How Do I Know If My Business Has Failed Or If I Should Keep Going?

How do I know if my business has failed or if I should keep going? That's today's question here on Q&A Wednesday. And to be honest, it's one of the heaviest ideas, questions that entrepreneurs have to ask themselves more often than they like to ask themselves, because it means that things are not going so great. And I want to give today's kind of takeaway right from the top. And we're going to talk about how to implement this takeaway. But there's one question that I like to ask myself if I'm ever in this situation. And here's the question. If you could take back all the time, all the effort, all the money that you spent on this business that you're questioning and you could have it all back, would you still keep going? That tells you a lot. That question. What you do with that answer is what we're going to be walking through in today's episode. Nicole, of course, is with me again here on Q&A Wednesday. Nicole is the executive producer of the show. She's my co-founder and my wife, of course. Nicole, thanks for being here.

I'm always happy to be here. Thank you, Omar. I think this question that comes from Michael today takes a lot to say out loud. So thank you, Michael, for sending this one in. Here's the question. Michael asks, how do I know if my business has actually failed or I just need to keep going? I can't tell if I'm being persistent or if I'm being stupid. It was hard to say that last word, and that line really gets me. What do you say to Michael?

Yeah, that's exactly the fear. I mean, that's the fear that we all kind of go through at some point in our business. It's like, did I back the wrong horse? Did I, did I make the wrong bet here. And that's okay. I want to say that it's okay to have this experience. Everybody celebrates the founders and the business owners that have, you know, pushed through and persevered and, and won. But no one really talks about, you know, the graveyard of businesses that a lot of people have to, you know, have in order to find that winning business, to find the business that wins. And today we're going to talk about like, how do you actually know if This is one of those businesses that's gonna end up in the graveyard, or, and I should just like cut my losses and move on with another business, or this is something here, I have some potential, I should keep going, I should keep persevering.

And it's a question of that grit and persistence.

Yes.

It's such a fine one. I can't wait to hear how you unpack this one.

Yeah, and what I wanna give Michael and everybody listening is more than just a feeling, right? A lot of this is just feelings. I feel burnt out, I feel like this is not working, I feel like this may not be the thing. Or I feel like maybe this thing has a chance.

Hmm.

I wanna give you more than a feeling. We're gonna give you some numbers. We're gonna give you a strategy. We're gonna give you a framework that you can follow so that you're a little bit more objective about this. So I mentioned at the top that, you know, the biggest takeaway is asking yourself the question, hey, if I can get all my money back, all my time back from all the things I've invested in this business that maybe I'm questioning, maybe it's like 2 years of time and effort and money, If you get them all back, would you continue the business regardless? Like, that's a good framework because a lot of us, we make decisions based on sunk costs. Like, let's say there is no sunk cost. Let's say you had everything back and you're back to zero again and nothing was lost. Would you still believe in this business? Would you still want to continue?

Hmm.

And this is a recurring theme we're going to be talking about, this idea of sunk costs and sunk cost fallacy. It's like, do I put good money after bad money? And do I like into a business that maybe is not serving me anymore? We're going to get to that. So, there are 5 steps to this strategy to really nail down, is my business failing or is it, you know, something that I should keep going with and should persevere? So, step 1 is my favorite step and it's because it's easy and it's that the numbers don't lie. Numbers do not lie. OK? And this is what I love about business is that there's a lot of objective signals that you can use to make decisions. So, I want to start with the trend. Not a bad month. You could have a bad month. Maybe your business is seasonal. Maybe sometimes it's down and sometimes it's up and you're expecting it. But I'm talking about a trend, a direction in time. And the way I want you to kind of look at it is that anything that exceeds 3 months is really a trend, is really something you need to pay attention to, right? Anything less, it could be an aberration. It could be a bad month. You could have had something going on personally in your life that's affecting the business and its numbers. And when I say numbers, I'm talking about like Your revenue, right? The numbers that actually grow the business. So you have some time, there is some grace period here. So if you're just starting out, it's been like a few weeks, that's not enough time. You know, you need a little bit of time to see if there's a trend growing, there's something happening on a consistent basis.

I think trend is the key word here. And I can't remember how it's phrased normally, like once is, you know, once off, but twice is a pattern. Or you're saying 3 months at a minimum is a good enough time to see. Yes.

To see if this is something consistent, right? Because—

Numbers trending down, numbers trending up.

