#044: Should You Quit, or Should You Stick?

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey everyone, thank you for joining me for episode 44 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. This is your host, Ed Gandia. And this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find details shown us to this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 44 so I got a really what I hope to be an interesting show for you today. And it's about the topic of quitting. How do you know if you should quit if you're in the middle of a project, an initiative, a push, or when does it make sense to keep trying and to really stick to it, give it a fair shot, change strategies, change approaches and so forth. Years ago, when I was getting started in business, I had so much going against me. And frankly, when I, when I look back at the days where I was launching my freelance business, when I was trying to get this thing off the ground, it's a miracle that I was able to launch what became a six figure writing business. It really is. I mean, I think about this quite a bit. I look back at it now and it's amazing that I didn't think about quitting every single day that I worked that business to try to get this thing off the ground. And I did think about quitting, but only occasionally. It really wasn't an all consuming thought. Not, not at all. You know, the daily outlook for me back then, this is late 2003, and for most of 2004, the daily, daily outlook was rarely pretty. And frankly, the journey seemed so long. I felt like I had such a long way to go before I started making headway, before I could really even think about quitting my day job. And you know, I feel the same way. When I look at, let's say, a disabled soldier who's coming back home and he's lost his legs in combat, yet he's thrilled to be alive, he's happy, he's cheerful, and he's confident that he's going to move on and live a normal life. I find that just truly amazing. Or the cancer patient who's just been dealt a horrible diagnosis, yet she knows that she's going to pull through somehow. She knows this and she's incredibly confident, just as I'm confident that the son's going to come back up tomorrow morning. She's confident that she's going to beat that disease and she does. She ends up beating it. And I find this to be such a fascinating topic and it really couldn't be more important today for us self employed professionals. And here's the deal, and here's why I want to talk about this today. Because the choices for striking out on your own have never been greater than they are today. And the barriers to entry have never been lower. You know, it's never been easier to set up shop, right, to hang your shingle. The opportunities to grow and expand your freelance writing business and to add new capabilities, new services and find new clients for these services. That that opportunity has never been greater. But that increased opportunity also brings with it a whole new set of challenges that creates what I would call near immediate parity. And let me explain what that means. So the ease of entry into the freelance commercial writing arena also means that there's going to be more competitors for us, right? The improved technologies, the increased platforms and the increased accessibility to these platforms that bring buyers and sellers together, things like Elance, Odesk, Fiverr, et cetera. That also means more competition, more choices for buyers, lower prices. And that's just one example. So while the opportunities have never been better, there are also new challenges that we didn't have to deal with before. So you know, you kind of get this, this opportunity to, to do better for yourself as a self employed professional, but it's almost instantly that they're now new challenges that you have to deal with, you didn't have to deal with before, which kind of cancels out that incremental opportunity and the, the chance to maybe take advantage of a new profit opportunity. So all this to say this launching or growing a high income freelance writing business is hard. And it really is very, very hard. And I hate to say that in a way because part of me also knows that when you classify something as hard, you start believing your own story about that. You start believing, oh yes, it's so hard. It's so hard. You know, few people ever make it and when you do that, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. But you know, I don't want to really talk too much about that today. I think that's a topic for another episode. And I really believe there's something to that. You know, it's there, there's something to what I call the Forrest Gump effect, which is, you know, the less you know, the better you'll do because you won't fall prey to kind of all these crazy stories about what's possible and impossible, just like Forrest Gump in the movie didn't, and that's why he accomplished so many things. But that aside, what I want to talk about today is, is this challenge. The challenge of getting started, the challenge of getting your business off the ground. Or if you've already an established writer, you got your own set of challenges. The challenge of taking your business to the next level of going from, say, $75,000 a year to $125,000 a year, or expanding your service, set the solutions you offer, how you run your business, or earning the same amount or more in less time. These are all challenges. These are all very difficult challenges. And it doesn't really matter where you are in your business. If you're looking to improve in any way, or, gosh, even today, forget about improving. If you're looking to survive and to maintain your current income level and the kind of clients that you might be working with right now, that in and of itself is a challenge. So specifically today, I want to talk about what it takes to create those kind of breakthroughs and how to know if it really is worth the. The fight or if maybe that kind of push or goal is just not for you, or at least not for you right now. Because you know what? Contrary to the popular belief in, at least in the Western world, it's okay to quit sometimes. In fact, I found that it's sometimes a smart idea to quit and to quit early. And many times that is the best option. It doesn't make you a loser to quit, you know, especially if you can do it before you even start or early on in that initiative or that push, when you realize, you know what, based on a new set of criteria that I'm now considering, which is I think it's a smarter set. I think it's best to not even go there or to just pull back now before it's too late. So I will tell you that much of what I'll share with you today is based on the ideas of Seth Godin and his marvelous book, the Dip. This is an amazing little book. It's very, very short. It's a quick read. You could read it in an hour or two. And I tell you, if you don't already own it, it not only belongs on your bookshelf, but you need to read it today. It really is fantastic, and it will change the way you think about going after something big and making better decisions about when to go all the way or when to not even start and when to quit. So let's talk a little bit about this, this concept. Here's what I found. And this is no surprise to you guys, right? If you're listening to the show, if you're a regular listener, these principles, this is not something completely new and