There’s a line I’ve carried with me my entire career. I’ve said it to my teams, to my partners, and more than a few times to myself in the mirror:
There’s only one difference between a loser and a winner, and that is where they decide to end their story.
Every winner you admire has been at the bottom. Not once — many times. The difference is what they did when they got there.
I’ve been at the bottom more than once
In my first solar business, we did $120 million in 2019, two years after we started. I had put about two and a quarter million dollars of my own money into it, plus every waking hour. At the end of that phenomenal year I was expecting my first payout.
Instead, I got a bill. From my best friend and business partner.
I looked at it and decided it wasn’t worth the fight. I’d built something once; I could do it again. So we started a new company.
Five days later, the world shut down.
Our entire model — sending people into homes, five a day, every day — stopped working overnight. We tried everything. Some of it worked a little. None of it worked like before.
Years later, a sales partner sued us and nearly bankrupted the business. The move from residential to commercial almost took us out on its own.
The obstacle is the stepping stone
I don’t spend much time dwelling on what I’d do differently. Not because I don’t make mistakes — I make plenty — but because I truly believe every obstacle is the stepping stone to where you’re going next.
If I hadn’t gotten that bill, I would never have built Power. If we hadn’t been sued, we wouldn’t have the business we have today. Each one forced the same question: Okay. What do I have? What can we do? How do we make an impact from here?
That question is the whole game.
Where does your story end?
The person who quits says, “I can’t do it. I’m done.” And that’s where their story ends — at the bottom.
The winner says, “This is the motivation to keep moving. Now I know where to grow.” And they keep writing.
If you’re in the middle of a chapter that feels like the end, hear me: it’s only the end if you decide it is.
Keep writing.