Right. And especially it depends on the business, of course. Like, but I know in the services, a lot of people, it's a bit of an on-off switch. They spend a lot of time getting business and then they have to fulfill that business. So those months are kind of slowing down because they're not gaining customers. So it's a bit of an up and down there. So like, you have to be mindful of like, you gotta be fair. You can't just like say, oh, well, I made more money last month than this month. So this must mean my business is doomed, you know, doomed to fail. No. You know, you have to give yourself a little bit of leeway to see if this is actually moving in the wrong direction. Now, what if it's beyond 3 months? Like, I believe that 6 months and, you know, you're in a really serious territory where you really might have to realize that I don't have a winner here. Or like, it's 6 months of losses, 6 months going in the wrong direction. I'm not talking about like 1 month is up, 1 month is down. I'm talking about like you're continuing to make less and less money or having less and less customers and it's been 6 months Since your best month, it's, it's not so great.

So you said this, it's about revenue. We're purely looking at revenue here because it could be leads, it could be the customers you're talking to, could be prospects.

Yeah, I'm talking about money here. I'm talking about revenue, and sales cures all things in business. Okay, if you're making a good enough revenue, you can make hires, you're not gonna get burnt out, you can invest in marketing, you can get more sales and get more salespeople. You can get an office, you can invest in so many things, right? But in order for you to stay in business, you need revenue. And if the revenue is not there and it's gone beyond 3 months, now we're in the 6-month territory, something fundamental needs to change. You need to start taking this seriously.

Right.

Now I have to mention this because some people wait until a year has gone. So if, if a year has gone and the downward trend, like the chart of your revenue is going down, it's not going up and down, it's not going up you know, up, up, up, and then a little bit down, then up. No.

Yeah.

If it's just going down straight like a slope, you're cooked. Okay? I'm sorry, but that's the honest read.

Yeah.

And from a revenue standpoint, your business is just not sustainable, right? It's, you're not gonna be able to continue to run your business, uh, in a profitable way for very much longer. It's, it's pretty, you know, amazing that you're still in business. So a lot of us, we wait too long to take action cuz we wanna hope that things are just gonna change. Things are gonna just change miraculously, uh, and things are gonna turn around. This is what I found in 20 years of business. It never just changes. It never just changes on its own. There's something that you do that makes it change. Like when you change something in the business, when you change your audience, when you do a new marketing strategy, when you start posting more on social, when you do something, then something changes either for the good or for the bad, but it doesn't just change on its own.

So even if like the numbers are trending down and you're measuring those, those variables, so you're changing a marketing strategy, you've made a pivot or a change to your product or service, you're monitoring that, even with those changes, it's still trending down. That's what you're saying, right?

I'm saying that, but I think, I think a lot of people, they don't even get to that point. Like a year has gone by, things are not looking good. And they're just hoping things are gonna just turn around. People are gonna learn about their business, people are gonna start walking through the door. That's just not gonna happen if you don't change anything. Like, yeah, you're getting the results right now given the inputs you're putting in, right? Given the, the action you're taking right now in your business, that's the results you're getting, right? Want different results, gotta do different actions.

Right.

And this is how it works. And it's easy to say this outside looking in, but I've lived it and I've, I've lived that life where it's just like I'm hoping and wishing and then I realize, oh, I get frustrated and I just do something and then, oh, Something happens now and I'm getting more business. Funny thing about action. And this is all to say that really the direction your business is moving and the revenue and your profits is really what matters. That's really what you need to focus on. This is what I mean by the numbers don't lie in step 1. Like, just trust the numbers. Let the numbers tell you if, hey, this is worth continuing.

Mm-hmm.

And I wanna also say that like, you need to be rewarded somehow, right? You need to make sure that like, hey, this business is actually serving you. The whole point of becoming an entrepreneur is that it's a vehicle to have freedom and independence financially. And if it's not doing that for you, then that's not an even exchange. We had Ramit Sethi one time on, on the podcast recently, and we were in Tokyo, and he said something on that that really resonated with me as a business owner. He says every business owner needs to say, um, what am I getting? Have your hand out, palm out.

Wow.

What am I getting in exchange for all my hard work and sacrifice and money and time and effort? At some point, the business needs to pay you back.

Yeah, because it's hard to sit in those downward slogs and those moments, right, uh, for a long time. It's fine for a short term. Yeah, you know, short burst, but you can get through it. But to sit in that for a long time, yeah, it's tough.

