As an entrepreneur, I dumped all my money, home equity and credit into a business opportunity and believed what the business books told you to “never give up”. And what happened? I lost my successful business, went through bankruptcy, lost our house, car and almost lost my wife and daughter. WTF? I thought if you are determined and never give up you can’t help but be successful. Wrong! Most entrepreneurs fail! You have to cut your losses and live to fight another day.
As much as you probably hate the thought of it, you must have and exit plan with any business venture. And you have to take calculated risks, “damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead” just doesn’t usually work in business. Put emergency money aside to save your ass, and spend the rest to grow your business. You should never use that emergency money or go into huge debt with the hope of success. You should close the business before it ruins you. Move on to the next business, it might be the right one.
I was laid-off for the 3rd time when a company went out of business and decided, shoot I can lay myself off. So I started a company. Made some money, but the bills and mortgage were too big. We refinanced our house to pull 50K out of the equity to finance my business and pay living expenses. So, this business lasted a couple years, by then we had racked up 100K in credit card debt and with no income for me in sight, we declared Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. What a gift that was, we kept our house had all our credit card debt dissolved and were able to start anew. Well, I had to close my business as part of the bankruptcy, so I immediately had a brain fart of a new business idea and started it. Ran up credit card debt again and refinanced our house again to pull another 50K out of our equity. This business did start to have some real success and I think could have made it, but I had to chase an opportunity to make it big! I sunk everything into this effort and lost everything. Boy did I crash and burn!
You have to give up on a bad business and move on to the next business idea. Most successful Entrepreneurs have failed multiple times before they succeed. The key is that they got out of the failures before they were completely ruined.