• Survey
  • Book Becky to speak
  • The book: Small Town Rules
  • Shop Local video
  • SaveYour.Town

Small Biz Survival

The small town and rural business resource

A row of small town shops
  • Front Page
  • Latest stories
  • About
  • Guided Tour
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • RSS

Don’t call it a failure just because it stopped

By Becky McCray

Stop sign

 

I think it’s time to stop calling things a failure just because they come to an end. This comes up because I asked a friend about a project in her town that rehabbed downtown buildings.

“It’s not really active anymore,” she said with more than a note of failure in her voice.

Let’s check that sense of failure against a record of half a dozen rehabbed buildings back in use today. I can’t call that a failure.

What about your festival that doesn’t happen any more? It mattered at the time. That revitalization project that kind of fizzled out? It made a difference while it was going.

Plenty of good projects run their course. Maybe you couldn’t get enough volunteers anymore. Maybe it just didn’t make financial sense to keep going. That doesn’t diminish what it was while it existed.

The SBA will count your business as a failure if it ever stops. I won’t. If you served customers and you learned something while doing it, it was a success in those ways.

When you lower the barriers to entry and encourage hundreds of new tiny businesses to sprout, you’re also inviting a lot of failure. Most of those hundreds of tiny businesses will stop at some point. Unless you want the would-be entrepreneurs to be discouraged by being labeled as a failure, you’re going to need to start redefining what you call it when you stop doing something.

The coming and going of projects and businesses is like breathing; it’s a natural process.

Instead of talking about how something failed, let’s start saying, “I’m really glad we had that when we did,” or “I’m glad you tried that.”

  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
  • Downtown is your town’s core: How to make your case - February 22, 2021
  • Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns - December 10, 2020
  • In an economic crisis, spend your brainpower before your dollars - November 25, 2020
  • Video: How to fill empty car dealership buildings for the holidays - November 6, 2020
  • How has 2020 changed the challenges rural small towns face? Tell us here - October 20, 2020
  • The Idea Friendly Method to surviving a business crisis - October 6, 2020
  • Join me for the Rural Renewal Symposium online Oct 13 - September 26, 2020
  • Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
  • Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
  • Huge vacant buildings: grants to renovate? - June 9, 2020

October 3, 2017 Filed Under: entrepreneurship, failure, rural

Wondering what is and is not allowed in the comments?
Or how to get a nifty photo beside your name?
Check our commenting policy.
Use your real name, not a business name.


Don't see the comment form?
Comments are automatically closed on older posts, but you can send me your comment via this contact form and I'll add it manually for you. Thanks!

Howdy!

Glad you dropped in to the rural and small town business blog, established in 2006.

We want you to feel at home, so please take our guided tour.

Meet our authors on the About page.

Have something to say? You can give us a holler on the contact form.

If you would like permission to re-use an article you've read here, please make a Reprint Request.

Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.

Shop Local

Buy local buttonReady to set up a shop local campaign in your small town? You'll need a guide who understands how we're different and what really works: Shop Local Campaigns for Small Towns.

Best of Small Biz Survival

What is holding us back? Why does every project take so long in small towns?

How any business can be part of downtown events by going mobile

Concert-goers talking and enjoying the evening in downtown Webster City, Iowa.

Why do people say there’s nothing to do here then not come to our concerts?

Retailers: Fill all empty space, floor to ceiling

More of the best of Small Biz Survival

Copyright © 2021 Becky McCray
Front Page · Log in