Rebuilding After Setbacks: Eric Partaker Shares Lessons on ‘Restarting’ from Experience

In a recent LinkedIn post, Eric Partaker shares a candid account of overcoming significant business setbacks and distills key lessons for those navigating similar challenges. Partaker, co-founder of the restaurant chain Chilango and a newly established coaching business, details how the COVID-19 pandemic led to the insolvency of his restaurant venture and impacted his nascent coaching practice. He outlines his strategy for rebuilding, emphasizing the critical role of experience over starting from absolute zero.

The Anatomy of a Business Restart

Partaker recounts the dramatic collapse of Chilango, a business he co-founded and dedicated ten years to. The pandemic forced the closure of all its sites, leading to insolvency within three months. Simultaneously, his newly launched coaching business suffered as clients focused on their own survival. This period of profound loss and uncertainty became the crucible for his next steps.

“In 2020 the restaurant chain I co-founded went from solvent to insolvent in three months.”

Faced with a near-total reset, Partaker initiated his comeback not with established methods, but by experimenting. He describes running a free online event for CEOs, an undertaking he had never attempted before. This event, which hosted 200 CEOs for nearly five hours, proved instrumental in regaining traction for his business, leading to several client acquisitions.

Lessons from Co-Author Christian Poensgen

Partaker also introduces his co-author, Dr. Christian Poensgen, whose own entrepreneurial journey involved a near-collapse of his health startup in 2017. Poensgen’s experience led him to research the factors differentiating those who successfully rebuild from those who burn out. Their shared insights and learnings from these personal and professional trials form the basis of their new book, “Ultraproductive.”

“We put what we both learned into our new book, Ultraproductive.”

The Three Pillars of Collapse

According to Partaker, the “restart” phase of a business is particularly vulnerable and often collapses due to three primary reasons:

• Too much ambition
• Too little patience
• No structure

To counteract these pitfalls, Partaker and Poensgen advocate for a structured approach from the outset. In their book, they introduce simple habits designed for the first week of a restart, emphasizing small, manageable steps that align with natural bodily rhythms.

Leveraging Experience, Not Erasing It

A core message from Partaker’s post is the importance of recognizing that a restart is not a return to zero. Instead, it is a relaunch built upon a foundation of prior experience, even if that experience includes failure. As Eric Partaker notes:

“You are not starting from scratch. You are starting from experience.”

This perspective reframes setbacks as invaluable learning opportunities. The concluding sentiment of their book, as shared by Partaker, is “the next chapter is yours to write,” underscoring agency and the potential for future success.

The post concludes with a call to action, prompting readers to consider which of the three identified collapse factors they might address first. Partaker also promotes “Ultraproductive,” highlighting its release in October and offering preorder bonuses, including the opportunity to work with him.