Founders spend an average of fourteen months running a business they know is dying. Why?

In this raw, unfiltered episode, Anthony Franco opens up about the collapse of MC Squares—a company doing four hundred thousand in monthly revenue that imploded after an Amazon glitch tanked sales by fifty percent overnight. Stephanie Hays shares her battle with a zombie company: profitable, stable, loved by customers, but trapped in limbo with misaligned partners. Together, we break down the two types of business closures, the brutal mechanics of bankruptcy, and why founders suffer alone when they don't have to.

This conversation doesn't sugarcoat the shame, the financial wreckage, or the mental health toll. But it also reveals what happens on the other side—and why closing a business isn't failure, it's survival.

Keywords: business shutdown, startup failure, bankruptcy, zombie company, founder mental health, business closure, failing business, entrepreneurship challenges