Resilience Isn’t What You Think It Is

And That Matters for Entrepreneurs

May 27, 2025

Everyone loves to talk about resilience. It’s the golden trait of every founder highlight reel, every leadership post, every gritty “I kept going” narrative.

But here’s the problem: most people are talking about different things - and all calling it the same thing… resilience.

One founder I interviewed for the No Bullsh*t Talks podcast, Clair Heaviside, ran half a marathon to work every day to train her mind. For her, resilience is about endurance - about showing up no matter what.
At TEDxShoreditch, I ran a workshop with storytelling expert Amanda Baker who said, “F*ck bouncing back - resilience is rewriting your story.”
And then lately, I’ve been reading Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who argues that true strength isn’t in resisting change or bouncing back… it’s in getting stronger because of the chaos.

So which is it? What is resilience really - and what should it mean for entrepreneurs?

Resilience 1.0: Grit, Grind, and Never Give Up

This is the classic, hustle-flavoured version of resilience:

Get up every time you’re knocked down.
Push through no matter how tired you are.
Outwork everyone. Outlast everyone.

And of course, there’s truth in this.

Clair Heaviside literally ran 13 miles to the office every day. Rain, snow, exhaustion - it didn’t matter. It was about discipline, identity, and testing her mental edge.

Please do check out her full story on the podcast as she’s quite the human!!

To me, this form of resilience is about durability. It’s about becoming harder to break. She even said that she built this habit because she just wanted to see how far she could run!

Angela Duckworth, author of Grit, defines it as passion + perseverance over time. Her research shows that gritty individuals often outperform more talented ones - because they stay in the game longer.

This version of resilience says: “I’m the kind of person who keeps going.”

The upside: Discipline and consistency are powerful forces in entrepreneurship.
The downside: This mindset can glorify suffering for the sake of suffering. If you’re not careful, resilience becomes martyrdom.

Resilience 2.0: Rewriting the Narrative

Then comes Amanda’s version - one that really hit me during TEDx prep.

She said:

“F*ck bouncing back. Let’s rewrite the story.”

Because sometimes, what knocks you down isn’t something to push through - it’s something that should make you rethink everything. A toxic business partner. A burnout spiral. A product you loved that flopped.

This version of resilience isn’t about snapping back to your old self.It’s about letting go of who you thought you were, and choosing a new path forward.

Psychologists call this post-traumatic growth - the idea that people can experience deep growth because of adversity, not in spite of it.You don’t just recover - you evolve.

This version of resilience says: “That version of me is gone. This new version is better.”

The upside: It gives permission to pivot, reimagine, and heal.
The risk: You might get stuck in the loop of constant reinvention - without learning consistency.

Resilience 3.0: Antifragility - Thriving in Chaos

Then there’s the third path: antifragility. A concept Taleb made famous in his book Antifragile, where he argues that the best systems (and people) don’t just survive stress - they benefit from it.

Resilient things resist shocks.Antifragile things grow stronger because of them.

Your business hits a crisis - and you find a better model.
You get rejected - and it forces you to become more persuasive.
A market crash wipes out a competitor - but makes you indispensable.

This version of resilience says: “Every hit I take adds to my strength.”

The upside: You become dangerous in the best way - agile, adaptive, unshakable.
The trap: You need a system that’s built to learn. If you just endure, but don’t adapt, you’re not antifragile - you’re just exhausted.

What Resilience Really Means for Entrepreneurs

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been hit with THREE different versions of resilience. In fact, there have been many more, but these are the three I’ve analysed in detail, due to the podcast, the event and the many hours reading Taleb’s book.

And I’ve been really thinking about it and I think that true entrepreneurial resilience is a fusion of all three of these versions:

Grit to keep going
Narrative to evolve meaning
Antifragility to build smarter through stress

In the founder world, we are constantly faced with:

Rejection
Isolation
Financial stress
Team breakdowns
Public scrutiny

You need endurance. But you also need adaptability. And you absolutely need to extract meaning from it all - or it breaks you.

TRUST ME on this one… sadly.

I fear that resilience has become a bit of a throwaway buzzword. One is just some fluffy thing to talk about when times are tough… “Oh if you have resilience, you can beat anything.”

But what does it mean to you?

After reading this article, I now ask:

What version of resilience are you using?
Is it serving you - or is it keeping you stuck?
Are you bouncing back… or are you building better?

How to Build Real Resilience

No matter what your definition is, I don’t think anyone is arguing that resilience is not an absolutely ESSENTIAL tool for entrepreneurship.

But I worry that we’re all just getting a lot less resilient in this day and age.

The term “snowflake” is used a lot, because more people are so easily offended now and there’s a huge increase in mental health problems too.

We all could do with a little lesson in how to build resilience.

I know I am working on things myself too.

Here’s what’s been working for me, in case it helps you too:

Auditing Your Setbacks

Take 10 minutes to list the biggest challenges you’ve faced in the last 12 months. For each one, write:

Did I just survive it?
Did I evolve because of it?
Did I build something stronger as a result?

This helps you see which version of resilience you're living by - and whether it’s time to upgrade.

Build “Bounce Systems”

Resilient people have systems, not just willpower. That might look like:

A go-to mentor you call when things go sideways
A journaling habit that helps you reframe quickly
A checklist for what to do after a failed launch

Watch the Narrative

Listen to how you talk about your setbacks. Are you the victim? The hero? The villain? How you talk to yourself is extremely important. If you change your narrative, you can also change your story.

Design for Antifragility

Where can you design your business so it benefits from volatility?

Create offers that adapt to economic changes
Build systems that get stronger when challenged
Don’t just survive hard times - learn to harvest them

ZERO TO SOMETHING

This is Zero to Something - where we take one idea, one shift, one insight a day to grow.

Today’s something is this: Resilience isn’t about just getting back up. It’s about learning which version of yourself you’re building next - and making that version stronger, wiser, and more dangerous.

You don’t just need to bounce back. You need to bounce forward.

Zero to Something