I’ve always considered persistence one of my strengths.
For most entrepreneurs, I think it has to be.
You don’t build a business without hearing no.
You don’t make it through payroll scares, lost customers, bad hires, recessions, cash-flow problems, competitors, lawsuits, changing markets and all the other shit that comes with entrepreneurship by being someone who gives up easily.
You figure it out.
You find another way.
You get knocked down and get back up.
You keep going.
I’ve done that for nearly four decades.
And for most of my entrepreneurial life, I believed that was one of my greatest strengths.
I’m starting to recognize that sometimes it was also one of my greatest weaknesses.
We’re Taught Not to Quit
Entrepreneurs love stories about persistence.
The founder who was rejected 100 times before someone finally said yes.
The company that almost ran out of money before landing the deal that changed everything.
The entrepreneur who mortgaged the house, maxed out the credit cards and somehow made it work.
We celebrate those stories.
Hell, I’ve lived a few of them.
The problem is that we don’t tell nearly as many stories about the entrepreneur who kept going when he shouldn’t have.
Sometimes perseverance saves the business.
Sometimes perseverance just makes the hole deeper.
Knowing the difference may be one of the hardest lessons in entrepreneurship.
Persistence and Stubbornness Look a Lot Alike
I’ve been thinking about the difference between persistence and stubbornness.
From the inside, they can feel exactly the same.
Both say:
Keep going.
Don’t quit.
You’ll figure it out.
You’re almost there.
But I’ve come to believe there is an important difference.
Persistence keeps pursuing the objective while remaining willing to change the plan.
Stubbornness becomes emotionally attached to the plan itself.
That’s a distinction I wish I had understood better at different points in my career.
There have been times when I was so committed to making something work that I stopped asking whether it was still worth making work.
Those are two very different questions.
The Sunk Cost Trap
Entrepreneurs invest more than money into their businesses.
We invest time.
Reputation.
Relationships.
Energy.
Identity.
Years of our lives.
That makes walking away incredibly difficult.
The longer you’ve fought for something, the harder it becomes to say:
Maybe this isn’t working.
Because quitting doesn’t just feel like abandoning the business.
Sometimes it feels like admitting that all the time, money and sacrifice that came before it were wasted.
So we tell ourselves:
I’ve already put too much into this to stop now.
I’ve learned that can be a very expensive sentence.
What we’ve already invested is gone.
The better question is:
Knowing what I know today, would I make this investment again tomorrow?
That’s a much harder question.
It’s also usually a much better one.
Optimism Needs Guardrails
Optimism is another entrepreneurial superpower.
You almost have to be slightly delusional to start a business.
You look at the odds and somehow think:
Yeah, but I can do it.
I love that quality.
I don’t want to lose it.
But after nearly four decades of building businesses, I’ve learned that optimism needs guardrails.
There should be points along the journey where we stop and ask:
What would have to be true for this to work?
Are those things still true?
What has changed since I made the original decision?
Am I continuing because the opportunity still makes sense, or because I don’t want to admit I was wrong?
That last one can sting a little.
But Battle Scars usually do.
Quitting and Failing Aren’t the Same Thing
This may be the biggest shift in my thinking.
For years, quitting and failing occupied pretty much the same space in my brain.
Winners don’t quit.
You finish what you start.
You find a way.
There is tremendous value in that mentality.
Until there isn’t.
Sometimes shutting down a business is the right decision.
Sometimes ending a partnership is the right decision.
Sometimes firing an employee you’ve spent years trying to save is the right decision.
Sometimes abandoning a strategy is the right decision.
Sometimes saying “this isn’t working anymore” isn’t failure.
It’s leadership.
The real failure may be refusing to make the decision because your ego can’t tolerate what it feels like.
So When Do You Keep Going?
I wish I had a magic formula.
I don’t.
And anyone who tells you they do probably hasn’t spent enough time actually running businesses.
Sometimes the breakthrough really is just around the corner.
Other times there is no corner.
That’s what makes entrepreneurship hard.
But I’ve started asking myself a different set of questions.
Am I responding to evidence or emotion?
If I weren’t already invested in this, would I choose it today?
Has the objective changed, or does only the plan need to change?
What would someone without my emotional attachment see that I’m not seeing?
And perhaps the hardest one:
Am I being persistent, or am I just being stubborn?
I suspect I’ll continue getting that answer wrong occasionally.
That’s part of the deal.
Keep the Superpower
I don’t want to become less persistent.
Persistence helped me build businesses, survive difficult seasons and accomplish things that probably wouldn’t have happened if I’d been willing to quit the first time things got hard.
I want to keep that.
I just want Chris 2.0 to be a little smarter about where he applies it.
Maybe that’s one of the benefits of accumulating a few Battle Scars.
You don’t have to stop taking risks.
You don’t have to stop believing.
You don’t have to stop fighting.
You just learn to occasionally look up from the fight and ask:
Is this still a fight worth winning?
Sometimes the answer will be yes.
Dig in.
Keep going.
Figure it out.
And sometimes the answer will be no.
Learn the lesson.
Take the Battle Scar.
And go build something else.
Chris Shurian is an entrepreneur, speaker, mentor and founder of Bootstraps & Battle Scars. After nearly four decades of entrepreneurship, he shares the wins, failures and Battle Scars from his journey to help other founders navigate their own.