revolutionary, but I'm going to give you kind of a different twist on it. So here's the first kind of no brainer. Every worthwhile endeavor starts out as fun, right? It's exciting, it's invigorating. All you can think about is the end result. That's, that's why it's fun. And that kind of excitement is what's going to give you what you need to get started. You need that excitement to kind of take those first early steps. Because we all know that those first steps in any worthwhile endeavor are, you know, it's, it's hard. Most people don't take the first few steps. And it's the excitement of being able to fit into your old jeans, right? Losing enough weight that you can now fit in the jeans you haven't worn in 10 years, or getting that diploma or passing the bar exam or getting your, your CPA certification, landing that dream job. You know, these are all hard things to accomplish. But you know, initially when you kind of set that goal, you're you, you get excited because you think about the end result or buying that beautiful home and enjoying the good times and that gorgeous patio that you're going to have, right? Or quitting your day job and freelancing full time or going from a solo business to a boutique agency with six or seven contract writers and designers. You know, you're excited. You set that as you go, you're ready to go, you're all charged up and you get going. And again, it's often that excitement that helps us get over those initial humps. We don't even notice those initial obstacles because we just, we're excited. We have what it takes to kind of forget about them and look past that. But as those obstacles keep coming and coming and coming and coming, what I found is the initial excitement starts wearing off, right? Those early morning jogs start becoming a bit of a drag, especially in cold weather. You know, there's just two feet of snow on the ground. It just, this is just not fun. It's freezing, it's raining or whatever. You no longer start thinking about the goal. You start thinking about what a pain it is to do this. The course material was harder than you expected to go. After this certification, it really starts sucking wind to keep having to save that much money every month and to deprive yourself in many different ways for that next home down payment. When the purchase is not going to happen for another three or four years, the excitement starts wearing off and you start just focusing on the obstacles, the effort. You can't seem to get a single interested prospect where you're having a hard time getting clients interested in buying a more comprehensive offering from you. And maybe these are the same clients who initially expressed very strong interest in this new idea that you had. And now that you've formulated it and you've spent months kind of reworking your business, now you can't seem to get any traction from the same people who encourage you. And many times it doesn't seem to be a break in these challenges. If anything, they seem to be getting worse, one right after the other. And this is precisely what Seth Godin calls the dip. It's that dark place, you know, that you feel like you've hit rock bottom. It's just punch after punch after punch. It's the place where you really start questioning if there really is an end in sight. You know, is there a corner coming up where things are going to turn around and you can finally get some breathing room, or are you in a dead end street? And it's hard to tell when you're in this dip because it's so dark, you really can't see very far ahead, you know, so you're not really sure. You can't go by what you see. You have to rely on, on some guiding principles. So you gotta look at this challenge a little differently. Let's talk a little bit about this. And I got five or six concepts that I really want to touch on to give you a framework to make better decisions as you approach these big obstacles. Because again, if you're going after anything worthwhile, you're going to come across this. In fact, that is the first idea I want to discuss. All worthwhile achievements have a dip. You know, if it's worth doing, there's going to be a dip. There's no question about that. In fact, it's precisely the dip that makes the goal that you're going after so worthwhile. Pretty ironic, right? So why is that, you know, why is it that everything it's worthwhile seems to have a dip? Let's stick to freelance writing for now. Well, the fact that it's so hard to make it in this business limits the number of people who get in and stay in, which then limits the supply of labor and keeps prices up. And we'll Talk more about that a little bit later. So in other words, every dip by default creates scarcity. If it were too easy, right, Everyone would be doing it. We all know that, right? And you know what? In some cases, they are doing it. I mean, if you look at again, the online job platforms like Elance and Odex and so forth, there are tens of thousands of freelancers out there trying to get business. And you know, they. Elance doesn't publish this anymore, but there was a long time where they were posting how many providers were out there bidding for work, and then how many employers or how many clients were looking for a freelancer. And the ratio was way off. It was something like. And I tracked this a few times, like 17 to 1 or 20 something to 1. It was crazy. So there's only a handful of potential clients for every given freelancer out there. But guess what? How many of those freelancers will be around a year from today? That's the real question, right? Everyone tells me all the time, oh my gosh. But it's so crazy out there and it's impossible. And you know, these, these websites and overseas competition are making it impossible. You know what? I think you're looking at the wrong side of the coin here. That is a myopic view of the situation. You kind of have to step back and ask yourself two things. First of all, are you. Why are you competing in those same markets with those same people? And that's a topic for a different show. But also, how many of those same freelancers are going to be around a year from today? Are you going to be around a year from today? So even in Elance and Odesk, there is a diplomat. There's always a dip if the end goal is worthwhile. And you need to know and accept that fact. Okay. We also want to believe that there's such a thing as overnight success. That the, the, you know, the rock band that seemed to come out of nowhere and is now everywhere, they're on the COVID of Rolling Stone. Where do these guys come from? You know, we, we seem to fall prey to this idea that this was luck or that let's say the entrepreneur who's now a billionaire was just destined for fortune, that their IQ got them there or his connections, you know, these people just came out of nowhere. It seems like two weeks ago they were just a regular guy or girl and now they're on the COVID of Time magazine. Right? That, that's the impression that we get. And you know, there's a lot of reasons for that, but we never see the backstory. What we don't see is the years of crazy hard work, of constant fear of major setbacks, of self doubt, rejection, failure. We don't see that, right? Time magazine, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and Oprah won't really tell you too much about that. Maybe the exception with the exception of Oprah, but you don't see that. So it just appears on.