Every founder has a bad day.
The pilot doesn’t work. The term sheet falls through. A key hire leaves. The customer says no.
So we ask every founder we interview: what helps you carry on when things get hard? Here are the mantras and mindsets that have kept them going.
When it feels impossible
“If it was easy, somebody else would have done it.”
— Samantha Anderson, CEO & Co-founder, DePoly
Ash Stott, Co-founder of Rhizo, sees difficulty the same way: “It wouldn’t be worth doing if it wasn’t difficult.”
Abijit Aji, VP of Financing and Treasury at Gradiant, keeps it even simpler. Asked what habit gets him through a big deal, he answered in one word: “Perseverance.” For high-stakes negotiations, he borrows from Carl Sagan: “If you want to make apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
When you need to hit reset
For Michael Oster, Co-founder of Ionic Desalination, failure is part of the process, but dwelling on it isn’t. “Fail quick and fail cheap, and we will only be mad if you blame someone else,” he says. “If today has been a tough day, go home and push the reset button – tomorrow must be better. If it is not, lather/rinse/repeat.” Matthias Friese of XPRESS Ventures puts the same idea in two words: “Fail forward.”
Chris Rea of AESSEAL gives you permission to have a moan, as long as you come out of it with something to fix. “Find reasons to be cheerful. It might have been great before, but if it’s terrible today, deal with today… Do all your whining and get as upset and wound up as you feel like, but at the end of the day, no matter how bad it is, find reasons to be cheerful, find something you can improve.”
You’re allowed to have a bad day. Just don’t let it become a bad week.
When the road is long
Climate companies rarely get built overnight, and progress can be painfully incremental. Andres Anijalg of Roofit.Solar has relied on the same Malaysian saying for 15 years:
Slowly, slowly catch your monkey.
Sævar Einarsson of Flexdrill puts it in engineer’s language: “One step at a time. I like thinking in modules, where I can break down a seemingly unachievable goal into clearly defined criteria for success.” Santiago de los Reyes took his from Atomic Habits: “Every day is 1% more.”
And Anthony Agnew keeps it practical: “Do the hard thing first. I think the most important thing is just to do the next thing, whatever is in front of you, just take that step and keep going.”
When you need courage
Sometimes the problem isn’t knowing what to do. It’s finding the nerve to do it.
“What if we fail? Right – but what if we fly?”
— Benny Shoham, Co-founder & CEO, SCUDOdoc
Moby Ahmed, Co-founder of Ambercycle, reminds himself that “you’re as ready now as you ever will be.” Babajide Oluwase of EcoTutu says to “be stubborn on vision, flexible on the details.” And Cory Sanderson, CEO of Sustaera, keeps his brutally simple: “If you want something done right, do it yourself.”
For Ansie van Dyk, who is building off-grid homes in South Africa, courage comes from looking sideways at other founders: “There are founders already doing this in harder conditions than mine. If they found a way, I can find a way.” Sometimes courage is borrowed from someone who has already done the thing you’re afraid to do.
When you need perspective
The business is only one part of a much bigger picture, and on a hard day that is easy to forget. Yaky Yanay, CEO of Pluri, says the answer is to “be involved in missions that are bigger and more important than you are. If this is the case, you will never give up and never want to stop, you will recover quickly and make sure you do what you have to do.”
Others carry that bigger picture in a single line. For Jop Blom, “the best way to predict a better future is to create it.” Ben Brown of Going Green Media aims to “leave the earth better than you found it.” And Jerome Cochet of Goodcarbon is “an optimist by nature – that’s my mantra – ‘in the end, things will be alright.’”
For Josh Domingues, Founder & CEO of Flashfood, it’s personal. “Hold on to happiness” is tattooed on his arm, a line from a song on his late sister-in-law’s playlist. “You’ll have ups and downs, there’re going to be good times, there’re going to be awful times, but you decide the outlook you have in any situation and even when things get really difficult with the business; take a step back. Remember that we’re trying to do a really hard thing and we’re trying our best.”
Mitchell Possada of High Impact Capital Partners measures success differently: “Leave a wake of smiles, laughs, and people feeling loved.”
And one of our favourites comes from Jacob Tompkins, Co-founder of the Water Retail Company: “‘That’ll Do, Pig.’ Which is what the farmer says to Pig when he’s rounded up the sheep and done a decent job. To me, it sums up contentment and playing your part.”
Find yours
Read back through these and you’ll notice that almost nobody talks about winning. They talk about tomorrow, the next step, the people around them, and a mission bigger than the company.
What keeps founders going isn’t having no bad days. It’s knowing what to tell yourself when one arrives.
If you don’t have a line yet, borrow one. Jacob Tompkins’s is a good place to start: on the days you’ve done what you could, “that’ll do.”
