How to overcome business failure

The business I dreamed up and worked on for three years has failed. I am having trouble recovering from this.

I developed, founded, and funded ToHonorThem.com, a site where people can share love, appreciation, and honor with people who have made a difference in their life. The site was a huge labor of love taking more than three years from concept to launch. A large amount of personal funding was utilized and countless hours. I had done a lot of due diligence on the site, and felt there was a natural human tendency that would cause people to want to use the site to honor or thank someone.

The truth is I spent most of our available funds to develop the site and did not have very much left to promote the site. In fact we only had around nine months of advertising funding at minimal levels.

I made some good decisions like using Drupal as our programming platform which included many fundamental things like an email system, a registration system, etc. And, by the grace of God I didn't borrow anyone's money. Also, by the grace of God I only incurred minimal personal debt to fund the site.

The trouble has been, that I have done enough advertising to drive thousands of visits to the site, and have only had a couple of hundred people send an honor through the site. And really, most of the honors sent through the site are not even from advertising but from friends and family who had followed our journey and believed in the mission and purpose of the site. I am occasionally surprised by a new honor on the site from someone I don't know, and that is very exciting to me but we are talking ten a year or less, and most are private honors no one else can enjoy.

The site is still online today because I can afford to keep it running now that it is built. However I do not have any money I can justify spending for enhancements. The good news is I am going to be able to keep the site online and functional for the foreseeable future, but the bad news is the site is a failure on many fronts.

I know that friends and family will say this site has blessed people and if just one person were blessed by this wouldn't it be worth it? If you knew how much money I spent on the site I think you would understand when I say that is a hard pill to swallow. However, my challenge is bigger than money we invested or time we invested. My lasting challenge is this is a true failure I carry around inside. This is a wound in my soul.

This has not been a short recovery journey and I am far from better. The impact on my well-being and confidence is big. A big impact on me has been in the area of future entrepreneurship. I have many business ideas and I do not pursue them.

I would not say this failure wound effects my confidence in the areas of family living, spiritual life, or work/career. I would say it has had only minimal impact to these other areas except perhaps in my own psychology and personal inner life.

You may ask me, would I do it again? I don't know. The good news is this is a theoretical question which I don't have to answer. I will never have an opportunity to redo those decisions.

I will say looking back on the experience it taught me a lot, it was very rewarding at the time, I got to finish something big, and I am glad it has blessed a few people. But, to me this is a death that has happened in my life. I don't think time heals all wounds.

What I really have to do in this situation is hold to the anchor of my life, the hope of my family, the Person I can really trust. I have to turn my thoughts, feelings, memories, disappointments, and crushed dreams over to God. This will not be a situation I can give to God just one time, any more than someone who has lost a loved one can pray just once and give their pain to God and be cured. What I have to do is pray and trust God with this and even thank him for this, which is something my wife taught me recently, and do this for as long as it takes to "get better".

God really is my anchor, He is my life solution, and my foundation. I am very used to getting Him involved in big and small issues daily – and He always helps me in real and tangible ways. I have to trust Him now and bring this to Him until I am cured.

I normally like to blog and have a positive message. Certainly the things God has done in my life have been very positive. This situation is just hard. I know I can trust God. I do- really. I think there's something to be said for trusting God for a long period of time even against how you feel, what you have experienced, and in the face of your own self-doubt. I think we are given opportunities in these long-lasting difficulties to either be mad at God, doubt God, or trust God against all that we see and think. I think some of these situations are ones that turn people against God. But if we knew how much God loved us, how faithful He is and if we could see the bigger picture we would know we can trust Him. It doesn't mean He is going to eventually waive his magic wand and solve our issue. The problem, failure, and disappointment may not be resolved – ever. So, the choice before us is to trust that He is good even when we don't understand or walk away from Him.

"Lord, I have nothing else to say here – I have covered this in sufficient detail. I choose again to say you are good and trustworthy. I once again give my disappointment, pain, and the deep hit to my personal confidence to you and say... please help me."

May my transparency in this post help someone. It was very hard to write.