Quitting Isn’t Always a Loss

The Complete Entrepreneur – EP34: Quitting Isn’t Always a Loss 

[00:00:00] 

 When should you quit your own business or are you stuck in it for life? Is there a right time to say you’ve had enough? What are the personal signs that suggest that may be better to move on? And then how do you quit? That’s what we’re going to be taking a look at right now. And it’s a topic which I must admit I was debating about tackling it because everyone says, oh, everything should be positive and never the teams to be wonderful.

Hey, everything’s going well here. Everything’s going well here until it’s not. But it’s a topic I think every single entrepreneur needs to get across. Is there a time you should quit? Maybe you’ve just been dreaming an impossible dream. Is that what it is? Let me share with you a story.

Many years ago, when I was in my teens, I used to play a game called Beddington. When I went away on holidays and aunties and uncles and all that sort of stuff. [00:01:00] Now Beddington is like a badminton, except you play with bats, not rackets. And my cousin and I, we used to be very competitive against each other, but he was built for sport.

And I was this wrangly little tiny kid and he was like, he had all the advantages. He had the hot chicken smashed the thing over the net. He had all those advantages. There’s one thing though. He didn’t have as much as I had. And that was I would never give up.

I would fight the very bitter end of every single match in the end. I want a whole lot of them. I didn’t win every one of them, but I want a whole lot of them. And that mentality carried across into the, into many of my businesses in the years that went forward. And as I began I’d start a business and I would never say die, that sort of mentality was in my DNA as such.

And that really helped me a lot in my [00:02:00] businesses where I would never quit. I’ve never quit no matter what, but there was times, even though I had that attitude, I should have. I shouldn’t have backed that because I went where I took one step where angels fear to tread, and I shouldn’t have done that. One thing.

I shouldn’t have launched that product, or I tried to rush something or whatever I should have just tasted a little bit more. And and to learn from those experiences that sometimes it’s better for an entrepreneur to quit or to retreat, even if it’s temporarily, before you go ahead and move forward once again.

So have you had an experience like this? Have you been an entrepreneur where you said, you know what? I really should have quit. I should have given up. I should’ve just said enough’s enough. And I didn’t, I hung in there and before I knowed, I kept them borrowing more and more against my house or something like that to try to fund this thing, which was never going to work until.[00:03:00] 

Quite often and will happen is an external party will force you to quit. And whether it’s the bank or whether it’s be investors or someone like that say, we’re done here or you’re done. And maybe it’s time to assess that. So if you’ve got a story about this, or maybe you have a story on the other side of the fence of, Hey, you didn’t quit.

Therefore you actually managed to push through to a great outcome. If you’re a person in the audience and you’ve got a story like this, we’d love to hear from you. One of the reasons why I love this session so much is that it’s not just about say a bunch of us on stage here, but from you and the audience, just please stick your hand up.

If you’re unfamiliar with the app, it’s down the bottom there, you can raise your hand and we’ll invite you to the stage. And we’d love to hear from you in the meantime. So Colin coming across to you, have you ever. Have you ever quit any of your business? So is or launched a product at all? No. What have I just done?

I’ve got to quit that. Have you ever done anything like that before? [00:04:00] Hey, Michael, of course I have. I’ve done many companies that think anyone who’s at a startup has to, any entrepreneur who has done it before we’ve all quit. I think we’ve all had our failures. We’ve all pulled back.

I think it’s important to think about a startup in terms of a stage gate a period of time in which you can give yourself to get to a certain amount of funding required or whatever, but you set those goals and the parameters in advance so that if you don’t hit them, then you can do a shift or decide to quit, decided, to decide to do something different.

I’m actually going through security right now and getting the hook from security. So I’m going to be offline for about 15 minutes, but I’m gonna try to listen in as much as.

Michael you’re there. Oh, sorry about that. I feel telling mute myself. [00:05:00] Yeah. Yeah, we were just hearing Colin go through there, go through the the security there, but I just want to jump across to yourself. Def, have you ever been in a situation where you said yourself, you know what, in hindsight, I should have quit.

I should stop that thing I was doing. Or have you ever been in a situation where you wish you’d quit and other times you said, oh, gee, I shouldn’t have quit. I should have persisted. If I could have just persisted, I could have got there. Have you ever had experiences on those two injured ends of the spectrum?

So I when I saw the topic for today’s room, I interpreted it a little bit differently since you used the word. Quit, I was thinking in terms of do you get to a point where you leave or quit your own business, but the business is still going on versus the quitting that Colin was talking about where you’re starting a business and you’re recognizing that maybe it’s not going to work out the way you hoped.