Yeah, it's not good for the mental health either.

No, for sure.

So let's move on to step 2, which is quitting the business versus quitting a version of the business, right? I want to share, um, A distinction that has really saved a lot of our businesses, but most businesses I interact with, like, I often feel like this distinction is not something that they really focus on. And that is, you need sometimes to quit a version of your business, a type of manifestation of this business, or a type of the way you're delivering this business, and say, hey, this is not a failure by quitting it. It's me understanding that this is not working. Your job as an entrepreneur is to serve the customer. And if you're not serving the customer, you need to stop doing that.

Right.

Like, stop doing things that people don't want. Right? And you need to pivot. And that's just an improvement. You're just improving your business in that way. And it's almost worth mentioning this, like, in its own section here, because you could save your business by just not being stubborn, by just pivoting a little bit and realizing that, hey, you know, It's okay for me to like let go of this idea and create a different version of this idea. And in tech we call this killing our darlings, right? Like you're gonna create things that you love. Like when we had Webinar Ninja with our software company, we created a bunch of features that we absolutely thought were amazing. But at some point we started to look at the data and look if users are actually using these features.

Mm-hmm.

Are we actually making any headway? Is it valuable for our customer? If not, we need to remove these features because it's bloating the software. It's causing more problems. problems because the more features you have, the more problems you can have, more bugs, the more complicated the software becomes for the user. So, you sometimes you just got to like say, hey, this is not serving my customer anymore regardless of how brilliant I think it is. I need to just cut it out.

Right. It's getting very analytical and very specific about what elements of the business aren't working. So, it's not the whole business is failing.

Right.

Really getting granular what is not working that we need to fix.

Yes. Our first podcast was not this podcast. We had a podcast called People Who Know Their Shit. It was our first podcast. We did interviews with other entrepreneurs. And we had to kill that show. Mm-hmm. Kill that darling. Even though we put so much time and effort into it and 6 months and 40-something episodes and hustled to get like people like Gary Vee on our show, we had to say, this is not working. You know? And we realized, okay, we're not the best when it comes to interviews. We're not really differentiating ourselves. We used our strengths as teachers and said, let's teach on this podcast. And that's why The Hunterall MBA is primarily lesson-based and adding value in some way through answering questions like this. So sometimes, you know, your biggest failures, your biggest, you know, mistakes actually teach you what not to do so that you can create a better product. Failure is not the end of the world. You could just bounce back and learn from that failure and go ahead and create something better. I also want to point out that this is an exercise you're going to continue to do even when your business is successful.

Mm-hmm.

Right? You're going to continue to reinvent yourself and improve your business, improve your program. Like, for example, the $100 MBA program, we've launched it in 2013 and we continue to improve it till this day. You know, we, we realize, oh, that's not working anymore. We need to add more templates. We need to add more, you know, examples. We need to maybe create content that doesn't age that quickly. Uh, we also, you know, implemented AI features in there so that people can be able to implement the stuff that we teach in the program. Big companies do this all the time. They create products that cannibalize their current product lines.

Mm-hmm.

Apple does this all the time. You know, before the iPhone, there was The iPod and the iPod Video, which basically was like a very, very basic version of an iPhone. It did like 1/3 of what the iPhone does. But the point is, is that they realized we need to do this before our competition does this. We need to reinvent ourselves, and we need to kind of make sure that we're constantly killing our darlings and realizing, hey, this is good and people are happy with it, but they're not gonna be happy with it forever.

It was clear to us when the podcast wasn't working. How does Michael know To kill the business completely or kill that version, pivot, do something different in that business, but still stay in that, in the business that he's in?

A good way to answer that question that Michael has is ask the question, is the problem I have right now, is it a market problem? Is the market the problem or is it the offer I'm presenting? If nobody wants this solved, like there's no real problem here to be, to be had in the market, doesn't want this anymore, right? That, that's a market problem, right? There's no really problem to solve here, right? That might be the real ending of your business, right?

Mm-hmm.

But sometimes you're trying to sell a product or service or solution to the wrong market and they don't really appreciate what you're offering. They don't really understand what you're offering. One of the things I always say is that like when you're making any kind of offer or solving any problem, you have to sell it to people that actually recognize they have that problem. If you are selling, you know, let's say healthy recipes so you can cook healthy dinners and you're selling to people that are not really health conscious, right? They're like, that sounds good and all. I know I should be doing that, but you know what? I'm busy. I'm just going to pick up Chipotle, right?

