First of all, this is really not all that bad: you got paid, and you have a years worth of $ in the bank.
Good. Now, the first thing to do is to make sure that you get into a mode where you extend your runway, turn that 12 months into 13 months and so on. Doing nothing for 3 months is enough to recharge your batteries a little bit.
Figure out what your monthly expenses are and then try to find something - anything, really - that pays you just a bit more than that so that you can remain floating while you work out what to do next.
Please do not consider yourself a failure in any way, I've run the same company for almost two decades before getting back a little over what I put in initially. I don't consider that a failure either (maybe I should ;) ), and you managed to do this in a substantially shorter time.
Sooner or later a new real opportunity will come by: use all the lessons you learned and your new perspective on life to make the call on what is worth your time and if and when that happens you can roll the dice once more. But don't get seduced by risking that head-start that you now have over most other people on something with a low chance of success.
Then you might end up losing all the time you put in.
If you're like me - and I really hope you are not - and you're continuously tempted to spend your money in unwise ways then I suggest you buy some real estate in a place where the market is reasonably fluid or, if you already own a house, to simply dump it (or at least a sizable fraction of it) in your mortgage. That way it will last long, will have an immediate ROI (if it is your own house) and you avoid the temptation to spend it piecemeal until there is nothing left.
First of all, this is really not all that bad: you got paid, and you have a years worth of $ in the bank.
Good. Now, the first thing to do is to make sure that you get into a mode where you extend your runway, turn that 12 months into 13 months and so on. Doing nothing for 3 months is enough to recharge your batteries a little bit.
Figure out what your monthly expenses are and then try to find something - anything, really - that pays you just a bit more than that so that you can remain floating while you work out what to do next.
Please do not consider yourself a failure in any way, I've run the same company for almost two decades before getting back a little over what I put in initially. I don't consider that a failure either (maybe I should ;) ), and you managed to do this in a substantially shorter time.
Sooner or later a new real opportunity will come by: use all the lessons you learned and your new perspective on life to make the call on what is worth your time and if and when that happens you can roll the dice once more. But don't get seduced by risking that head-start that you now have over most other people on something with a low chance of success.
Then you might end up losing all the time you put in.
If you're like me - and I really hope you are not - and you're continuously tempted to spend your money in unwise ways then I suggest you buy some real estate in a place where the market is reasonably fluid or, if you already own a house, to simply dump it (or at least a sizable fraction of it) in your mortgage. That way it will last long, will have an immediate ROI (if it is your own house) and you avoid the temptation to spend it piecemeal until there is nothing left.
Best of luck!