So you end the business. I took quit for the literal sense. And the one time I had to [00:06:00] quit a business that I was a co-founder of, or leave a business that I was a co-founder of was something that happens quite often, which was after a merger or acquisition. So one of the companies, I was a co-founder of, we eventually merged with another company.

And even though at the time I was the CEO of the company when we merged and I remained the CEO it didn’t take me too long to realize that the new team, the company would merge. Was really going in a different direction that I had wanted to go in and it just wasn’t really the same fit for me.

And so that was the time where not only did I quit, but I actually quit and left and stepped down from being the CEO of the company, because it just wasn’t the same company anymore, as we merged in with this other business and I had to make that decision to, to move on and find something else and leave.

So I have had that situation one time, the other kind of quitting, of course, as an entrepreneur, you have [00:07:00] many ideas, many businesses that you get to a certain point and have to come to the realization, you know what this product’s not going to really be what we thought it would was going to be, or there really isn’t a marketplace for it, or we’re not able to secure the funding we needed.

And unfortunately, I have to close that business and move on to the next time. So I guess I’ve experienced both types of quitting, but I was thinking more in terms of the first one when I read the title. Yeah. So here’s a question for you, Jeff. So when you have to make that decision, and by the way the two different variations of the title is quite willing to explore both sides of them, but when you had to make that decision to quit because of the merger and all that sort of stuff, what was it like emotionally going through that decision-making process?

Did you find it, it took a toll on you just of how do you come to the conclusion you need to back out now and go do something else? Yeah, actually it’s interesting because looking back on it, and this goes back a number of years [00:08:00] the toll was being taken on me before I made the decision.

It was after the merger happened. And now I was working, even though I was CEO, I was working within this framework of a different company, essentially, because we merged with with with a different company at a bigger company, arguably I just would not happy. It just wasn’t, it wasn’t the company that I co-founded was changed dramatically through the merger.

And even though I had an important and active role, there just wasn’t the same. It wasn’t satisfying. And that took its toll. When I finally recognized, what, it’s just time to move on and let go of this. That was actually a relief. This, the stress came before that the act of making that decision was actually a relief and, going forward, obviously, ultimately prove to be the right.

So the stress was just being in that circumstance of having merged companies and being in a position to, to be trying to run a company that wasn’t the company it was before. [00:09:00] Yeah, you’re listening to the complete entrepreneur. We’re taking a look, the topic of I quit and the broadest expressions of what it means I quit.

And if you have a situation in your life right now, as an entrepreneur, you say, you know what, boy, if I got a story to tell you, please raise your hand. We’d love to have you up on the stage. We’ll be jumping across to William, but just before William Jeff, I just want to ask you that a little bit more about that is that, did you have a great internal dialogue?

You mentioned there that there was an enormous amount of stress beforehand, and when you finally made a decision that unions move on, it was like a massive relief hit you. What was that like that whole process. And how long did you, did it actually take to go through that whole sort of realization that, what you just weren’t.

Yeah. It was not quite a year but pretty close to a year of still working with the company after the merger. And it just wasn’t it was a different company just going in a different direction. [00:10:00] Even though I was CEO, I had to do a lot of different things that I hadn’t been doing before that weren’t.

Even if they were in my wheelhouse, they just weren’t enjoyable to me. And it was just a, and there was to be perfectly blunt. There was some physical geographic aspects to it because the company before we merged was based relatively close to where I lived, the company we merged with was in Miami.

So all of a sudden I had to go from a comfortable 15 minute commute to driving down to Miami and traffic every day. And needless to say that compounded the stresses of the business, because if you haven’t done it before, it’s miserable, commuting down to Miami on a daily basis. So that, that was certainly a contributing factor.

There was additional stress on my family cause I was commuting. Greater distance and getting home later and leaving earlier and just so many factors contributed. So that finally, and not being a quitter by nature, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to make that decision. So I [00:11:00] probably stayed longer than I should have in retrospect, because once I made the decision and moved on, I was significantly happier.

Yeah. But correct me if I’m wrong. Kay. You said before you were the CEO of the company is that right? Yeah, so I was the CEO of the company and this was at the time to a publicly traded company. And then we merged with another company and I remained the CEO of the merged business. Okay. Yeah, I think I find interesting, obviously, as a CEO, you would have orchestrated this whole merger and all that sort of stuff.

