Taking the Punch and Moving On

Taking the punch is never easy, or fun, but it is important to know how to take it and move on. As entrepreneurs, you could almost say it’s our daily bread. Knowing how to move on after taking a punch, or losing is of utmost importance for all entrepreneurs and founders or anyone for that matter. Character is defined by how you act when you have a tail wind and how you act when you have a head wind. Tail wind is easy. Everything is going your way, pulling in your direction, and you don’t really have to do anything but enjoy and take advantage of the brief period in which you find yourself. Head wind, however, is the opposite. Everyone and everything is against you and it is how you act, and how you manage to execute in those circumstances, that defines the outcome. Entrepreneurs live in the latter situation. Your company is literally born with all odds stacked against it. You as an entrepreneur are fighting a battle alone against competitors that might be 1,000 times bigger than you in terms of human capital and capital. No one knows who you are, your customers even less. And at every turn, you face challenges or issues you have to resolve. Punch after punch. Day in, day out. What a life. In retrospect, most of us must be psychopaths wanting to do this willingly. And even worse, we enjoy it. If that doesn’t sound like some sort of self-harming type of stuff to you, then I don’t know what is. 

Taking a punch in the face is the name of the game. Curiously enough, if you are great at it, your odds of winning are much higher. Who would have thought. Being great at taking a punch doesn’t mean you enjoy it. The opposite actually. It means you hate it but you understand it, you learn from it, and you grow. There are just way too many situations where your odds are against you that you just have to get used to it, and not take it personally. Fundraising is a fun example. It is a game where (for 99 percent of entrepreneurs) it means taking a punch multiple times a day. No after no after no. It is incredibly tough on the soul, the spirit, and self-confidence. But taking it personally is what kills you. It is a game designed to make you lose. So knowing that going in, knowing how to take a punch or lose, is what is going to keep you sane throughout the process. Listen to the why’s, the reasoning, the feedback. Your job is to take it to heart (to some extent) and move on to the next one, always improving and iterating. If, like most of us, you take it personally, you get angry, you let it affect you, then you end up losing even more. Because it will affect you in your next pitch with an investor. You will bring that “aura” of anger and bitterness with you, and it is usually noticeable. Trust me. Obviously, if you enter with that, the outcome will be the same as the last time. Another L, another punch in the face, another No. It’s a vicious circle that is only broken by knowing how to take the punch. And the only way to take it is to learn from it, and move on. 

Right now, it might sound like I am preaching the good old “everyone gets a participation medal.” I am not. I am all for winning and having a winner’s mentality. That means that you should hate losing and that you do anything to win. You most certainly do not go into any situation with the mentality to lose. I think you should do anything to win. But, you should not let losing affect you, you should not let a punch affect you. You should know that a punch or a loss represents opportunity. That’s the kind of mentality that I am preaching. An opportunity to learn, grow, iterate, become better, and to eventually face the same situation again, and win. That’s what great entrepreneurs do. That’s what winners do. And that is what you should do. And eventually, there will be less losing. Less punching in the face. Fewer situations where you have the odds stacked against you. And that is when you’ll know that you are becoming a great entrepreneur, that you are doing something right. At least for a moment. The tail wind as mentioned. The brief period where everything is going your way. And then back at it again with the head wind. Only this time, you are better armed. You know how to accept the punch, move on, and do it quickly. So that you can get to the next tail wind as fast as possible. The bad news is that there will always be head winds on your journey as a founder. The good news is that you’ll be a master of moving on. And that gives you speed. And speed is the ultimate weapon we as entrepreneurs have against our slow moving incumbent competitors.