When is it time to quit?

When is it time to move on?

I received this question from a friend last week. She had an extremely difficult time with a client, and she was at the end of her rope. The criticism stung – worse than losing money.

She wanted to know if her business had reached a peak, and now everything was on the downhill side.

What a great question. We all ask it of ourselves at one point or another. Is this business, photography, art I’m pouring myself into worth it?

I didn’t have a definitive answer for her, but I did pass along a few steps to help her sort out some of her feelings.

1. Know yourself.

I believe in the power of knowing your personality type and temperament. There are lots of reasons to know this information – understanding  your interactions with partners, employees and clients, knowing what parts of business you will be strongest at, knowing what areas you will need help with.

In this case though, understanding your personality type helps to understand how you react to negative comments.

There are lots of different tests and scales out there, but I like Personality Plus and DISC.

I am a Melancholic-Choleric or Compliance-Dominance.

Because I have a high amount of Melancholic characteristics, I tend to allow my lows and highs to influence my decisions (or inability to decide). It’s not good for me to make decisions based off great or horrible news. I need to have better perspective.

This leads to…

2. Step-back and evaluate the situation.

Imagine yourself as the expert policeman talking yourself off of the edge of the cliff. We need to step back, take a deep-breath, and test what has happened.

You have a poor interaction with a client, your great business idea isn’t moving the way you anticipated, or your photography seems to be stuck in 1995. Is this a pattern? Is it a one-time occurrence? Is there something you could do more or less of to stimulate growth?

This also applies to those who are the opposite of me. Rather than feeling like all is lost at times, you may naturally feel there is never a reason to quit. The truth is you might be beating your head against a wall that simply will never move.

More than anything a bit of time will allow yourself the opportunity to let the truth set in. Our emotions make things too big or too small. The truth is reality rests somewhere in the middle most times.

3. Do what you are passionate about.

Going back to my friend. Is she passionate about photography. Does she love running a business based around portraits?

Maybe she loves photography but not the business side of things. Is there a way to hire or contract some of the bad stuff out?

If you don’t truly love what you are doing then it will turn into a J-O-B, which will turn into a passionless march toward retirement.

Love what you do.

4. Expect resistance & a crash.

I just finished Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work. He talks about 2 things to expect as we create (photography, business, writing, art, etc) – resistance and a huge crash. How we respond to both will define us and our creation.

Resistance is us. Resistance is telling ourselves we can’t, we’re not good enough, we don’t have XX. The truth is you do have it, you can, you are good enough. Push through self-doubt.

Pressfield says that even when you power through resistance, at some point, you still will crash. He tells the story of spending 2 years to write a novel. It stunk. It wasn’t his assessment, it was the assessment of good friends whom he trusted. The novel just didn’t work. He crashed.

When you crash (I would define this horrible client encounter of my friend as a crash) what will you do? Will you get up, dust yourself off, and move forward? Will you give up?

Pressfield moved past the crash, went back, fixed the problems. After another year of work he finished and finished well.

Don’t give up.

My motto for 2009 was

Don’t give up.

2009 was a hard year. Yes, I believe there is a time to quit. I’ve done it, and I know it was right. But quitting and giving up are 2 different things.

If you’ve done the above evaluations, and it’s time to quit. Then quit. Don’t give up.

Some recommended reading:

• Personality Plus by Florence Littauer
• Personality Plus at Work by Florence Littauer
• The 8 Dimensions of Leadership: DiSC Strategies for Becoming a Better Leader (Bk Business)
• Do the Work
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins

Header image courtesy of stock.xchng

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