Most people think wealthy people avoid financial setbacks. We don’t. We refuse to let one stop us.
When a deal goes bad, broke folks play the blame game. It happened to me. It wasn’t fair. And then they never get back up.
Wealthy business owners take the hit, take the lesson, and go again.
If you want to recover from a financial setback, it comes down to one question, one support structure, one direction, and one way of seeing downturns. Get a pen and paper out. Let’s go.
Not Every Hit Is a Setback
First, let’s qualify what a setback actually is.
For some of you, it’s lending a friend a couple hundred dollars you never see again. For others, it’s a lost job, a failed deal, or a lawsuit. As you grow, your capacity to handle these grows with you.
Separate the economy from your own transactions. Right now, in 2026, every entrepreneur I know is rebuilding their website and social media around AI. That’s not a setback. That’s the weather. You plan around it.
A true setback is a transaction that went wrong. I once signed a deal to put my brand on billboards across the United States and Canada. It was a 65/35 split. The 35% owed to me never came.
So do you sue a huge firm? Or do you move on? We had generated plenty of leads and made plenty of sales, so I moved on. Several colleagues in that same deal walked away from the industry entirely.
And here’s the setback almost nobody counts. Most of you lose money every single year because you don’t pay attention to your taxes. To me, that’s more tragic than any money I’ve lost defending my reputation in court.
“Most of you lose money every single year because you don’t pay attention to your taxes.”
Why “So What, Now What?” Beats the Blame Game
So what, now what? I’ve lived most of my life by that question.
So what if it happened? Now what are you going to do?
That doesn’t mean you ignore the past. You take its lessons and do your darndest never to recreate them. In Yes! Energy, I wrote about a lawsuit that came with an ugly public smear campaign. I got my team in place and asked only one question: So what, now what?
Bob Proctor taught me two rules for any setback. Keep it as short as possible in time. And don’t let it cut so deep that it paralyzes you.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. One morning in 2002, our entire database disappeared four years of names, addresses, and emails. No backups. Most people would have stopped right there.
I love old-school paper, and that saved us. We pulled every business card, registration card, and order form I had kept, matched them against our QuickBooks sales, and rebuilt the database by hand. It cost money. That database was our business, and we got it back.
The real question in any setback is simple. What are you willing to do?
“So what if it happened. Now what are you going to do about it?”
How to Protect Your Energy While the Lawyers Work
Most of you don’t have enough support around you, emotional or tactical. That’s where a setback turns into a permanent stop.
My first big wave of lawsuits came from a third-party vendor. They bought my book, The Millionaire Maker, in bulk and gave it away to real estate investors, claiming I was part of their deal. I had nothing to do with it. The deal turned out to be a scam, and the litigation landed on me.
I had to hire lawyers in multiple states because every state needs its own. I got out of every single case. I paid nothing beyond legal fees, and you never get those back.
Here’s the structure that kept me moving:
- Put a buffer between you and the drama. I placed a legally minded assistant between the lawyers and me. She handled the admin. My energy stayed face forward.
- Stay in the strategy. Don’t assume your lawyers will handle it all by themselves. I met with them once a week for the strategic calls.
- Compartmentalize it. Put the negative energy in its own box. Then make a bunch of money.
- Call your mentors. When I called Bob Proctor, upset, he welcomed me to business for the first time in my life. He told me he got sued all the time, and so do the investors on Shark Tank. People still do business with them.
Another mentor told me something I later put in Yes! Energy: “You’re not in business until you’ve been sued.”
Watch who stays, too. I’ve seen business owners go through a divorce or a bankruptcy and watch their circle split in half. Notice who’s around you when you’re winning, and who backs away when you’re not.
“Put the negative energy in its own box. Then go make a bunch of money.”
Sell Your Way Out, Don’t Shrink Your Way Out
How did I make back every dollar I paid those lawyers? I sold my way out.
When most people get hit, they shrink. They cut back, pull in, and tell themselves they can’t take the bruises or the heat. Shrinking feels safe. It takes no skill and no energy to get small. And it locks in the loss.
During the 2008 downturn, someone advised me to hit the bankruptcy button and let everything go so there was nothing left to sue. I refused. That’s calling foul, taking your ball, and going home.
Selling moves you forward. Put your energy into new money: a new product, a new service, a new path. You will have losses throughout your career. Your job is to make sure new money comes in faster than the losses go out.
Say yes, then figure out how.
“It takes no skill and no energy to get small.”
Why a Downturn Can Make the Wealthy Richer
When wealthy people hit a setback, they retreat a little. They reset. Then they watch for the opportunities the downturn creates. The setback motivates them to go again.
They also blend their risk. They run several projects so that a strong one can support or merge with a weaker one. No single deal can take them down.
Beginners do the opposite. They do one real estate deal. When it falls through, they code themselves as a failure and never try again. We’re coming up on 20 years since the 2008 crash, and I know people who got burned then and have never gone back into the market.
You fall off your bike, you get back on. That’s how you build money muscles. As my teenage daughter would say, a lot of you are soft. The only way to build those muscles is to hang around people who already have them.
“You fall off your bike, you get back on. That’s how you build money muscles.”
Start Today
Here’s your week:
- Name your real setbacks. Write down the transactions that cost you money, not the economic weather.
- Ask the question. For each one, ask: so what, now what? Write the next move beside it.
- Build your buffer. If you’re in a dispute, put someone between you and the admin so you stay face forward.
- Pick one new-money move. Choose a product, service, or offer you can sell in the next 30 days.
- Check your taxes. If you can’t say what you overpaid last year, that’s your quiet setback.
- Take the Financial Personality Quiz. It places you in one of four financial traps and gives you a video on how to get out of yours.
My goal for you is simple: make more money, pay less in taxes, invest in alternatives, and create generational wealth. Setbacks will come. Make them something you roll through, not something that stops you in your tracks.
Never compromise. Never give up.
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