Short YouTube monologue by Ryan Deiss using a personal anecdote (a failed edible-underwear business) to answer a viewer question about whether they can "burn down" a business and start over. The core advice: you can exit, but be clear about what you are "exiting to"—otherwise you risk trading one problem for another and feeling lost or depressed after the move.
All right. And so those are the five big lessons learned on why my edible underwear business failed. Hey, Ryan, I hate my business. Can I just burn it all down and start over? You can, but are you sure that the next thing is going to actually be better? I think this is a challenge that we face a lot of times as business owners. We don't necessarily love where we are right now, and so we fantasize about this glorious, perfect unknown. And so we decide that we don't like our business today, but the next thing we start, it's going to be so much better. Here's the reality. If the next thing was going to be so much better, you probably would have done that thing first. So anytime somebody's thinking of exiting where they are right now, whether it's because things are bad or because things are good. So if somebody's saying to me, I think I wanna sell my company, or I think I wanna shut down my company, my question is always the same. Okay, you wanna exit. I understand what you wanna exit from, but what are you exiting to? If you're not crystal clear on what you're exiting to, then you probably shouldn't make that move. When we sell our house, it could be for good reasons or bad reasons, but in general, we know where we're going, and. And all too often as business owners, we sell our company or we shut down something and we don't know where we're going, and then we feel homeless and we wonder why we're so sad and depressed. So can you burn it down? Of course you can. It's your company. You just gotta ask yourself, what am I exiting to? And is that actually better?
