When Do You Call Your Startup A Failure?

I have had this lingering thought “When should I call my startup a failure?”

Now, I did not have this thought in the beginning of building my startup. As time went on, and so many things have happened. I crossed many milestones in this build, that it's like answering someone's question “what do you do?” My answer. Oh nothing, not much. Keeping back the gazillions of ups and downs, the bazillions of craziness, the stress compounded by a trillion pounds of pressure, the countless dollars I pumped into an idea that most likely has no chance at all, oh yeah, that's my normal life. So it's easier to smile and say “Oh nothing, not much.”

When should I call my startup a failure? Let's see.

• When I conceived the idea and spent 3 months thinking about it. If I had had called it a failure then, the words you read right now would not have happened.

• When I walked into that college class and the teacher was obese, she stood there talking about health and fitness, and I could have stayed in the class, and been a cardiac rehab specialist by now, but I looked at her and thought, she needs my product. So I walked out and started building my startup. If I had quit my startup then, that's what I'd be.

• After writing out track after track of the truth of what happens in the mind of a food addict. If I had quit then, the 350 pound man I'm helping now would never know me, and would not be getting my help.

• If I had called it a failure after a man promising me he would build me a website, and taking 3K from me, yet never did a thing. Then I would have never met Jonah Lupton on Twitter, and he would never have led me to Chopdawg Studios. (The best people in the world to build your website)

• If I had called it quits the million times I wanted to, then my startup would have failed.

You see, there is no point of failure unless you give up and walk away. Even though I have not reached the success that I believe is success, if I had walked away at any of the points above, then that's when a startup fails. It only fails when you walk away from it. The startup needs you to build it, and nurture it, and if you walk away when you think it's a failure, well that's when, it is a failure.

What if you never walk away? What if you go though a million stresses, and years of everyone looking at you like, “What the hell are you doing? Get a real job and work like the rest of us.” Oh yeah that pressure is always looming, especially when most of the people in your life only understand, get a skill or profession, and do that, don't follow some wild dream. If I had walked away at any of those times it would be just like what has happened to all the other startups and ideas I have had, they all failed, because I walked away. I quit, I gave up.

This time however, I'm not walking away. I am staying in the thick of world of uncomfortable uncertain feelings. I'm standing in the face of scrutiny that my idea is just a bunch of shit. I'm staying when months and months go on, and I only make a little bit of headway.

The truth is, when I think of when I should call my startup a failure, the answer always is, if you don't give up, it's never.