Mm-hmm.

That's just the reality. You're selling it to the wrong market. But if you sell it to people that are like fitness fanatics, people that really care about their health, people that do biohacking, they're going to be like, yeah, I need to know how to do that. And that is the right market for that. And then it could be your offer. And these are the 2 things you need to look at. Sometimes we try to sell something and it doesn't really solve the whole problem, right? It solves a portion of the problem, but they're like, hey, I still have to do XYZ. You know, if we go back to the healthy food type of thing, like I need to cook healthy meals, can you gimme some recipes? Right? Maybe that's not enough. Maybe your offer needs to include also a shopping list so they know what to buy when they go to the grocery store. Maybe they need to be specific for your local area of like, maybe you can just do like an Uber Eats cart and just share that cart with them. Like, here, order this every week. Make it super simple. So like your offer really needs to solve the whole problem so that they're, they're, they don't kind of feel like, oh, I, I still need help, or this is actually worth paying you money for.

Can you gimme another example? 'Cause I think there's more to unpack there.

Okay, great. Um, so as you know, we have run events, many events here, uh, in our company. Um, one event that we ran, uh, several times is called AusCon, which is a retreat for entrepreneurs. Uh, and we go on these skiing trips. Uh, last time we went to Queenstown and we spent 5 days in the snow and it was all inclusive and great restaurants and great crowd of entrepreneurs, right? If I try to sell OSCON, like it was so easy to sell this, this event, by the way, but it was so easy for a reason cuz I was selling it to the right audience, to the right market. If I sold this event, which was about $8,000 a ticket to people that are just starting out in business, mm-hmm, it'd be very hard because they may not see the value. They may not, maybe they can't Maybe they can't take the time off because they're still in their job to go on the middle of the week to, you know.

Right.

So what we did is that, hey, who would actually benefit the most? Well, actually busy entrepreneurs that don't have time to network. People actually doing well in their business. People that, you know, the cost is not the biggest concern. Maybe their biggest concern is like, you know, who else is going? You know, I want to make sure it's a good use of my time. So as long as I can address that, I can pitch it to the right audience. That's a right market for me. You know, established entrepreneurs, then I gotta make sure that when I, when I'm offering it, it's worth $8,000. Like I'm actually solving all those things. Like I am gonna meet interesting people. There are gonna be structured, you know, discussions. It will be fun. Yeah. You know, it's gonna be novel. It's gonna be a, you know, a good use of my 5 or 6 days. I could have failed. We could have failed with this event if we tried to pitch it to the wrong people.

Yeah. I think that's a really good example that, that makes it a lot clearer.

Hey, I hope this episode is really helping you think clearly through some of this these hard decisions, I encourage you to subscribe to the show on whatever platform you're on— Apple, Spotify, YouTube— uh, particularly because we have an upcoming episode, uh, a Q&A episode with Nicole and I that I want you to make sure that you don't miss. Okay? I wanna make sure that you tune in. And it's about if you feel stuck, if you feel lost, somebody writes in and says, I feel stuck. I feel lost. I don't know how to change things in my life. You know, they just feel like they're in a rut and we've all been there sometime. And the longer you're there, it's harder to get out. So tune in, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss that episode. Because I'm really going to try my best to help out this listener, but also help out everyone who's listening who's just feeling stuck right now. Thanks so much. Subscribe so you don't miss it. All right. Step 3. If you decide to stay in the business, you realize, oh, there is potential. I just need to learn a little bit more.

Right.

This is step 3. You need to start talking to people. OK? A lot of people, I cannot tell you how many times I hear about this, where people get stuck in their business. They feel like they're in a pivotal moment and they think the answers come from them. No, you need to talk to your customers. You need to talk to your audience members, potential customers. OK? You need to decide that I'm going to keep going, but I need data. I need information. Right now, you're dealing with very little information for you to be able to make any kind of decisions to change your trajectory.

Right? Yeah.

