Here are the hard-earned emotional and tactical lessons that helped me navigate a struggling franchise, rebuild my mindset and become a more resilient business owner.

Entrepreneurs like to tell stories from the mountaintop, looking back, about how they decided to make the jump, the precarious middle ground, the gritty climb, and the eventual glimmer of success before making it big.

And let’s be clear: successful entrepreneurs are inspiring. Hearing their stories can be encouraging and motivational.

But oftentimes, stories like these can gloss over the very real fear, missteps and failures along the way that taught them important lessons about how to be a business owner. Because earned success isn’t all victory laps and reminiscing – I would know. As a small business owner with nearly a decade of experience in franchising, I found (and still find) entrepreneurship a journey with hard lessons.  

For context, in 2017, I was staring down the barrel of a franchise business that was losing money after a slow launch and had recently been laid off from my corporate job. I was stressed, at my wits’ end, and knew I needed to reevaluate my approach. I also had a growing family, so failure was not an option. The lessons I learned during this period were highly formative and, in hindsight, fell into two clear categories: Emotional and Tactical. 

What I discovered was that the emotional lessons were all about mindset. These lessons forced me to zoom out and reevaluate who I was and what I thought it meant to be an entrepreneur (spoiler: it was not the image I had in my mind).

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