Been reading about successful women entrepreneurs, but want to get more insight into the immediate aftermath of a business or project failing.
Women who have started a business and have had it fail completely, what’s your story and how did you recover?
r/AskWomen
Comments
Fail completely in what sense?
It is really not in my vocabulary so im not sure what you mean exactly. I’ve never seen my businesses/projects as a failure. Some of my projects did well financially but didn’t align with my lifestyle or values, so I chose to end them. Some were financially horrible- I lost a lot of time, money, and effort- but I still gained so much experience that carried into my next business or project. To me, it’s jist exploring and experimenting. There’s no “fail,” just a pivot or redirection.
If by “fail” you mean closing or ending a business, then yes, there are practical things that needs to be taken care of such as wrapping up contracts (or paying fees if ending early), managing leases, or if you have physical products, usually doing a clearance sale to recover costs. Emotionally, the harder part in the beginning was dealing with self-doubt, guilt, and/or identity
Then, it’s about starting another project/business
Many of my entrepreneur friends share the same perspective.We don’t really fail. We take the lessons, integrate them, and move forward with sharper instincts and more clarity. It was just a side project that led us to our main projects
I was honestly waiting for a question like this, because this woman has a looooot to vent about.
I officially started my business about 3 years ago (by that I mean all the legal registration done). I’m in the esoteric field and mainly sell divination services and let me tell you : nobody really prepares you for the reality of it.
The advice you can get is usually something like :
“Just work for a platform, all you need is an online presence, give what people want even if you’re miserable then once established do you, go ask your cards!”
But divination never meant being the lucky winner of life who gets to skip the hard work. Otherwise, the millions (or billions ?) of people grinding every day to get just one client wouldn’t be struggling.
Over the years, I identified some harsh truths:
At first, I stuck to my vision and it didn’t generate revenue (my highest earning was €30). So, I switched. I switched to what “everyone want” : love readings, no-contact, specific person. Guess what ? It worked. I went from 300 to 1.4k Twitter followers with regular bookings in less than 2 months because people were finally getting what they wanted from me.
But. It attracted the wrong audience. By “wrong,” I mean people who wanted me to confirm fantasies:
“Of course your ex will come back.”
“Of course Pedro, married to lovely Malory with 7 kids, is leaving it all for you.”
“Of course Pascal wasn’t playing you, he’s just lost but deeply in love.”
(I highly blame delusional spirituality trendy cult for that)
And that led straight to burnout, on repeat. Sure, my revenue grew but only within the €1–15 range. My highest single payment was 121€ and highest revenue with that cheap method, if I’m not wrong about 300+€ of endless readings that sucked the life out of me.
The truth is, I made the most money on platforms (over 800€ in a month), but the cost was high : you had to accept everyone, no matter if they fit your vision of an ideal client or not.
So how did I fail?
By focusing too much on generating income instead of my original goal : building a community. I don’t believe it was for lack of effort or lack of online presence > I showed up every single day, even burnt out, even discouraged, even on the edge of giving up, I even market myself outside of the internet, network. And this kept on showing me that my failure was in trying to fit the mold instead of creating my own lane, even if it meant the long road because yes, I wasn’t generating much when started but the audience I had was a loyal one who resonated with my vision vs those 1.4k ? They came for the cheap dopamine rush.