One of the biggest killers of momentum in entrepreneurship is failure. Luckily, there is one way to stop failure from becoming a setback. That is by having resilience in your business.
We’re all emotionally affected—at least in some way—by rejection or setbacks. But it’s those of us who are resilient enough to continue driving forward in our business in times of doubt or uncertainty who end up succeeding in the long run.
While all entrepreneurs agree that resiliency is absolutely essential in entrepreneurship, it’s easier said than done. No-one really talks about what it means to have resilience in business and how to achieve it. So I will.
Resiliency is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness”.
In other words, resilience in your business means getting back on the horse. Maybe instead of riding off into the sunset, you’re fighting your way through overgrown thorn bushes in the dark of night. But at least you’re riding.
Earlier, I was chatting with a freelance medical writer who’s considering enrolling in The ‘Thriving & Free’ Medical Writer Program at Prospology—Jacci.
For Jacci, resiliency is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, she’s someone who doesn’t give up easily: “When I decide to do something, nothing can stand in my way”. However, like many freelancers, Jacci also has a tendency to overcommit herself and, as a result, experiences burnout a lot.
“I read that only 10% of freelancers make it to the $100k+ mark,” she shared. “You have to have the drive, the tenacity, and the backbone to do it. But some people don’t have the stomach for struggle, or to not care what others think.”
This got us onto the topic of self-awareness and how difficult it is these days to share how we’re actually feeling without feeling judged.
Filtered self-expression is not a recipe for growth or success.
As business owners, we all want to come across as confident authority figures. We do our best to carefully craft our message, conduct ourselves professionally, and generally make a great impression on others.
And this is important! Because anyone in your network (or general vicinity) could end up becoming a client or refer a potential client to you, if they know, like, and trust what you have to offer.
The major downside to this instinctive approach is that it encourages us to filter what we actually think, feel, and believe. This not only weakens our message, diluting our brand, but also makes us afraid to be vulnerable—the secret sauce for genuine connection and relationship-building.
By not wanting prospects to think we’re weak, stupid, or incapable, we hide the fact that we’re open to learning new things. By keeping our insecurities and challenges to ourselves, we close ourselves off to mutually beneficial collaboration. By filtering out all of the negative emotion from our content, we come across as dull, predictable, and unrelatable.
This externally portrayed, fake resiliency is a recipe for stagnancy in business.
“Fake it ’til you make it” is a temporary solution to imposter syndrome that keeps you stuck.
When you lie to yourself and pretend you’re resilient, outwardly, it doesn’t make you actually resilient.
No amount of external validation will ever be enough to cause a permanent shift in your self-belief or ability to keep going when things get tough. That has to come from within.
Paradoxically, a lot of the time we can only make these kinds of internal mindset shifts when we have others to:
- bounce ideas off of to see what’s real and what makes sense,
- listen to us rant so we can get out of our heads and think more clearly,
- relate to and empathize with our struggles, and/or ultimately
- provide solutions we may not have considered.
The only way to grow is to express yourself authentically, which often requires rawness and vulnerability. By admitting you’re struggling, you can identify the underlying problem and seek help. This is a measure of strength and true resiliency. It’s also what differentiates successful entrepreneurs from the riffraff.
Going it alone in business means you’re significantly more likely to give up.
Everyone has a breaking point. There’s only so much we can hold inside, avoid, or be in denial about before we lose our composure and our business and those around us begin to suffer.
Over time, this kind of suppression and avoidance can cause irreparable damage to our relationships and call our livelihoods into threat.
In Jacci’s case, this means chronic over-working and pushing loved ones away. “I’m hustling 7 days a week for at least 12 hours a day because I’m writing and researching, plus trying to do bookkeeping and emails and figuring out how to market, and my boyfriend and I broke up because I’m basically a ghost.”
Trying to navigate her life and business in “survival mode” all the time only serves to make Jacci feel scared and alone. We can learn a lot from Jacci’s story because it’s been our own story at one time or another.
The simple fact is: the more you push and struggle on your own, the more stressful entrepreneurship becomes and the more lasting damage it causes.
This kind of pressure can lead to us:
- abandoning our dreams and ambitions altogether,
- making sacrifices we may live to regret, or
- otherwise feeling disempowered and alone.
One effective way to avoid or combat this is to find a supportive community that allows you to freely express how you feel—the good, the bad, and the horrifically ugly—and help you get through it.
In this way, taking a community-based approach will remove the burden of having to do it alone and help you build resilience in your business.
Resiliency comes about through consistent, focused effort and the support of others.
By identifying and addressing the root cause(s) of your struggles, you’ll develop and strengthen skillsets to help you succeed by tackling them head on.
In practical terms, this may include things like:
- practicing resourcefulness,
- strengthening your personal brand,
- crafting authentic, story-based content for your business, and
- connecting with prospects on a deeper level.
For example, the Prospologers Community is a place where new freelance medical writers can seek support from experts in branding, marketing, sales and negotiations, contracts, networking, LinkedIn, invoicing, client relationship management, medical communications, journalism, scientific manuscripts, medical information, advertising, website design, mental health, psychology, authentic transformation, entrepreneurship, and so much more.
There’s no such thing as a “stupid question”. And with so many paid moderators, no question goes unanswered and no-one gets left behind. The second a student’s horse throws them off and they feel the sharp scratch of those thorns, several coaches are already on standby (with bandaids in the form of proven strategies and words of affirmation) to help them back onto the saddle.
Whatever your industry, you can always find an existing community of like-minded people ready to cheer you on and help you win in business. And if you can’t, start your own!
A supportive community can be the difference between burnout and continued success.
In summary, resiliency is both an attitude and a practice. To build resilience in your business, we need to think less about making it seem like we’re resilient and more about actively building it. One of the best ways to achieve this is by finding a safe and supportive community in which you can vent in a healthy and productive way, addressing the root cause of your issues and tackling them head on.
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