Got fired or demoted? Want to unleash a little small business startup revenge? 

Before you make plans to become an entrepreneur, think about your career motives.

Is your desire to start a small business clouded by payback and vengeance?

I’ve even been passed over for promotion, by people who were less qualified and competent than I. 

So I can relate to the real human feelings of revenge and bitterness that can rise out of the depths of a career disappointment. But the discontent alone does not give you an excuse to retaliate by starting a small business.

Because the knife you are wielding to stab your old company or boss in the back could be the fatal blow to your own small business dream, before it even starts.

Revenge will destroy your small business startup dream

Considering that 50% of small businesses fail within the first five years, who can realistically maintain resentment and animosity for half of a decade?  To create a new business venture using a negative emotion as the impetus for a long-term dream is difficult to sustain and hazardous to the health of your business.

There are enough barriers, set-backs and obstacles waiting for you as a new entrepreneur. You need a positive attitude and high levels of emotional intelligence to help you thwart the unforeseen adversity waiting to greet you as a business owner.

It’s impossible to plant corn in concrete, and expect a bountiful harvest

As an entrepreneur, your small business is a seed that has to be continuously nurtured, watered and cultivated. Planting this seed in a negative environment filled with anger and retribution can doom your precious startup in the early stages of its genesis.

The purity of an entrepreneur’s idea to solve real problems and make other people’s lives better, easier or happier can’t survive when it is planted in a stone cold, hostile and bitter environment filled with revenge.

Don’t fool yourself; anger is hard to conceal

Your customers and employees can feel the revenge, brewing underneath the shiny and brightly colored surface of your entrepreneurial veneer. Jerry Seinfeld’s infamous NBC Soup Nazi episode contains the perfect negative, small business archetype for any overbearing, revenge-filled entrepreneur who thinks that customers can’t feel your bitterness and anger.

To prevent the toxic emotion of revenge from traveling from person to person and damaging your small business startup, use these 4 revenge-busting strategies to “relax, relate and release”:

1)    After a major disappointment at work, give yourself six months of recuperation and reflection before you start your business. Take a vacation. Rest and relax. You are not ready to start a new revenue-generating idea. Give yourself time to heal and regroup. You deserve it. Every new idea or venture that I started without first healing myself mentally and emotionally from a loss or setback, ALWAYS failed.

2)    Write a twenty page business plan. It will reveal your motives, better than any career counselor ever would. I believe in the power of a well-written and researched idea. Every detail of your small business startup from sales to marketing and operations and funding, must come from you.

     It’s hard to stay bitter, when you are willing to spend hours upon hours pulling statistics and working your dream from the ground up. (But you must write this plan yourself. Do not hire a writer to complete this exercise. The writer can revise and consult, but must not create the first draft.)

3)    Let go of your anger quickly, so you can attract a wealthy investor. Very few investors will give money to someone who is perceived as an angry jerk, even if you are a genius. I believe in bootstrapping, but a revolutionary idea needs money, and lots of it. So if your attitude stinks, because you are whining and complaining about the past, kiss any thoughts of money from angel investors and venture capitalists goodbye.

     A serious funder will bet on a positive winner with a good idea that needs a little tweaking, than risk funding your amazing idea that’s fueled by a desire to payback those who have wronged you.

4)    Think long and hard about the ideal and positive employees and business partners you need to succeed.  Do you want your receptionist to answer the phone with a bad attitude? Think it’s a good idea for your sales manager to be sarcastic with precious and fragile new customers? These dreadful employees are drawn to any motives of revenge and can help your business fail, quickly.

     You need the best employees money can buy. Most winning employees and freelance consultants are allergic to bitterness, revenge and regret. Those are the winners your small business startup will require to succeed.

You can't forecast the future when you are consumed with the anger of your past 

According to the Small Business Administration, more than 649,700 new firms opened in 2006 and an estimated 564,900 closed that same year. If you don’t want to be a part of the small business closure statistics consider this fact: a small business requires future postulations and positive predictions of the needs, habits and desires of its customers, to survive. Negativity and revenge will cloud your bright future.

Don't start a fragile new business, with a knife of revenge plunged into its' young vibrant heart

Give your small business startup all the love and respect it deserves. While some business people are ferociously competitive and vindictive in their business dealings,  I promise that you’ll have plenty of opportunities to experience newfound feelings of anger and revenge.

If you've been honest with yourself, and followed my tips above, you're fully prepared to face any challenging negative emotions associated with your career's past. Now you can move forward with your small business startup filled with unbridled optimism, and no fear of failure.