Back in Business’ genesis began as personal journeys of discovery for its founders towards making sense of the experience that entrepreneurs go through when they fail. We encountered no shortages of platitudes like ‘fail forward’ or ‘don’t worry, the best is yet to come,’ as well as went through dozens of books on how to build a business better next time. All of these were generally more frustrating than helpful when you are face down in the mud and looking for something with depth and real, tangible meaning. What was really missing was the personal recovery side of things; the answers to questions like “what now?” or “what’s next for me?” and “how do I actually get there?”
We struggled with the frustrations of most people around us wanting to celebrate the highs, when you are growing and succeeding and riding the tiger, but when you fall, people are quick to move on to the next flavour of the month. It often feels like no one wants to go through the hard and patient work of helping you back up, and harder still is knowing how and what things to do to rise again in a healthy and productive way. We struggled with trying to re-enter the workforce, fragile bank accounts, and strained relationships.
Learning from failure is one of the most rewarding journeys anyone can take, and for startup founders it can be a daunting challenge as it often involves the entire spectrum of life in turmoil – the psychological, emotional, spiritual, physical, financial, social, and others. As we were learning that process, we began to ask the question “how many others go through this, and how lonely is that process for them?” “If we didn’t find anything specific to entrepreneurs and their recovery and learning journeys, what would it take to make so that others could rise stronger and faster than we did?”
The response was overwhelming from the community that this was important to people – people starting and worried about failure, people who have been there, and people going through the thick of it right now. Thus, Back in Business was born. We began to synthesize months and months of our own research, collate discussions from dozens of entrepreneurs who had been through their own failure journey and come out the other side, and drew from academics and thought leaders in the spaces of business and psychology.
We are now sharing the early results of all that work and building out support structures for entrepreneurs. We continue to grow our knowledge each day as we hear from more people growing through their journeys.
Welcome to the community!