And I think some entrepreneurs need to hear this, is that quite often when you’re doing a merger or a takeover you’re selling or whatever, all oldest sort of different machinations is that they economically look great. In other words, the reason why you’re doing this because getting a bigger slice of the pie and all that sort of things.

But the thing I was struck by Jeff is that it wasn’t for economic reasons why you left. [00:12:00] It was for emotional reasons why you left. And so often that that entrepreneurs are almost told to ignore their emotions. It’s all about the money, but you made a decision. It was almost divorced or the money was that.

Yeah the finances had absolutely nothing to do with it. And obviously stepping away from a secure position at a publicly traded company, more than likely my next move was going to be a step down financially, certainly at least for the short term that wasn’t even part of the consideration, to be honest, it was just, I was not happy.

I was not doing stuff I was enjoying and I didn’t see, I didn’t see myself being in a position to really continue to lead or grow that. Yeah. So this story is an essence that what the complete entrepreneur is all about is because so many, there’s so many even on clubhouse or you look online, everything like that.

And they’ll talk about the business side [00:13:00] of being an entrepreneur. And they’ll talk about, and they’ll talk about the total about how to raise money, how to go along and deal with manufacturing, how to do this, how to do that all that sort of stuff. But there’s very few that tackle the issues that you are wrestling with Jeff, you are wrestling with, and that is what does it mean to live the life of an entrepreneur?

What does it mean to be that person has that internal dialogue and to realize that despite all the financial issues that you’ve come to realization, this is not for you. And then you need to move on. And there’s so many entrepreneurs I’ve seen over the years, they have made all these right financial decisions to find out that they’re intentionally unhappy.

They’re unbelievably, I’m happy. And there’s a classic saying, yeah, there’s so many people that climb the ladder of success, defined as leaning against the wrong wall. And it’s to do [00:14:00] that is it can be quite solar story. If you get you in your life to fight, you get to the top and you say, Hey, I’ve won the game of business.

I’m a multi-screen millionaire, but this is not where I want to be. Yeah. And it’s not against making sound financial decisions. I’m not saying that, but I am saying is that there’s two aspects to being an entrepreneur? There’s actually many aspects of two aspects we’re looking at here is both the financial, but the emotional side and the emotional toll it takes when you’re making these quite dramatic decisions.

And what are the things that actually go and what are the things that actually go and cause you to come to conclusions that sometimes may even be economically not good for your situation, but you’re going to be happier as a result. Interesting questions. Anyway, I thought I’d like to jump down to William here.

William. I just like to welcome you to the complete entrepreneurs, the stage here, [00:15:00] and to hear your thoughts on this William on this topic on it, I quit. And by the way, I love your photo just there. William. Welcome to the stage, William.

It looks like William’s not there at the moment. So we’re going to skip across the Dr. Pepper, Dr. Bev. It’s wonderful to have you back on the complete entrepreneur. Love to hear from you on this topic. Thank you. How are you all today? It’s good to see you again. It’s great to be here. Love to hear your thoughts.

So what does it mean for an entrepreneur that goes through that internal dialogue or with. That is a great question. And I love the title because a complete entrepreneur makes me wonder what does an entrepreneur, what would they say? Okay, I am complete. I quit. I just thought about that. I’m just new on acting out the entrepreneur.

That’s always been inside of me. [00:16:00] So now that the kids are out of the house and I need to make money. It’s why not act on all of my ideas. And I think a true entrepreneur is one of those individuals that wake up every morning with tenants. That they could write down on a piece of paper that solve a problem or something that we’re thinking about that might help someone or help this person or write in and say, this product could be better.

And that has always been me. And so now it’s time that I’m an empty-nester and I can go ahead and focus on what I want to do, and then maybe make a business out of it. I’ve noticed in the last year I have gone all in, on my first business, this smart, digital kids business at the cost of my relationship with my husband.

And I don’t know if this is going to add value to people in the room, but I think that the entrepreneurs that I’ve watched and known over the years, the ones that feel like quitting but don’t [00:17:00] sometimes do so at a sacrifice that they don’t realize and marriages and or relationships are strained with children.

And I’ve learned that in my 52 years, just watching. So now that it’s my turn to begin a business and yeah, watch it grow and maybe have an acquisition and an exit to be careful and decide first before I begin how far I’m going to get in and is it worth it and is it time to quit? And I’m at that point, Michael I’m at that point where my husband came to me and said, okay, it’s been a year and we’re not getting any money.

