For over a month now I’ve been building a SaaS with the intent to market it to a $200 billion a year niche.

As I was working on it last night, I ended up uploading a wrong set of documents to my coding software and lost about a weeks worth of work.

In the moment, I felt like I had lost everything and even considered starting from scratch. But after a minute of contemplating my next move, I just said “Challenge accepted” (albeit, in a pretty sad tone), and picked up at the most recent spot I could.

It got me thinking about how there are people out there who truly have lost everything and were forced to start from nothing.

Hopefully, it hasn’t happened to you, or never will happen, but there are a lot of these cases floating around. Take Steve Jobs for example.

Despite founding Apple in 1976, Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 due to a power struggle between him and the company’s board CEO John Sculley.

At the time, Jobs had a leadership style that didn’t really sit well with the board. He was unpredictable, a little cruel at times, and intense. Because of this, Sculley went to the board and convinced them to boot Jobs out and make him the CEO of the entire company.

And he succeeded.

Here Jobs was, having lost almost a decade of work, back to nothing.

However, instead of calling it quits, he started a new company called NeXT—a web-based software for computer workstations for higher education and business markets.

Later, he bought Pixar which as the time was a small animation studio. They went on to create Toy Story and became a massive success in the film word. Meanwhile, Apple started to struggle without Jobs, and in 1997, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Randomly, Apple offered to buy NeXT and offer Jobs his position as CEO back. And before long, he began to launch new products like the iMac, the iPod, and the iPad, turning Apple into now a three-trillion dollar company.

Now this was a guy who lost everything and hit the ground running.

It just comes to show that no matter what you lose, you still have the opportunity to win it all back. As long as you’re willing to accept the fact that you’ve lost and there’s still a chance to win, there’s nothing you can’t do.

And if something like this ever does happen to you, remember, there are other people out there who have come back from a lot worse.

Take it from someone who lost a grain of salt compared to Steve Jobs.

Until next time,
Isaiah Taylor

Dive Deeper

What I’m Currently Reading - I’m now reading Deep Work by Cal Newport. A book on how to find meaning through work and master the flow state.

Quote Of The Week - “The people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.” — Steve Jobs