How to Come to Terms with a Failing Project

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Why am I Doing This to You?

In the life cycle of an entrepreneur, the vast majority of your projects aren’t going to be hits. Most of them aren’t going to be ones that you make vast sums of money from. They’re not going to be ones that explode beyond your initial estimates. Most of them probably aren’t even going to be ones that you tell other people about. This said, you really, really need to get accustomed to dealing with it when things haven’t gone as you expected them to.

Even if you put your all into these projects – big lumps of your savings, early mornings, late nights and lunch breaks – sometimes there’s just no saving them. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. The last thing you want to do is keep investing your spare time and funds into an idea that doesn’t deserve it.

I’ve had countless websites, product ideas, and services that I thought were going to be ‘The One’ and I had to abandon ship, because they weren’t going how I wanted them to. It was very difficult to part with some of them, but the only reason I managed to find my feet was by shedding the bad and cracking on with the good.

Let me break down what you need to do with a failing project:

Confirm It’s Really Done

Before you do anything, you need to be absolutely certain that you’ve got a failing project on your hands. We’re not just talking something that’s not quit hitting its targets; we’re talking about a project that’s hindering your growth. This has to be something that isn’t growing – with no sign of better days ahead (without divine intervention).

This has to be something so demotivating that it makes you feel as though you’re losing your skill for finding business opportunities (which you know you’re actually really good at). Run things past someone you know and trust. This is where a mentor really comes in handy. Even if you don’t know any business owners, an unbiased voice is great to make you see sense.

Once the assessment is complete, accept it (probably the hardest part) and it’s time to move on. Whatever you do, make sure you’re content with the decision. Don’t go back unless something significant happens. I once killed off an ecommerce brand for a good two years, but then an influencer posted my product (nearly 2 and a half years after I sent it to them) and it got 18,000 likes on the photo. I rebuilt the site that day, but slept and realised it wasn’t worth relaunching it, because the hype would fade. Accept your decision and stick with it.

Be Honest with Everyone Involved

Failures accumulate, especially if this idea is beyond just yourself. You might be in a partnership. You might be outsourcing people to take care of some aspects of it. If you know that things aren’t right, chances are that this will have trickled into other areas too. Rather than panicking over things getting worse – perhaps as money dwindles – accept where you are and make moves to shut things down in a way that causes the least disruption to others.

I was employed at an agency that slowly ran out of money. The business development team got increasingly desperate to keep things afloat, until it was beyond saving. The team fell apart because no one could see a positive future, and they actually started working on their own things; distracting themselves from work and potentially making things worse. We were constantly told that things were fine, and believed it. Everyone would have been far better off without having to go through the uncertainty of redundancy, rather than being in the dark of the true state of the business.

Figure Out How to Retain Leads

Customer and client leads are so valuable. If you’re trying to serve a purpose within a particular niche and you’ve managed to win over a decent number of people behind your ideas, you’re crazy if you let them all go. With an ecommerce business, you might do a closing down sale to squeeze out a little bit of extra revenue, but you don’t want that to be the end of the journey.

Use the communication channels you have – whether it’s social media or a newsletter – to get the word out about something else you’re working on that may appeal to them. Thanks to GDPR, you can’t just go and shift a customer email list from one business to another without consent, so if you have some way of telling your old customers that you’re setting up shop elsewhere (and they can get some sort of a similar experience), let them know the connection and why they should be interested.

Learn from It

Extract the goodness from it and apply what you learned to another project you’re working on, or start planning a brand new one. Nothing excites me more than working on a new, promising idea. I’m sure most people like me feel the same. You could revitalise something else you’re working on – giving it some new life with inspiration from your now-defunct project. Alternatively, you can channel all of your energy into something brand new, with a lot more promise.

Were you more thorough with the business plan? Did you put more effort into the online marketing? Whatever you know you did well with your other project, figure out how you can apply all of that to something else. If you haven’t got any other ideas in your sights yet, there’s no shame in admitting it and just jotting down the good things you did and waiting until something else comes along. You can’t force greatness after all.