You’ve already, we’ve already bled out 15,000. I’m done. You love this kind of company more than me. And I’m like no, I’m not. Okay. I quit. So I didn’t quit my company. That was another something I think Jeffrey was saying, I didn’t quit my company, but I quit what I’m doing right now in the company and the product that I’m doing.

So I’m not [00:18:00] trying so hard. And I am going to get part-time work as a marketer. So I’m defaulting back to what I can do to make money right away, go into marketing, do my marketing bit, even though it pains me because I’m an entrepreneur and I want to be working for myself and I want to be building my future dream company, but I needed to quit.

And this is a broad sense, right? Broadly defined. I needed to quit right now where I’m at today for six months or whatever, pursuing it and forcing it because it wasn’t working. And it seems right when I did that, I got to speaking. And so that’s going to bring in a little bit of money. And so I think that’s something that entrepreneurs, we get focused and it’s got to go this way.

We have it all laid out. We’ve got 14 moves ahead. Let’s play this game of chess. And it might go a different way than we think, and I’m not going to quit. So I’d love it, the title, cause you can interpret it many different ways. I’m not quitting, but I’m resting to decide, do I need to let go of that product?

Cause I have a head of first [00:19:00] product. I’m thinking maybe that’s not the one. Maybe I need to sit back, find another product and move in a different direction. But anyway, that’s me as an entrepreneur. I think that a complete entrepreneur, I don’t think they ever quit. We can’t quit on ourselves. We can’t quit on our minds and the way that they work.

And I hope I never reached that stage where I quit, I’m going to work for somebody else or I’m going to go chase the money. Because I didn’t fulfill what, what was inside of me and who I am. That’s just, hopefully provided some type of value, but thanks for this room. I always love coming here.

This is Dr. Beverly I’m complete. Let’s climb. Say Dr. Bev. It’s really great to hear from you and thank you very much for being so open and honest in the dream here. And it was a pleasure having you here as well. Love to hear if you hear from you on a regular basis, but yeah, I think you’ve raised an interesting thing is that it’s like your husband sat down with you and said, hang on a second here.

Yeah, we put this much resources into this. We’ve given it this much time and I never see [00:20:00] you because you’re always working in the business. When’s the time. When’s the time you say enough’s enough. When’s that? Where’s that line. And you do an assessment. Or as Jeff was saying before, it was like, Oh, I’m just intense then.

Happy. I’m just unhappy. I just need to move on and do something to make myself happy. Yeah. When I look back at my own entrepreneurial life I remember when I first got married how many years ago? Remarried now for about 30, nearly 35 years. We first got married. I sat down with my new wife and I said to her, I need to let you know about something that you may not have realized the seed yet.

Yes, what’s that? I said, I’m an entrepreneur. Now she came from a background where her dad had the same job for like basically the whole of his life and all that sort of stuff and came home at the same time each day and left the same time, all that sort of stuff, all very secure. And there’s a fairly regiment.

And here she was, she just [00:21:00] married an entrepreneur where if for those of you who are entrepreneurs, you’d understand, the lifestyle is quite different. And but more than that it’s chaos. And so during this journey, she, a number of times she came to me and said, I feel like quitting, not quitting me, but in other words, like quit, I’m going to quit your business on you, Michael.

Yeah, because there’s times where it becomes very difficult. Yeah. And we need to take into account that our loved ones around us, like your husband, their doctor, Dr. Bed. We need to listen to. Because there’s one thing that entrepreneurs are in that is they’re fanatical about what they do to the detriment quite often of all else.

And so you’re going to blazing away at this thing and you forget your kids. If you get your significant other, if you forget other things live and before you know it, you [00:22:00] suddenly find yourself, Hey, I’m actually not happy. Or, ah, I missed out on those key sort of moments that you’ll never get a game and that sort of thing.

And it’s making those assessments. And sometimes you go to make those assessments and go the business. And other times you would make those assessments and say, no, you know what? I’m not going to go to that particular client meeting because I’m going to go down and be with my kids. So I quit that.

I quit that mean, and I’m going to go and be with my kids at that time. Yeah. So I know call, I’m not sure if you’re out of security yet. You just flash your microphone when you at some point, oh, you’re well, I just got it to the lounge. All good stuff. I know. You’ve had to make these sort of decisions quite a lot in your business career.

You shared quite openly about that on the complete entrepreneur where you’ve made decisions for the business rather than the family and that sort of stuff. But has there ever been times where you’ve said to yourself, I feel [00:23:00] like quitting. I just need to go home. Oh those times when you just want to curl up in a ball and go to bed and of course, yes.

