I Built 12 Products in 10 Days. Got 1 Sale. Forgot About It by Thursday.
Why the solopreneurs who survive aren't smarter - they just hold more pain.
A few weeks ago, I got excited about a side project. It wasn’t even in my niche — just an idea that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.
So I sat down and built twelve tools in ten days.
Launched them, ran Facebook ads, and waited…
I got one sale from an email list. Forty-seven dollars. After the ad spend, I was about ninety dollars in the minus.
I looked at the numbers, closed the tab, and by Thursday, I was already building something else. (This was the project, if you are curious https://getcancelkit.com/)
I’m telling you this not because I’m proud of it. I’m telling you because five years ago, that same situation would have played out very differently inside me.
The failure part isn’t new. I’ve been failing since I was twenty-two.
My first website was about relationships.
I don’t even remember what I thought was going to happen with it. I just knew I wanted to quit my job and somehow make money online.
It didn’t work. Obviously.
After that came a long line of projects.
Marketing
Campaigns that went nowhere.
Direct sales.
Ideas that felt brilliant at two in the morning and embarrassing by
noon.
One after another after another.
But here’s what’s interesting — back then, none of it really affected me. And I think the main reason is that I was young and naive enough to genuinely believe it was all going to work out. Not because of evidence. Just from being twenty-two.
This is the power of being young. You don’t overthink it. You just do.
And I wasn’t alone in it.
I had three business partners. Four young guys with one shared dream: never work
for anyone else. We didn’t have much else going on. No kids, no real responsibilities.
Just our dream.
That combination of young confidence and brotherhood created a kind of armor. I could tolerate anything because I didn’t fully feel it.
Fast forward to now. I’m in my thirties. I’ve had one significant success along the way — a project that actually worked and made enough to give me space.
Space to stop and ask what actually matters to me.
That’s how I found myself studying ontological coaching, brain-based coaching, and eventually Gestalt psychotherapy at one of the most advanced training programs in Europe — a place people fly in from across the world to study at.
And here’s what I didn’t expect.
The therapy training changed how I handle failure.
Not because someone taught me a technique or gave me a mindset trick. Because the training itself puts enormous pressure on your nervous system.
Group therapy sessions where you’re pushed right to your edge.
Waves of emotions you can’t think your way out of.
Hours of sitting with discomfort that has no quick fix.
Two years of that, and something shifted inside me.
I became more patient. More tolerant. And not less sensitive — actually more.
I feel failure more deeply now than I did at twenty-two.
But my capacity to hold it grew faster than the pain did.
There’s a concept in psychology called the Window of Tolerance.
It’s the zone where your nervous system can handle what’s happening without shutting down or falling apart.
When too much hits you at once — stress, uncertainty, emotion — you leave the window. You freeze. You react. You quit.
When the window is narrow, even a small failure can feel catastrophic.
When it’s wide, you can hold a lot at the same time. Business pressure, relationship tension, health worries, financial uncertainty — all of it, without collapsing under the weight.
And here’s what I’ve come to understand about entrepreneurship:
The ones who survive aren’t smarter. They’re not more talented. They don’t have better strategies. Their window is just wider.
They can sit in the silence after a product launch that flopped.
They can look at zero sales and not go into “I’m not good enough.”
They can fail twelve times and start the thirteenth thing on Thursday.
Not because they don’t feel it. Because their nervous system can hold it.
Nobody really talks about this. The business world treats resilience like a personality trait — something you either have or you don’t.
But it’s not the truth. It’s a nervous system capacity. And it can be trained.
Not with affirmations.
Not with cold showers and morning routines.
With real work. The kind that happens when you sit with another person — a coach, a therapist — and practice staying present with discomfort instead of running from it.
That’s what actually expands the window. That’s what real personal growth looks like. Not the Instagram version.
I notice it now in my daily life. I work more hours than I used to — not because I force myself, but because I can. I try more things, launch more experiments, and take more actions that could lead to failure.
And most of them do lead to failure. That’s just how it works.
But it hits different now. The capacity grew, so I can hold more. I can build twelve products that go nowhere and start the next one without drama. It wasn’t always like that…
That’s not hustle.
That’s not discipline.
That’s a wide window.
If you’re running your own thing and every failure stays with you longer than it should — if you catch yourself avoiding the next move because the last one still hurts.
It’s not a strategy problem. It’s a capacity problem.
Your window needs some work.
This is actually why I built the https://alexzah.com/flow-state-method/.
It helps you notice what’s pulling you out of flow and gives you a daily practice to stay in it. Because the wider your window gets, the more you can try.
And the more you try, the closer you get to the thing that actually works.
— Alex Zah