If your business is unprofitable, shut it down

If your business isn’t profitable then you should just go get a regular job. I don’t say this to taunt, or jeer, or gloat. I say this with love and care, hoping you’ll love and care for yourself. There’s no reason to be running an unprofitable business for a long time. 

You may have gotten into business to be able to spend more time being creative. Maybe you got in it because you love serving people. Maybe you started one to stand out from the crowd. This is why I’m saying there’s no reason to run an unprofitable business—you can do all of these things outside of business. You can create art any day of the week. You can volunteer any day of the week. You can express yourself in a thousand other ways. 

Western culture can make us feel that unless we’re making good money with our passions, we’re failures. This is such a terrible lie. You don’t need a justification to create art. You don’t need an excuse to volunteer. You don’t need a reason to be unique.

“My persistent and fundamental belief is that art is an expression of the human soul and need not ever, in any circumstances, justify its existence.”
–Joyce Carol Oates