That happens. I think that’s happened too many times in my life. And I think more often than not, it’s a matter of perspective and I come back from it. But but there again, I’ve mentioned has been a many companies that I’ve closed. I’ll tell you the issue with quitting as an entrepreneur, I believe has a lot to do with what we put into it.

We put our heart and soul into this project. We put not only we put a lot of money up for it, we’ve risked our reputation. Our identity is on the line. Those who told us we couldn’t do it, our right, all of these things are going through our mind. And the reality is we actually had a learning experience.

We’ve actually sharpened our sword. We’ve actually become a better entrepreneur. And coming to that conclusion, there are [00:24:00] times when it does make sense to quit. Now, I will say this. I will say that, I see a lot of entrepreneurs who get to a point where they just walk away. And I actually think there is some residual value in almost every business in that.

But if you make certain decisions you can maximize the value on exit, whether it’s selling to your competitor. I give an example. I have many examples, but one of them was a Toronto based company was we did all the taxi cab ads ads for all the taxi cabs over the last 10 years. And w the business was struggling, Uber was eating it alive and, but a year or two, before the pandemic, we decided to sell the company.

We weren’t allowed to take her. So we went to our competitor and we did a deal where we merged with them. We got 50% of the company in a five-year earn it. That wasn’t ideal. But in hindsight, it was good because we actually the pandemic absolutely destroyed that business. And my point here is that there is some ways, sometimes there’s ways of exiting without just walking away from it.

Whether that’s selling the company, even going to your competitor, and these are not [00:25:00] ideal exit strategies, by the way, anyone who knows our team here, we sell to strategic buyers. But if the business is just not moving forward, it’s not delivering selling that business or moving along, taking a loss on it.

That’s okay. It was a learning experience we all learned from it and we’re going to be better entrepreneurs for it calling complete yeah. Call it. I think you raised something really important. There is that quite often that the entrepreneur associates, their self-worth with how well the business is going.

In other words of the business is not going well, that I’m worthless as a person. And I find that actually really sad. And then you then followed up with that or no, if the business has gone down, you’ve learnt a lot from that experience. And you’ve just gone on a great training course for the next one.

So you can be better. So you don’t make the same mistakes again. And there’s some people I know in this room need to hear that message Latin CLIA, but that your [00:26:00] self-worth as an individual is not. Connected to your business. And likewise, by the way, if your business is going gangbusters doesn’t mean you’re a better person.

They’re completely separate issues. And it’s something that we need to really remind ourselves of there’s this great thing where people sometimes will wonder why was the fool in the court? Was the fool just there at the court with Kings of all the things. I was a fool, just there to go along and to entertain.

You asked the full entertain, but you’d also whispered in the king, his ear, you’re human words. You know what? We’re all here. Yeah. And we, we have disappointments, we have struggles and things like that. There’ll be at times like that. And sometimes we have to make those difficult decisions to quit, but, I just want to come across to Rob, it’s wonderful to have you on the stage of the complete entrepreneur.

And so welcome to the stage, Rob, what are you going to share on this topic of [00:27:00] I quit. So Rob, if you’re there, you just need to hit the bottom right-hand corner for your microphone and, yup. Yeah. Thanks Michael. It didn’t it. Didn’t say that there. Hopefully you can hear me now. Yes, you can hear me. That’s great.

I ran a financial planning business for five years. And quit that macho assault that has been six years ago now. And it wasn’t because of the money. It was because of a conflict of values that I felt very strongly about. And being the financial planning industry you either had to operate under your own license, or if you didn’t want to do that because of all the compliance and so on, you had to operate under someone else’s license.

And the problem I’ve found with that with the two licenses that I work with was that they always looked at a financial planner as a sales person selling a product. And that really got up my nose because all I wanted to do was service the [00:28:00] clients grow the business slowly. And yeah, I got on really well with all my clients and it was a real conflict at the end of the day, between my values aligning with the dealership versus what I wanted to do.

For my clients and the values that I had in that respect. So at the end of the day, it was selling out because of the conflict of values. And I didn’t want to go down the route of my own license because that meant a lot of compliance and I wouldn’t have had time to actually build and run the business at the same time.

And what else I was going to say then? Yeah. Yeah. I think Rob, you raised an interesting point and that is that people quite often will quit entrepreneurs or quit and it can be an entrepreneur. That’s attached to another business, like in your situation where you discover you have a mismatch of that.

Where you’ve been told as you, and you said that with the financial plan to sell, don’t worry about it to sell the products of the screen for the client, but the bad with the clients is imagine yourself, versus actually trying to do the right thing by the client, which what you were trying to do, and that’s [00:29:00] becomes a mismatch.

