.

It used to be that a bad day knocked me down for a day. Then I got it down to an hour. Now I give it five minutes. Here’s the process:

1. Give yourself a set amount of time to be down. Don’t pretend it didn’t sting. Just don’t let it run your whole day.
2. Learn from it. What happened? What would you do differently? Take the lesson and leave the rest.
3. Put a new goal in front of you. Something specific you can go after right now.
4. Take action on it with speed. Knock out the next thing.

You won’t always move with precision. That’s fine. If you move with speed and you keep learning, eventually you’ll move with more precision too. And when you move with speed and passion, you bring energy to the market. People feel that.

Why does it get hardest right before a breakthrough?

Usually the most challenging point is right about where the breakthrough is. Every breakthrough I’ve had came when the ceiling was right there and I felt like I couldn’t go any further. The next day I got up and did it again because I believed in it.

And breakthroughs don’t come in ones and twos. They come in tens and twenties and fifties. You can post videos every day for a year and get nothing, and then your next three take off. Business and sales work the same way. You take one more step, and three or four things come together at once, and you wonder how it happened. It happened because you stayed focused, had a clear vision, and kept putting in effort every day.

Write this down: input always equals output, eventually. Most people don’t like the “eventually.” It’s not immediate. Growth comes through a lot of input over and over, through wins and losses, through ups and downs, adjusting your heading, meeting the people, shaking the hands, doing it daily.

Another member on the call put it well. The hardest stretch you’ll ever go through is what it takes to punch through a ceiling. Once you do, your old ceiling becomes your new floor. Don’t coast when you get there, but it does get a little easier.

Should you let your team see you struggle?

That same member made a point every leader needs to hear. Keep a smile on your face. Don’t let your people see you break down. They need to know someone has it under control, whether you feel like you do or not, whether you’re scared or not. He admitted he’s scared half the time.

Everybody posts the good stuff. As he put it, if you’re not dealing with tough stuff, you’re not doing enough stuff.

That’s part of the reason to plug into a group of other business owners. You hear what everyone else is going through, and you realize the people running big businesses put their pants on the same way you do.

How do you reframe daily losses?

There are things that disappoint me every single day. If I got caught up in every one of those, I’d walk around saying “we lost.” We didn’t lose. We’re one step closer.

A few things that help:

• Know you’re in the right vehicle. When you believe in what you’re doing and you know it’s good for people, that belief turns into knowing. That carries you on the hard days.
• Remember easy isn’t an option. If it were easy, everybody would do it, and there’d be no profit in it. It’s a lot like playing a sport against an opponent who’s no challenge. The win doesn’t mean much.
• Look for the opportunity inside the challenge. The biggest opportunities are in the biggest challenges. When you get through one, the next challenge shows up. That’s also your next opportunity.
• Do something every day that moves you closer. People running bigger businesses have the same customer, marketing, and fulfillment problems. They face them and keep moving toward the goal, even on the bad days.

Struggle is where we become strong. Without it, we wouldn’t be ready to handle what comes next.

Quick answers

How long should you let a setback affect you?
Set a short window, even five minutes, then pick a new goal and take action. The aim is to shrink that window over time.

Why does it feel hardest right before things improve?
Because breakthroughs usually come right at the ceiling. Pushing through it makes that old ceiling your new floor.

How should a leader handle stress in front of the team?
Stay steady in front of your people so they know someone has it under control. Work through the fear with other business owners who have been there.

Want to work on this with other business owners? Book a discovery call with The MVMT team at themvmt.com/discovery-call.