A business that can’t fail

To be in business is to take a risk. 

In a capitalistic society, success is not guaranteed, or even likely. 

You could spend days and weeks coming up with your initial concept. You could spend months trying to find your first customers. You could spend years trying to grow the business to a point where it makes you more money than a normal job would. All without a guarantee.

With all this risk, is running a business even worth it? 

Let me tell you a story.

My first part-time job out of college was at a coffee shop called Mantra Coffee Company. It had opened near where I went to school, just a few months before I graduated. During my finals week, I dropped off my application, finished my finals, interviewed to be a bar-back, and got the job. I started a few days later. 

I only worked there for about two months before I moved to Venice Beach to grow my freelance business. But Mantra left a profound impact on me. It was at Mantra that I came to believe in the power of hard work. At Mantra, I understood that how you treat people matters—even when they’re annoying you. These lessons have informed my career since then. 

Recently, Mantra went out of business. After about eight years, they had to shut their doors. A few factors out of their control contributed to this. Of course, COVID was a big hurdle to overcome. The size of the college I went to had been decreasing rapidly, which took away a good portion of the coffee-enthused customer base. 

I bring up this story, because most people would view this as a failure. A business that was once thriving and vibrant had to close up shop. The owner, who cares so much about the community, didn’t quite have enough people from the community care about his business. That sounds like a failure, right? 

In an ever-pressing, growth-at-all-costs culture, maybe it is. But on a personal level, it was a success. Mantra changed me for the better. It helped me pay some of the first real bills of my adult life. Mantra created a welcoming space for the community for most of a decade. And it brought in meaningful revenue that the owner live off of for that time—not to mention the challenges and growth that certainly enriched his life. 

Does that sound like a failure? 

Everyone needs to make money somehow. And when compared to the alternative path the owner could have followed (a normal job to pay his bills), Mantra was a smashing success. It had such a greater impact on hundreds of lives, and served hundreds of thousands of cups of coffee to people in that time. It helped people pay their bills and learn job skills. 

So don’t worry about failure. 

Because even eventual “failure” can still be a great personal success.