And you’ve got to make a very difficult decision about a situation of values, but yes. So coming back to your role what else do you want to follow up on there? I was just going to say that it, those two, two things that led to that decision in the end one was a a client who really needed the insurance paid out and it took three months to convince the insurer that was the right thing to do.

Cause I was trying to get out on a loophole and it was a very old policy where they shouldn’t have been able to do that. And I remember saying to my wife at the time, if this doesn’t come through for the client, I’m quitting right here and now, cause I’ve just lost all faith in the industry. But that didn’t happen thankfully for the client.

We actually. Oh, I managed to just keep pushing and pushing until I got what they needed. And at the end of the day, I made sure that all the clients went to another financial planner that I really trust and had known for many years. So I left with a resolution that I knew they were going to be looked after.

So that side of things was no longer a conflict. And I was happy to walk away. Can I just say you’re a very [00:30:00] unusual financial planet to be in that situation too many of them arrived. I think sometimes we to go low and sell a push, put financial products versus I can do it the right thing by the clients.

So I just wonder honor, respect you for doing that. Rob, do you appreciate that, but thank you very much for sharing that. Rob on. Do you have anything else you wanted to share or that’s good. Fantastic. So here’s a question. Why is it that entrepreneurs. And when all the sort of research in this topic of such a thing that I’ve found was that they quit for a number of reasons.

One is, what the business is, does a bad business, this didn’t work. And that happens, and if you think about it and it happens in incredibly frequent, what is it? 90% of businesses fail in the first three years. Yeah. So it’s to build a business as an entrepreneur is quite a difficult road to go down.

It could be that it’s just changing times. Maybe the opportunities ran dry or something like that. Let’s imagine you’re selling [00:31:00] buggy whips back in the 18 hundreds, and the motorcar comes along. You know what? You’re not going to be selling many buggy whips anymore. Are you because the motorcars there?

Yeah. So things can change. Yeah. So there’s different reasons why then we heard another one which is values or another one is. I personally, personal happiness. I’d be really happy. I think there’s one more and that’s not just, are we happy? Are the ones we really care about happy. They really happy.

Michele, I just want to come across to you with that. Like you’ve been in business a long time. Many different businesses over those years. You’ve been involved with a whole lot of businesses as well. In senior leadership roles, have you seen situations where even members of a team or some like that you’re being part of where the reason why the person has quit is because not because of their unhappiness silly, but because they see loved ones are incredibly unhappy with the circumstances.

Have you experienced [00:32:00] something like that? Yeah. I, haven’t not experienced it myself, but I certainly have seen people on the team experience that, and for us, I really believe. It’s hard to, quit. It’s hard to see somebody quit. So I think really it’s a very mental drain and it’s a very emotional drain.

What I’ve observed is that when it’s right time for somebody to quit, to move on, I don’t even think of it so much, like quitting in the, negative connotation, but just that they need to move on. We, if they come and they have a conversation with us, or we see that they’re struggling either personally or with the work, we try to help them move on in a very positive manner.

What I’ve seen is when someone is able to do. They usually land in a better situation. And I’m not just talking about money. I, it could be money, but meaning that they’re just [00:33:00] happy and quite oftentimes it’s better for the business as well, because at the end of the day, we have to look at the business holistically and if people are unhappy or, they just feel they need to move on.

I think it’s important to support them in a way that uplifts the team and where they don’t feel like they’ve been raked through the coals on the way out the door. I’m a big proponent of making w what I call a soft landing for them. So I think it’s extremely difficult. I’ve quit jobs before I’ve quit companies before it’s very emotional.

And I think it’s really important to be very kind and help people through that transition. And when you do, oftentimes they really do end up off better. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with you on that. And I think that one of the things that you said there really resonated with me is quitting is actually not a negative.

And in fact, Jeff said that as well where Jeff [00:34:00] talked about the fact that it’s, it, wasn’t a negative cause you get this sense of relief and everything like that. Then the world opens up before him yet. Cause sense of that and that we need to remove the stigma of making a balanced choice.

I’m not talking about him. Everyone has a bad day, right? Everyone’s going a bad day or a bad week or whatever. But if you’re really unhappy in the circumstances you’re in for whatever, the reason then quitting is not necessarily a bad thing. I remember many years ago a friend of mine, he had a business had to go into administration and a very wise older guy said to him, you’re about to earn a whole lot of money today.

