The most annoying thing when you are a solo company is that you are the only one doing the research, making the decisions, calling the shots. When you need a new website or anything tech, you can’t call the IT department and have someone whip it up. 

Well, I tried. I called myself, my IT department. And I made a bad call. I did the research (or so I thought), read everything (or so I thought) and I picked a platform. For this business, The Business of Handmade. 

And I picked the wrong platform. 

It’s a really good platform, for a different business than what I envision this to be. I looked at all the other sites using this platform and was blown away by how cool they were. Because I was so awestruck, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that they had completely different content and business models. 

After a few weeks on the struggle bus I came to the conclusion that this was just not the platform for my tiny little fledgling enterprise. ARGH. All that time! Fortunately no money, but still, I spent a stupid amount of brain energy trying to make it work and what a waste that was. After wasting that much time on a wrong decision I then proceeded to spend more time telling myself that it was hopeless, this wasn’t going to work, how could I have been so blind, why didn’t I read more? Etc, etc, etc. 

Is my business dead before it’s properly started? 

No. 

It was a wrong decision. I learnt a lot and if I ever have a business that fits the long-form written content model I know just the platform to use. In the meantime, I have to lick my wounds, take a deep breath and move to a different platform. 

Wrong decisions happen all the time. It is rarely the end of the world. The most important thing to remember is that no one is watching. No one other than you really cares. No one is paying attention. No one is going to remember in a month that this happened. No one is going to point fingers at you if you screw something up. 

The only person paying attention is you. 

If you do make a mistake or bad decision, trust me, your time is better spend fixing the error than beating yourself up about it. 

What is important is to acknowledge the error before it compounds. Me, I could have stubbornly held on, thinking if I just learn more then it will be OK, I can make it work. This is what is known as a “Sunk Cost”. 

A sunk cost is money, time, or effort that has already been spent and cannot be recovered. It should not be used to decide what to do next, because future choices should depend on future costs and benefits, not past losses.

A sunk cost fallacy is when someone keeps going just because they already invested a lot, even when stopping would be the better choice. Sometimes that cost isn’t money but time. For me, I’ve invested time to learn the new platform only to discover it isn’t a great fit for my work. 

Even though I have invested the time, continuing on this path will hinder my future growth. I will not waste more time on the platform, and I will not waste time beating myself up. Life moves on. 

So if you find yourself in a situation where you aren’t happy with something, maybe a product that isn’t selling after you spent ages developing it, packaging that just isn’t as lovely as you thought it would be, or a website that you’ve struggled with that just sucks, maybe you need to pull the plug and move on. It will not kill your business. It will not be the end of the world as you know it. 

It just might be the beginning of something way better. 

Take a look around. Are you hanging onto something that is a sunk cost that you would be better off moving on from?

Drop me an email and tell me what you are hanging onto.