Quitting - When do you give up?

When do you give up? I got a really great question from one of my YouTube viewers. Love you guys. Jang, who wrote in to say, Evan, when do you decide to give up? When things seem they get so hopeless and there's no future market, or we just have to believe ourselves and keep going no matter what happens? But there's a lie in believe, if you notice. So should we keep lying to ourselves? So this is a great question, and every entrepreneur thinks about giving up at some point, multiple times. It's something that nobody talks about. When we're out talking about our businesses, it's always the good stuff, right? You're meeting other entrepreneurs, they're always telling you the good things that are happening. I just landed this new client, things are going really well. But man, everybody struggles at some point in their life and thinks about giving up and doing something else. Everybody. So when do you actually decide to give up? And for me, the answer is when you don't have the passion for it. If you are still passionate about what you're doing, then you have to keep going. Even if it's hopeless, even if you don't see a market, you'll figure it out. If you are passionate about it and you're helping people, you have to keep going. This is your life's passion. You got to keep doing it. If you're not passionate about it, that's when you give up. Then it's a, then it's a struggle. Running a business is hard. It's hard. You have to be a little crazy because you're doing things that, that don't necessarily seem rational, that if you think logically about it, that doesn't make sense. And it's hard because if you look at— if it was as easy as find your passion, go do that, everybody would do it. Everybody would be millionaires, everybody would be entrepreneurs, and yet we're not there. Why? Because it's hard. Because following your passion is an easy strategy, but it's hard to keep going. It's easy for one week to do, but it's hard to do it for years when you don't see the momentum. And it's only the successful, brave entrepreneurs that get through all that crap, all the doubt, all the insecurities, all the lack of momentum, and they keep driving through, and they come out on the other side, and they're successful. A lot of entrepreneurs, they start a business that they're not even passionate about. At the beginning. They think they can make a lot of money. If that's you, you're dead in the water. Like, quit now. When you give up, you give up right now because you're never gonna make it. You start a business just trying to make money, stop. There are other businesses though that you'll, you'll lose interest in. You might be passionate about it at the start and you'll lose, you lose that passion over time. And when that passion starts to fade, that's when the business is gonna, it's gonna flounder. It won't do well. So that's when you quit or you sell. But if you found the business that you love, you still love doing it even though you're not making money yet, you don't see momentum, then you have to keep going. That's when you keep going. Let me give you an example. There are 3 activities that I've tried as an example. So one was rock climbing, one was snowboarding, one was salsa dancing. Rock climbing, when I tried, I tried it once, day one, I hated it, okay? The thing, the harness was in my crotch, I was uncomfortable, you know, I'm afraid of heights. It was not a great experience for me, and I never went back. Snowboarding, I picked up a couple years ago, and I was obsessed when I first learned it. I was obsessed. I got my own board. I went every day to the hills, was learning, picking up new moves, getting better super quick. And now I still like it, but I don't have— I'm not obsessed with it as much. I don't have to go every day to go snowboarding, so I've lost a little bit of the passion for it. And then there's salsa, which I've been doing for 8+ years, and I still love it. I love the music, and I love the community, and I'm still out, you know, 20 hours a week doing salsa or dancing or DJing or whatever. And so this is the difference, right? There's some things that you do, there's some business ideas you have that, like rock climbing for me, you have no interest in, or like snowboarding, you have a lot of interest in at the start and then it fades, or Or like salsa where you have interest in and it just keeps staying high, right? Those are the businesses ideally you want to stick with. The problem with a lot of entrepreneurs is they look at the rock climbing type of businesses and they'll say, I can make a lot of money here. I don't like that business. I don't know anything about that business. I don't want to be an expert in that business. I don't really want to work, but I want to make a lot of money, so I'm going to jump in here. That's a recipe for failure. That's why all these companies are shutting down. You're in the wrong business. You're not passionate about that. Don't go into rock climbing unless you're passionate about rock climbing. Then the entrepreneurs who focus on the snowboarding business, right? The things that you are really passionate and deeply involved in, and over time it fades. Maybe it's over a year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, whatever. Over some period of time, a lot of businesses, the entrepreneurs, their passion just fades. You change, you become a different person, you're not interested in it anymore. And when that happens, that's when you quit. You should be living your life doing things that invigorate you and bring you happiness, right? If your business is not bringing you happiness, if you're not doing things you're passionate about, then you have to change. And maybe your company has grown to the point where you can sell it to somebody, or there's somebody who can take over, or maybe you didn't get it off fast enough and you're not making enough money, and the best thing to do is just to shut it down. But if you're in the business of the salsa business where you love what you're doing, you still are obsessed with it, you're still in it, you see how you're helping people, even if you haven't had any momentum yet, you're not seeing the progress, people tell you you're crazy, you're stupid, if you love it, you gotta keep going. You gotta keep going. You have to do things in your life that you're passionate about, period. So that's how you make the decision. That's when to stop. Believe. For those of you watching, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below. Let me know what you think. Let me know how you decided to stop your business or if you're passionate about what you're doing. Leave in the comments below because I hope it'll help inspire other entrepreneurs who are facing the same problems. If you guys like this video, thumbs up below. Click on my face, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.