If you can do a date of arrangement and things like that. And it was a very different way of looking at it versus there’s the trauma of the whole experience and all that sort of stuff. And in some times we need to the same thing when we look at when we look at our lives as entrepreneurs and we make the decision to quit, that’s not [00:35:00] necessarily a bad option to do but anyway, I just want to just jump across to Waka.

It’s wonderful to have you on the complete entrepreneur. Yeah. It’s all of a sudden. Great match that I have got to the right room at right point of time. I would like to tell you a bit about myself. I’m 35 and I have worked for 12 years of my life in a professional corporate world or doing different jobs at managerial level until I came to the point of self-realization a couple of months ago, and it was a real, a call from my creator.

That was so damn emotional that I wasn’t able to control the energy that I got absorbed. It was like how can I put it in murders? Getting downloaded an infinite amount of terabyte data on a nanosecond scale. [00:36:00] That I talked to your brain download. So it was like that and it was it was a magic believe me and my life totally changed out of that now.

So now I see from different perspective, I see abundance of opportunities. I see my life as an opportunistic. I get away from toxic people. I get away from negative vibes, just like a genie I’m attached to positive people. And I’m building a very huge disruptive global impact with my startup idea.

It isn’t in development. I live in Pakistan. It’s a third world country limited resource. When it comes to the internet and professional development and social connections. But believe me, it will go big and it will [00:37:00] hit across the globe. It will be a destruction. And you’ll be feeling that coming to just like that.

That’s Yeah. I just say it’s fantastic. You’re doozy, as it’s wonderful to hear this, that you’re so excited and that your eyes have been open, what it means to be an entrepreneur. I really thank you for your input there. We’re coming to the downhill stretch there right now. So if you want to meet your mock friend, do you appreciate that?

And it’s great hearing from entrepreneurs from all around the world. Yeah, it really is. It’s one of those exciting things about being a part of the complete entrepreneur, but yeah, one of the things I wanted to touch on before we close off today’s session is how can you stop yourself from quitting?

Cause sometimes you, maybe it’s better not to. And when I reflected on my own experiences and also with all the different businesses I’ve been involved in over the years. And what I find is that [00:38:00] nine times out of 10, the reason why people quit is because they’re trying to do too much. And that’s nine times out of 10, they’re trying to do too much.

And there’s a lack of focus. And if you’re thinking to yourself, I’m really not happy and all that sort of stuff. I bet you it’s because you’re doing what’s called thrashing. Thrashing is jumping from one task to another task without even finishing the first task. And so you’ve got all these tasks that are like half completed and you feel intensely happy about all of that and you try to get back to them, but you’re just doing too many things.

Can I suggest what you do is you take some time. You sit down with a piece of paper, you write all your tasks on them down, and then you realistically look at it and say to yourself, this is the job of five people on one person. I need to pair this back. I become focused, really focused. See if there’s too many entrepreneurs, they [00:39:00] try to do everything.

And really when they tried to everything, they end up doing nothing. It never happens with a single one, man army, never a one-man show. It is a group of like-minded individuals who think to the basic core values to the same major and envision. They can make an impact. Otherwise it’s nothing more than a flop.

Exactly what care. So do you appreciate your input on that, but that’s the thing, look at your list of, to do’s and. Is this something that I really needed to do? Or is this something I like doing? Or what is it yeah. And really focus on what needs to be done. I know Michele, you’re a administrator, a business lady with Supreme skills in this area.

What’s your thoughts around that? It does. That is that you agree with as much sort of [00:40:00] comments on that point

and Michele there. Okay. I’ll jump to Jeff with your own experiences. What’s your thoughts on that? On that point there on really getting focused as an entrepreneur and by being focused quite often, that also brings you a lot more happiness as well. Focus of course, is. Very important. It’s there’s so many things going on.

It’s easy to get distracted. It’s easy to be chasing something that keeps you busy, but isn’t actually moving your business forward. So it’s not just focus, Michael it’s focusing on the right things and really understanding what are the three or four or five things that really are essential to move the business forward and make sure that you’re focusing on those things.

I’m not sure how that fits relative to the topic of quitting and when to quit but certainly learning to focus on the right things is. Yeah, I think Jeff Mo my point was, I was trying to [00:41:00] make, is that what I found is that quite often, entrepreneurs who are intensely unhappy and they want to quit and everything like that, it’s more often than not.

It’s because of a lack of focus on their part and focus on those right things. And so they’re just not happy because they’re never completely anything because they’re trying to do way too much. They need to become focused. And if it’s like a self to quitting is care about what you do focused on the right things.

