Wars stall pipelines. Admin loops kill momentum. Chaos hides monsters. Every entrepreneur faces dry spells — here’s how to outlast them.

Everybody likes progress and success. Nobody likes setbacks and dry spells.

But let’s come straight to the point: The road to success always leads through setbacks and dry spells. No matter what you’re involved with, there is no way around them. In this article, let’s not look at the daily frustrations, but at the longer dry spells you will have to endure over and over again in your entrepreneurial life.

Growth Stalls

When the war in Iran started at the end of February, markets reacted globally. At Yonder, the B2B SaaS company I co-founded, we’re very active in the aviation sector. Guess what, our sales pipeline in aviation stalled when the war broke out. Projects were shelved due to the high fuel price, RFPs were delayed, and trade shows were postponed.

Growth is the essential rationale for any entrepreneur. When it suddenly stalls, you are in trouble: Investors won’t talk to you anymore, your board becomes nervous, and suddenly you start questioning yourself whether you’re doing anything right.

It’s hard to motivate your team and yourself through such a scenario, yet it happens. The war in Iran wasn’t the first sales dry spell we witnessed; it was similar during COVID-19 and when the war in Ukraine started. You will have to grit your teeth and keep going.

Admin Loops

Change of scene. You’re trying to incorporate a new company or to close a financing round. Everything is ready — your first customer just committed, or your investors have pledged the money you need to close the round. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s go!

Not so fast. You forgot my most intimate enemy: Administration. You can buy a car online with your credit card or a house without seeing a notary, but you can’t incorporate a company or close a financing round within a day. Such acts are an administrative back-and-forth, as they require different confirmations and forms, and each player insists they need that other confirmation from that other party first.

Those admin loops turn for weeks, and they usually occur when you have absolutely zero time: Incorporating a company or closing a financing round are always urgent.

What can you do when you’re trapped in an admin loop? Absolutely nothing other than gritting your teeth through the back-and-forth.

It’s A Mess

Back to daily business. I’m sure you have taken over a job, a project, or any other role in your professional life where you met pure and utter chaos: Unorganized teams, buggy software, overdue projects, and budget overshoots.

Speaking for myself, whenever I take over a mess, I dive right in and try to clean it up. Yes, I might be a little overstructured, but structure has served me well to manage multiple projects without burning out.

Every time, after a few weeks or months into the role, when I think that I have finally gained the upper hand in the mess, I come across an unremarkable stone, and I decide to lift it. There is a monster underneath it. Welcome back to the mess. It will take you another few months to kill the monster before you can enjoy the benefits of your hard work.

And Suddenly…

Even after the darkest night, the morning will come.

Suddenly, traction is back. Deals are awarded, and your sales funnel expands again. You’re working on multiple opportunities simultaneously, and with that, the positive energy is back. You also found out that your competitors didn’t close any new deals in those months scarred by war — you questioned yourself in vain.

At the same time, all the required confirmations for your company incorporation or financing round arrive in the mail (yes, those are still delivered as paper originals).

To finish off a good day, your projects suddenly move forward after months of clean-up work. Everything falls into place.

Conclusion

Don’t be overconfident when the dry spell ends and the windfall starts. Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster, and you need to be ready to switch from dry spell to windfall (and back) within the flick of a second.

Longer dry spells are part of the game, and you shouldn’t let yourself be frustrated or demotivated by them. So what can you do to cope with them?

First, I recommend keeping a broad pipeline of activities and opportunities. There is a fair chance that you can bridge a dry spell phase in activity A with the windfall in activity B, and vice versa. Multiple activities make you more resilient, and they reduce the risk of frustration because nothing moves forward.

Second, even the hardest challenges can be overcome when gritting your teeth and soldiering on. “Never give up” is more than a motto; it’s an attitude of life.