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No one wants to talk about failures and setbacks because it’s not cool. But every successful entrepreneur know it’s inevitable. But how should an entrepreneur handle setbacks? Below is a story of how an aspiring entrepreneur had a major setback. The response and what happens afterwards is up to her.

Background

I’m a business plan coach for high school students. I help a non-profit NFTE (Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship) by giving students advice on how to create winning business plans. This time around, I had a student who wanted to win- bad. She embodied the entrepreneurial spirit. The first time I worked with her to look at her plan, it wasn’t very good. The numbers did not make sense, neither did her marketing strategy, etc. She essentially did not really have a business. And it was going to be tough to even get her to the competition.

Through working with her multiple times, myself and another entrepreneur got her to the competition. She was the only student to email me multiple times to get help on her plan. No one else has ever done that before. Right away, I saw that hunger to win. That’s the ones you really want to help. All in all, I would say her business plans went through 10 different revisions. I would guess the other students had maybe 3 revisions.

Not only was she working with me to look through the numbers, she was working with another entrepreneur on the presentation part, twice a week. I was very confident she was going to win the whole competition, or at least advance to the next round.

Setback Came

We saw her present her plan in front of judges. It wasn’t perfect but it was definitely good. I saw how the plan got better each time she had someone else look over it. Then the moment came when we found out whether she would advance. I could tell she was really nervous and heck, wanted to hear her name called.

It didn’t come and she instantly broke down into tears. I been to enough competitions before and I have never seen that. For one, I don’t think many students take it seriously because it’s just a class in high school for them. But this girl put in all her efforts. It was devastating to a 17-year old girl. That must have been one of her first major setbacks.

How Do You Respond?

I was thinking how many people in the world never put their all in something because they don’t want to have their hopes crushed. But as entrepreneurs, that’s like a daily occurrence. But yet, no one talks about it. The first thing we want to hear about an entrepreneur is how successful they were, but not what setbacks they had to overcome. The setbacks are really the moments where the entrepreneur is made.

I did my best to give a motivation talk, but it crushed me too. I been through setbacks so I know how to handle it but when you see the setback in someone else, it’s really hard to take in. There isn’t anything you can do to make the situation better because it’s up to them to get back up. You can only help them once they made the decision to get back up after they fallen.

This girl wanted it bad. It’s a blow but not the end. If she continues down the entrepreneurial path, she will be successful. The reason is because she has dealt with setbacks at a very young age. Like I said before, not many adults have setbacks like this. So for her, she’s already way ahead.

It’s How Fast You Get Back Up

At this point, it’s up to her to make a decision- do I get back up or not? That’s a decision that many of us will have to make when we face setbacks. I had many, one of them not being able to get into an entrepreneurship program I felt I was very qualified for. I decided to get back up, apply the next year, and got in. And the director later told me that I was the perfect candidate because I embodied the entrepreneurial spirit in that I did not give up.

Be prepared, be persistent.

[Image: LoneGunMan - Richard Elzey]