How to Bounce Back From a Business Setback: The One Reframe That Changes Everything
If you’ve just had a bad quarter — a client you didn’t expect to lose, a team member you couldn’t afford to lose, a tariff or a regulation that’s wrecked the model you spent two years building — you don’t want a pep talk. I know.
You want to know how to bounce back from a business setback when, honestly, you’re not sure you’ve got it in you any more.
You’re tired. The voice in your head is louder than it was a year ago. The conversation you’re having with yourself about what this setback means about you and your business is not a conversation you’d ever let one of your team overhear.
And the worst part? You’re the bottleneck on your own recovery. Not because you’re not working hard enough. Because you’re stuck in the meaning you’ve given the setback, and that meaning is colouring every decision you make next.
I want to tell you about this week’s podcast guest. Because he has a way of looking at setbacks that, once you’ve heard it, you can’t unhear.
His name is Richard McCann.
The five-year-old who reframed the worst thing imaginable
Richard was five when his mum was murdered. By Peter Sutcliffe. The man we now call the Yorkshire Ripper.
I’m going to keep typing that sentence even though it’s hard, because the next bit is the thing.
Richard, as a five year old, the morning after the police had come and told him and his sisters that their mum was “in heaven” and they weren’t going to see her again, sat in a children’s home and had a thought he can still recall in detail today, fifty-two years later.
The thought was this. My mum is no longer suffering. And me and my sisters are going to get a fresh start with my dad.
That’s not denial. That’s not magical thinking. That is, as he now knows the technical name for, an explanatory style. It’s a phrase from Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology. It means: the meaning you apply to what’s happened to you creates your reality, much more than the event itself does.
Two people can lose the same client and tell themselves two completely different stories about what it means. One of them collapses for six weeks. The other one, the same week, signs a better client they wouldn’t have had the bandwidth to chase before.
It isn’t the event. It’s the story.
How to bounce back from a business setback when you’re already in the red
Richard has a phrase for this that I love. He calls it the bounce-back-o-graph.
You’re in the green. Then you’re in the red. Then you’re in the green. Then you’re in the red. That’s life. That’s business. There has never been a business owner alive who only had green periods.
The two things he’s worked out over fifty years of doing this consciously are these.
One — you never stay in the red. Sometimes you need professional help to climb back out. Sometimes you need a friend. Sometimes you need quiet. But there is always a way back.
Two — and this is the harder one — you never stay in the green either. Savour those periods. Notice them. Because another setback is coming. That isn’t cynicism. That’s reality. The business owners I coach who handle the red periods best are the ones who didn’t pretend the green ones were the new normal.
When you internalise this, something shifts. You stop treating the current red period like a personal failure, and you start treating it like the shape of the work.
Post-traumatic growth — the bit nobody tells business owners about
You’ve heard of post-traumatic stress. You probably haven’t heard of post-traumatic growth. It’s the work of two researchers called Tedeschi and Calhoun. The opposite of PTSD.
The premise is simple. People don’t only get damaged by setbacks. Often, they grow because of them. They become more, not less. They become useful in ways they couldn’t have been before the thing happened.
This is the bit Richard does in his resilience workshops, and it is the single most useful thing I’ve taken from his episode for my coaching clients. He gets people to write down their first big setback. Then he asks them, “how did you grow?” And they always find something.
The relationship that ended led to the partner you ended up with. The job that didn’t work out gave you the skill you sell now. The recession that nearly killed your business taught you the financial discipline that means this year’s wobble doesn’t scare you.
And here’s the part that matters for how to bounce back from a business setback. Once you have done that exercise and you can see in writing that you grew because of a previous red period, the next red period hurts less. You trust the pattern now. You’ve got evidence.
Why you’re the bottleneck on your own recovery (and how to stop)
Here is the bit I want you to take into this week.
The setback isn’t the bottleneck. The setback already happened. It’s in the past. It is, technically, no longer something you can do anything about.
The bottleneck is the meaning you’re giving it.
If the story you’re telling yourself is this means I’m not cut out for this, then every action you take this week will be downstream of that story. You’ll hesitate. You’ll undercharge. You’ll soften the difficult conversation you should have had two months ago. You’ll be tentative with the team and they’ll feel it.
If, instead, the story is this is a red period, I have been in red periods before, I always grow because of them, and this one will be no different, then your week looks completely different. You’re calmer. You’re decisive. You’re willing to look at the numbers honestly. You ring the client. You have the conversation.
Same setback. Different story. Different week. Different year.
(If you want a structured way to spot which corner of your business is being held back by the meaning you’ve given a recent setback, my Upgrade Audit walks you through it in one focused session.)
What this looks like for you this week
Two small things, both of them free.
First, pick one setback from the last twelve months. Write it down. Underneath, write down two things that have already grown because of it. One of them will be in your business. One of them might be in you as a person. Both count.
Second, take the meaning you’ve been giving your current red period — write it as you’d say it out loud to yourself at 11pm on a bad Sunday. Then write the second version, the Richard McCann version. This is a red period. I will grow because of it.
Read the second one back when you open the laptop on Monday.
That is, in the end, what Richard means when he talks about explanatory style. The meaning you apply to the situation creates the reality you live in this week. And as the owner, the meaning you choose is the most leveraged thing you do all month.
Stop being the bottleneck on your own bounce-back.
Richard McCann is the guest on this week’s ActionCOACH Podcast.
Want a 5-minute honest read on which corner of your business is still being held hostage by an old setback? Take the Score Card Quiz.