Evan Carmichael argues the only legitimate reason to quit is lost passion, not hardship or money. He shares how he ended his marriage despite fearing the quitter label, because the relationship no longer brought happiness. Use a one-word core value to guide whether you stay or go.
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Am I a quitter? I recently got asked a really super important question by one of my YouTube fans— love you guys— Rohit, who asked, "What if I find something and then I realize it's not my passion? Am I being a quitter?" This is a fantastic question because you have to do a lot of soul searching as a person, as an entrepreneur, and I believe the one thing that you hold core to you that stays with you for the rest of your life is your one word. Right? That is your core value, who it is that you stand for. You make all your most important decisions based off that. Everything else can potentially change, including the passions that you have in life. And there are some entrepreneurs who start a business because they're running away from a life, right? They're running away from working at— working for the man, you know, having a job, working set hours. They think they can make a lot of money doing something. They've seen something on TV or heard their friends talk about it, or someone has promised you to make lots of money, so you start a business. And then you get into the business and you realize, "Oh my, you know, this is a lot of work," and you're not passionate about it, and you end up having to close it down. That's a lot of entrepreneurs. There's also the entrepreneurs who start off for the right reasons. You start off because you're trying to make a difference in the world. You start off because you really want to help people in some way, make their lives better. You have a passion for what you're doing. But it's actually fairly common for that passion at some point to waver and to fall off, and you either have to find a different way to stand, a different way to pivot your company, or you have to close it down and go do something else, depending on how much that passion's fallen off. And so it's okay to quit at that point. You know, when do you quit? You quit when you're not loving it anymore. You quit when you— when it doesn't make you come alive anymore. You quit when you're not inspired or learning anymore. That's when you quit. That's when you should quit. You don't quit just because it gets hard, okay? You don't quit because you don't have it— you don't have enough money. You don't quit because, you know, you're not getting market acceptance yet. It's going to be hard, but as long as you love it, as long as you're getting energized by it, as long as you still want to make a difference in this world, then you have to keep going through all the crap that's going to come at you. But the thing that keeps you going is your passion. If you're not passionate about it anymore, it's over. You have to quit. You have to quit. You got to move on and do something else. Sell the business, give it to somebody else in the company, whatever it is. You cannot do great things if you're going to work every day not loving your job, not loving the company that you started. If you don't love your business, if you don't love what you're doing, you can't expect anything great to happen. And that translates into your personal life too. Imagine you're going to work every day hating what you're doing. You think you're going to be happy coming home? And that's most people's lives. You have to continue to follow what excites you. Follow your passion, follow your flow. And when that stops then you stop and do something else. And it's really scary. It's scary because you don't want to be a quitter, right? You don't want to look in the mirror and see a quitter, and you don't want other people to think of you as a quitter. But you can't let those feelings hold you back because that's gonna keep you in place doing something that you hate. A personal story for me: one of the hardest things that I had a— that I really struggled with was my divorce. And I don't talk about it too much because it's still, you know, it's painful. But I didn't want to quit. I didn't want the divorce to start with. I felt it was quitting, and I don't see myself as a quitter. You know, when I set my mind on doing something, I go out and find some way to accomplish it. And I didn't want to look in the mirror and see someone who quit on something, someone that I committed to. And I didn't want other people to see me as a quitter too. I didn't want other people to see me as a failure, even though so many people get divorced, whatever, it doesn't matter. I didn't want other people to see me as a failure, as a quitter. But at the same time, you're in a relationship that doesn't support you. Yeah, you know, you're in a relationship that doesn't make you happy, and it started off great, and there was a lot of passion. And then, you know, do you want to come home to somebody who doesn't make you happy anymore? Do you want that to be the rest of your life? And so I went through and got divorced, and I'm much happier now. And I don't see that as being a quitter, as a definition of who I am. And so you're gonna have to make those tough decisions in your personal life and in your business life as well. But what I know is, if you are not doing the things that you love to do, if you don't feel inspired in your day-to-day life and in the actions that you're taking, if you're not taking inspired action, you're not going to be a happy person and you're not going to accomplish great things. So it's okay to quit, but you only quit when you lose the passion. Belief. For those of you watching, if you like the video, you want to see more just like this, you can subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
