I've Nearly Quit My Business 7 or 8 Times. Here's What Nobody Tells You About That.

Most founders talk about wanting to quit once. Maybe twice. They tell it like a dramatic turning point — the dark night of the soul before the breakthrough. It makes a clean story.

Mine isn't a clean story.

In eight years of building, I've had that moment roughly once a year. Seven, maybe eight times. It wasn't always the same crisis. Different years, different problems. But the feeling was the same every time: a quiet, heavy question that sits in your chest — is this actually worth it?

I find that hard to admit. Not because I'm ashamed of it, but because when you're in those moments, the last thing you want is for the people around you — your clients, your team, your investors — to know how close to the edge you actually are.

There's a version of the founder story that gets told on stages and in podcasts that goes something like this: I nearly quit once. But I dug deep, pushed through, and came out the other side stronger.

I've told a version of that story too. It's not a lie — the grit is real. But the framing can be. Because what it implies is that resilience is a one-time test you either pass or fail. You either have the stomach for it, or you don't.

That's not been my experience. For me, resilience has been a practice. A repeated choice, made in different circumstances, with different stakes, and honestly, with different levels of certainty that it was the right call.

Wrong hires. That's one of the hardest to stomach, because it's not just a business mistake — it's a people mistake. You've brought someone in, invested in them, trusted them, and it hasn't worked. Sometimes that's on them. Often it's on you for hiring too fast, for ignoring a gut feeling, for prioritising speed over fit.

Eradicated cash reserves. There's a specific kind of anxiety that comes from watching a bank balance get dangerously low. It's not just financial — it's existential. Every decision starts to feel like it could be the last one. The margin for error disappears.

Days away from closing the business. I've been there. That's not a metaphor. There were moments when the timeline was genuinely short — where, if certain things didn't move in the right direction quickly, it was over. Those days are clarifying brutally. Everything becomes very simple when the alternative is walking away from something you've spent years building.

And through all of it — the recurring theme was this: I wanted to quit.

Not once. Repeatedly.

I'm sharing this because I think there's a real gap between the stories we hear and the reality of what building a business actually looks like over time. Most people underestimate how often it repeats. They expect the hardest moment to be early, or singular, or at least spaced out enough to recover fully before the next one arrives.

But the challenges compound. A bad hire leads to a culture problem. A cultural problem costs you, clients. Losing clients eats the reserves. Depleted reserves limit your options. And suddenly you're not dealing with one crisis — you're dealing with the accumulated weight of several.

That's when the thought appears. Not in a dramatic way. Usually quietly, often late at night: maybe this isn't the thing.

I won't dress this up into a five-step framework, because that's not what it felt like. What it felt like was simpler and messier than that.

I kept putting one foot in front of the other.

That's not a motivational poster line for me — it's a literal description of what happened. When things seemed out of reach, when the next move wasn't obvious, when I didn't feel confident or in control, I just kept moving. Not perfectly. Not always in the right direction. But moving.

I believe this: where there's a will, there's a way. I've tested that belief more times than I'd have chosen to. And it's held, not because I'm exceptional, but because I refused to let it break.

If you're building something and you've had the thought — not once, but multiple times — that you might be done with it, that doesn't mean you're failing. It might mean you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

The founders who make it aren't the ones who never wanted to quit. They're the ones who kept going anyway. Not because they were certain it would work. Not because they had more information, more money, or more support. But because they chose, in enough of those moments, to keep going.

You can build something real from that. I know, because I have.