don't give up on your dream

My brother is a screen writer. Every good story is a drama and is essentially either a comedy or tragedy: either the hero gets the girls or dies.

In a classic three act story, the first act introduces the protagonist and his or her goal. In business, this is an entrepreneur with a dream, a new goal, a powerful new idea.

In act two, the antagonist appears, as the central conflict of the story: man versus man, man versus nature, etc. In business, despite how it looks, the central conflict is almost always man versus himself. I'm usually the one in my own way, somehow.

The third act is the resolution of the conflict: either the hero-entrepreneur succeeds or fails.

The second act of a business cycle is where we tend to lose faith and forget there is a good chance we are living in a comedy, even though the struggle is not so fun.

Many people give up at this point not knowing how close they were to making it.

After all the efforts and struggles to survive the second act, we might as well give it all we've got and succeed or fail cleanly, with no lagging thoughts that we left something out on the field, to wonder for the rest of our lives what might have been.

This is a no lose situation. I either prove conclusively that my new business model works or prove conclusively that is does not work. Either way I move on to the next level.