As an ex-entrepreneur, it feels gloriously horrible to hang your boots. You are moved by the worn out ness of the heels. Yet it doesn’t quite look too tattered as you hang them. A sign that there’s more to where that came from. Once you are ready again.
But for now you gently close that closet door and sit on your laptop looking at Linkedin, Fastcompany, Indeed, Angel.co and whoever’s hiring. Maybe not you, maybe you are going to take a break. But I am going back to work. I want nothing more than to learn things I didn’t learn in time, and get a chance to own something again and see it to fruition.
The hustle is a frame of mind where there’s no way out. The only way out is to take a step. So you don’t wait, you take action. Sometimes there’s a burning sensation in your belly, all the way rising to your throat the other times.
How do I pay them? Do I have to downsize? Having the dirty conversations. Walking door to door to find clients. Going to great lengths to service them well for a repeat order. Repeat. Chasing defaulting customers for payments. Building a company culture.
When I look back, I realize I didn’t celebrate enough. I was gunning so hard, I was putting all of my life energies to move my company forward that I couldn’t stomp on the brakes. Slow down. But how? Money was running like a tap.
Sometimes that is a sign for a drastic measure – usually for a pivot or complete overhaul. But these signs need to be flagged for in advance, like red alerts – Road bump ahead. However, in my case I reached a point that said – No road ahead.
You don’t have money to pay the toll.
I remember downsizing. The agony of having to tell my tailors who had worked with me for a whole year, that it was over. I dreaded that day the most. I cried every week religiously, for a month until I took that decision and then some more before I mustered up the courage to have that conversation. First with my co-founder. Then with my lead tailor.
My tailor was empathetic. He’d seen me shrink in the last year. In his words I was ‘losing personality’. But I think he meant vitality. He said that it was not realistic to work with so much loss. He said that in losing to run this business, I had learnt to run one. Yes all that and more.
But its been a locked vault honestly after a stream of writing. A vault I don’t want to shake. I just pull up the relevant details for interviews because turns out this seems to be the most exciting part of my application. So I answer.
‘What could you have done better?’
‘What did you learn?’
‘What would you do differently?’
I think I am ready to dig deeper.