Sometimes Walking Away From Your Business Is The Best Thing To Do
Owning your own business is like an illicit love affair.
It’s a one-sided affair that only you experience.
While we want to believe that love is everlasting, it happens and then we’re swept up in it, wholly, completely.
We believe that our feelings for our loved ones will never change. The fact is, because we change, these feelings of love can, and do, change with time.
You could argue that someone who has experienced divorce, or a business owner who has seemingly flirted with one idea after another, before settling down and deciding on a business that looked great on paper, probably has no real concept of love, or business.
You may be right.
We all have idealized notions of how we think love and business work: you come up with an idea or a business model that you like or love, you start the business. The business takes off and is a huge success. You instantly become an overnight success story. You become a celebrated millionaire and live happily ever after.
Ah! How lovely, if things really did work this way. But they don’t. They rarely do.
Because like my first marriage, not every business is actually the right fit. And that’s okay.
As @Kris Gage so aptly wrote, “Our feelings for our partners will ebb and flow.”
The thing is, love, like feelings aren’t constant. Our feelings experience an ebb and flow. Sometimes when the low tide hits and business isn’t going the way we expected, we expect the high tide to come rushing back just in time to save the day.
This just isn’t the case.
In fact, being a business owner means being your own cheerleader when no one else is cheering with you, rooting for you or your relationship, to make it. It’s hearing the voice of reason when you’re dipping into your savings once again and then shirking that voice off because after all, things will take off…eventually. Right?
Or when you find your ankles swollen thick with pride when you have no investors backing you, so you pick up extra shifts to work your way through the next financial hurdles constantly coming at you.
It’s sometimes hating your relationship, not liking your partner, falling out of love with that business idea you thought was so great and then choosing anyway, to stick with it, regardless of how much it seems to be taking from you.
It’s not keeping score and remembering the goods days eluding you when all you really want is to throw up your hands already and just walk away.
Love is hard. Sometimes, it just sucks. So to, does being a business owner.
Realizing you need a break from it, to reevaluate where you stand can really be eye-opening. Sometimes, you need to re-evaluate if it’s worth it. If you should continue with it, or move on to greener pastures — start fresh.
Sometimes, walking away is best. Sometimes, it isn’t. Sometimes, as with any relationship, you just need some good, sound advice to help you get to a better point in the business. You need that freaking AHA! moment to grab your face and plant its’ kiss square on your face — the same face that’s too busy cursing and rueing the damn day you ever decided to get mixed up in this affair!
As you continue your love affair, your vision, your business, sometimes, the answer of what you should do explodes, too loudly to be ignored. Other times, it sneaks in, revealing itself so quietly you really almost miss it, not seeing what has already been placed before you.
So if you can, wait for it. Keep nurturing your love affair, your business.
Work on it. It comes to you, making the path clearer to see.
After all, your business, like your love affair, could end up being better than anything you could have ever imagined.
