Sometimes letting go is the bravest decision you'll ever make.
Nine years after opening my business, I knew it was over.
I just wasn't ready to admit it.
Barbara and her husband helped me reach that decision.
They could see what I had been struggling to accept.
The numbers no longer worked.
The business wasn't making enough money to survive.
I had fought for it as long as I could.
Before I closed the doors, my son and I went camping at our favourite family campground.
Looking back, I think I needed one last weekend to breathe before everything changed.
The decision had already been made.
I simply hadn't lived it yet.
When we came home on Monday morning, there was no more time to think.
There was only work to do.
I sold the kitchen equipment.
I contacted my customers.
Then I picked up the phone and called each of my employees, one by one.
That was the hardest part.
Each phone call felt like I was letting someone down.
I cried.
After that, I had to tell my children.
That was hard too.
They had grown up alongside my business.
They had watched me work long hours.
They had made sacrifices without ever being asked.
Closing the business didn't just affect me.
It affected all of us.
Years earlier, after my father passed away, I had received an inheritance.
The first thing I did was pay off our mortgage.
Then another dream began to grow.
After twenty-three years as a computer programmer analyst with the phone company, I wanted to build something of my own.
I wanted the freedom to make my own decisions.
I wanted to create something that belonged to me.
Looking back, I sometimes smile and think maybe I should have left my husband before I left my career.
Of course, hindsight is a wonderful teacher.
At the time, I was making the best decision I knew how to make.
I spent a year researching franchise opportunities before finally taking the leap.
And for many years, I loved it.
I loved creating something from nothing.
I loved the freedom.
I loved building a business that was mine.
One of my favourite memories is of my son having his own little office.
Every morning he would come to work with me before I dropped him off at school.
Those are memories I will always treasure.
But I also made mistakes.
I avoided the accounting because I hated it.
I didn't pay enough attention to whether there was enough demand in our city.
At first, my inheritance helped keep the business going.
Later, after my divorce, my share of the proceeds from selling our home gave me a little more time.
Eventually, even that wasn't enough.
For years, I carried shame about closing the business.
I believed I had failed.
Not because I hadn't worked hard.
Because the dream hadn't turned out the way I had imagined.
One day, my children told me they would never want to own a business because of what they had experienced growing up.
That was difficult to hear.
I had hoped they would remember the courage it took to build something from nothing.
Instead, they remembered the stress and the sacrifices.
It reminded me once again that people can live through the same experience and carry away very different stories.
For a long time, I wondered what life would have looked like if I had stayed in my secure job.
Would retirement look different?
Would life have been easier for my family?
Those questions don't have answers.
I made the best decision I could with the hopes, dreams, and information I had at the time.
Owning that business changed me.
It taught me how to lead.
It taught me responsibility.
It taught me empathy for every small business owner quietly carrying the weight of payroll, customers, employees, and uncertainty.
When I later became a college instructor, I realized something.
I wasn't teaching entrepreneurship from a textbook.
I was teaching from experience.
I understood both the excitement of building a dream and the heartbreak of letting one go.
For years, I believed my business had failed.
I don't believe that anymore.
The business didn't become what I dreamed it would.
But the person who built it didn't fail.
A thought to take with you
Have you ever held onto something because letting go felt too much like admitting you had failed?
What if you measured the experience by what it gave you, rather than by how it ended?
Something come to mind?
If you'd like to share it, I'd love to hear what this story made you think about.