How To Jump From Crisis to Crisis
Entrepreneurship is often romanticized…
From the outside, it looks like freedom, passion, and purpose — a life on your own terms. But the truth is far more complex. It is not just about building brands or creating beautiful spaces. It is about managing risk, facing confrontation, and navigating constant crises.
Some businesses are inherently more crisis-prone than others. Capital-intensive ventures, for example — those that require large investments in equipment, machinery, or infrastructure — carry enormous financial risk. Labor-intensive businesses, with large payrolls and shifting schedules, are equally vulnerable. And then there are businesses with dozens of clients, multiple locations, or long-term contractual obligations: leases, supplier agreements, licensing deals. Each of these is a front where problems can and will arise. And they usually don’t ask for permission before showing up.
What they don’t teach you is that as a founder, you’re the one left holding the bag. Not your team, not your investor, not your customer. You. While employees can leave if it becomes too much, the entrepreneur stays — and takes the hit.
We often forget that customers only see the facade. The website. The storefront. The smiling brand. That’s the job of marketing — to present the best possible image to the world. The same goes for pitch decks. They’re not documents of truth, they’re persuasion tools. But behind the curtain? There are sleepless nights, landlord disputes, unexpected tax demands, broken machinery, resignations, lawsuits.
As a consumer, you’re protected — by law, by regulation, by policy. The EU consumer right of withdrawal, for example, protects individuals from unfair contractual obligations. Businesses, however, are left to fend for themselves. Governments assume that companies, no matter how small, are responsible enough to manage risk and read the fine print. But the playing field isn’t fair. Big firms use manipulative contracts and hire legal teams that small founders can’t afford to challenge.
We’ve experienced this first-hand. Solicitation fraud. Contractual manipulation. Fraudulent invoices. I remember vividly a time when, in the chaos of lunch service, a supposed marketing agency called my business partner claiming they had already spoken to me. They said all we needed to do was confirm an email. They pushed. He clicked. A form was filled out. And then the invoices came. Thousands of euros for a non-existent advertising service. We later discovered their real business wasn’t the platform — it was legal exploitation. They existed to trap small businesses, knowing they wouldn’t have the time, money, or mental space to fight back.
And that wasn’t the only time. I’ve dealt with landlords who wrote 50-page lease agreements full of legal traps. With employees who used legal loopholes to claim pay for time they didn’t work. In business, the battlefield is everywhere.
But that’s what entrepreneurship is. It’s not just about building. It’s about surviving. It’s about resilience. It’s about learning that not every demand is valid — unless a court says it is. It’s about fighting back, pushing forward, learning to negotiate, to speak the language of contracts, and yes, sometimes to manipulate back just enough to survive.
The biggest lesson? Crisis is the default state of entrepreneurship. So if you want to be an entrepreneur, don’t just prepare your logo. Prepare your mindset.
The real question is not whether you will get another crisis. The question is whether you are prepared for this next. Both managerial and emotionally.
Without losing your mind, your purpose, or your soul.