And you’ll probably find you a much happier life, and you’re not working 16 hours a day and things like that, but you’re working a regular day, which means you have more time for your kids more time for your loved ones and everything around you. More time for yourself for that matter. But more than that, it’s the chances of your business being more successful suddenly goes up because your focus.

You’re focused on the important things versus the myriad of other opportunities, which are one day, maybe come off, just get that one going. That was what I was trying to illustrate there. Jeff. So do you want to just, [00:42:00] sorry. Jeffco? No, I was just say, yeah I hear you. And I understand that point just I guess, in, in my case and the story I told earlier, I was certainly focused on the right.

They weren’t the right things. They weren’t the right things for me anymore. I ha I had to, but for the business standpoint I was focused on the right things. It just wasn’t right for me. Yeah.

But to your story, anything, and, but anyway, you’ve been listening to the complete entrepreneur. And let me tell you, we’ve had an incredible time discussing, which is quite often a taboo topic, which is. And we can take this topic in a myriad of different directions, like all the topics we discuss on the complete entrepreneur.

And it’s something I know I must admit I’ve got a lot out of today and really appreciate the inputs from everyone. On the the panel with me, for those who were speaking as well, did it come up from the audience, but more particular? I just like to also think the audience for being here, and it’s great to have you here.

And it really is wonderful. I just want to say thank you very much, Mike, [00:43:00] next week, just before we look at next week. What’s your sadly of dev time right now, we’re winding things up at the moment. Just a quick question, as you’re the seniors I’ll be asking a very quick question straightened for. If you would like to give a yes or no, that’s it? The question is, yes. The question is that my vision is to end up the manipulation of giant corporations, selling a piece of crap, charging high amount of price and has no value of the product or service.

And there are many more individuals who don’t get the opportunity to sell their product in the same manner. So should I be moving to space [00:44:00] for that? Because the product every visionary startup starts from just because the time constraints work here. So the question is, should you move to the United States because maybe there’s more opportunities in the United States that, and my answer to you is categorically.

No, make it work where you are, and then you can make it work in other places, but have it work where you are. So I hope that hopefully I’ve answered your question, but I just want to go along and just move on right now to what’s going on with startup club. Honestly, I don’t care about startup club right now.

The company we have is my partners and I started 18 years ago. We have hundreds of employees in Micallef, Ukraine, and the link above the one that we have in the room here. This is an opportunity for you to help. You could look at this war. You can think about this war. You can be entertained by this war, but if you actually want to do something.

Donate 10, 20, $30. It helps us with the search engine to heuristics helps keep us at the top of the link. I know give, [00:45:00] send, go put our campaign at the very top of their page. We’re now their number one campaign that they’re focused on right now, this money is going to go directly to the people that make a life based on the efforts of my business partners and the infrastructure that we have there on the ground.

I know we’ve already deployed tens of thousands of dollars in that city. So if you really want to make a difference, 10, 20, $30 really does make a difference. And we really could use your support. Thank you, everyone enjoyed the show. Okay. Yeah. Colin, I think you brought our focus back to what’s really important right now and do appreciate that is that what’s going on Ukraine and everything, and it’d be great to be able to see that number climb.

So if you’re in the audience, go to the Gibson, go link at the top of the page here and and express your. Especially hard in donating to the cause there, and the money is going to be going straight into helping like the hospital and everything like that. And [00:46:00] boy, do they need it? That’s for sure.

I just like to say, thank you very much, Colin for bringing an inviting flat on earlier today too, he has relatives right in the middle of that area and are hired and prescribed to him as well. And all the people of Ukraine and those impacted in Russia as well. We must’ve forget that there’s people perish on both sides and their sons and daughters and husbands and wives and things like that on both sides.

Yeah. And yeah, it’s a terrible situation. I pray call it that you and the team, you can rescue your team as well. I in that area and that they all managed to get away safely. That’s for sure. I just want to finish up with today is the next week we’re going to be looking at the entrepreneurial family.

So I’d love to see you there at 5:00 PM Eastern time. Next Thursday. What does it mean to actually have a successful business, but also a successful family? The entrepreneurs family. So did we get your wife, [00:47:00] Michael? Did we get to meet your wife? Let’s make it interesting. Make it interesting. Oh, if I could possibly twist her, I’d love to have her on here, but I’ll see if I can get her on.

It’d be great actually then you guys should go along and interview

the entrepreneurs family, but anyway, so I look forward to seeing you all next week and God bless you all have a great week. Thank you.