If you get into business you’re going to experience loss at some point. You’ll lose the account, the inventory, your best player, or serious bucks. If you’re giving it all you’ve got, eventually, you’re going to lose.

Loss is part being innovative, progressive, human. @DanielleLaPorte (Click to Tweet!)

FLOGGING DEAD HORSES

It’s not the losses in business and life that will keep us down for so long, it’s clinging to them.

When we allow regret to grip us, we will value money more than we value freedom, we will choose ego over growth, and we will settle for less than amazing in order to save face.

Newbie entrepreneurs have a special knack for trying to salvage and make do. We get so attached to our investment of money and time that we might sell our selves short: we launch crappy websites that we don’t totally love because, “We sunk a couple grand and countless hours in to it, and after all that we can’t tell the designer that we don’t like it.” (Yes, you can.); we launch a product that we’re not super proud of because we can’t muster the courage to tell our significant other that, “Ooops, this gizmo is crap and I need to go back to the drawing board…and take out another bank loan.”; Or worse, we spend way too long trying to sell a product that just…isn’t…selling. Let go.

Of course there are times to recoup, liquidate, and recover what you can–but those tactics work best when they serve you in moving on and letting go.

You’re going to lose. You’ll pay too much, get hosed, choose the wrong damn software or the wrong partner.

Don’t make it worse by trying to make do with something that was wrong to begin with.

I’ve lost friends in business. Thankfully. I needed new ones with better vision. I needed to learn what it meant to truly partner. I’ve lost a few hundred thousand dollars, some of it in small bites of bad decisions and luck of the draw, and some of it in a phat fell swoop. I decided to turn that kind of pain into high octane motivation to earn more than ever. I’ve canned projects shortly before launch, overpaid for incompetence, and scrapped over-thought design concepts. I chalk it up to the price of innovation.

The expense of absolutely loving what you’re putting out into the world is most always worth it.

Assume losses will happen. Know that losing or “wasting” money is part of the creative process. Roll with the loss and you’ll not only recover faster, you’ll find a new edge of creativity and resolve within you…to go get more of what you want.

Danielle LaPorte is the outspoken creator of The Desire Map, author of The Fire Starter Sessions (Random House/Crown), and co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan. An inspirational speaker, former think tank exec and business strategist, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over a million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality”, and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes.

You can also find her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter @daniellelaporte.

Image courtesy of 401(K) 2012.