So, you need to speak to your customers, any customers. If you've had any customers, you've made any sales. You know whether they're your best customers. So like conversation number one would be people who have bought from you, especially your best customers. You want to ask them, why did you buy? Right? Why did you buy my product or service? What problem did it solve for you? Right? You want to learn. A lot of people they just think that's the customers that bought. They're like, oh, they bought. I don't want to leave. I want to leave them alone. No, they're a goldmine of information. There's two things that come out of these conversations. Number one, you get the exact language they use. They put that. The way that they feel about your product or service in certain words, and you can take those words and put it straight into your marketing material on your website, on your sales page, on your ads, in your social media, and it's gonna resonate with your potential audience members because you're speaking their language. And the second thing you're gonna understand why your thing works for those people, and you're gonna understand who they are because then it's like, oh, I gotta find more people like this and I need to pitch them my product. because they get it. All right, these people that buy.

This was game-changing for us in Webinar Ninja. I always remember this, where as soon as we started running user interviews and having those conversations with customers, um, it changed so much of our marketing, informed the marketing, informed the sales process, it informed the features that we developed and built and the things that we killed, the darlings that we killed in the, in the software. I got to give a shout out to Michelle.

Yes, it's Michelle Hanson.

Michelle Hanson. Michelle Hanson has written a book on this called Deploy Empathy.

It's the playbook. It's the playbook for customer conversations.

For those conversations, it gives you scripts. This was not sponsored. Yeah, we're not. But we've used her book several times, and you know, I use those scripts for those conversations, and and it it helped so much to understand. Exactly what you said, like who those customers are. If you have those conversations where you're doing most of the listening versus, you know, the talking.

Yeah. You have a problem if you can't say 5 people that have bought from you, a customer, like you can't say their names, like then you don't really know your customers. You need to spend more time speaking to them, especially when you're trying to make decisions. So conversation number 1 are people that have bought from you. What about conversation number 2? Conversation number 2 are people that didn't buy from you. Another goldmine. This is a little bit harder because for some reason we just don't want to bother people that didn't buy from us. We feel like, oh, we broke up, so we don't want to talk, right? But it's also super valuable, right? You can literally email them. You could just talk for them 2 minutes. You could just like just have a quick exchange. You can make it fun and interesting where you email them and say, hey, I'm giving you 24 hours license to be as honest as possible. Let me know why you didn't buy, you know, or why you canceled your subscription.

Mm-hmm.

You're not gonna hurt my feelings, but only for 24 hours, right? And you can just have a little bit of fun with it. I remember when we were trying to reduce our churn at Webinar Ninja, reduce the number of people who are leaving our service, one of the things that we implemented immediately was a cancellation survey. So when they would cancel in the app, we would ask them why they canceled. And we made it simple. So they did like the top reasons, you know, is it too expensive? Did it not have all the features you wanted? Maybe there was a technical issue, whatever it is. And then they could have a— there's a blank space for them to— Write their own. to put that information in. But at any point, we could email these people and ask them questions like, hey, you know, what would you need to have? What would need to be true for you to come back and be our customer? Right? And this tells you exactly what's broken in your offer, what's broken in your business so that you can offer it to those people. But I do want to say something like you need to learn from who's speaking to you, understand the customer, what they do, their demographic, you know, their needs, their wants, and compare that profile to the people that buy, right? If they're the wrong customer, then good to have the feedback, but take it with a grain of salt because you really don't need to change the business or change the product for somebody that's not intended to be your customer. So if they fit the profile of the people that have bought, then, oh, maybe there's some things you need to improve and some things that you can pivot with. But this is all to say that you need to talk to your audience, your people, whether they're customers, they're not your customers anymore, or they never bought. Yes. Like this is just no way around this. You have to do this. And this is why it's so important to choose a business that you enjoy. And, and cuz you're gonna be hanging around the people that are gonna be your customers, you're gonna talk to them. You wanna make sure you're spending, you know, a, a reasonable good time with them. And one of the things that really surprised me when we did these interviews is like how gracious people were that the founders actually reached out and wanted to have a conversation. Even the people that didn't buy, people that are not, that canceled, They're happy to hop on a call. And a lot of people just like to have a conversation and talk.

And typically, 5 conversations is plenty. If someone's imagining, oh my gosh, how many? I don't have time to run customer interviews. I can't interview 15, 20.

5 a quarter is fine.

5 is for that first— exactly. 5 a quarter is plenty. You get so much, like you said, gold from each conversation. What about the other side of it? When is it the right time to actually quit?

And this leads me to, you know, I would say step 4, which is permission to walk away. This is your life. And I have a rule in business: a business should serve you. It's a means to an end, okay? You should not be serving the business. You're not a slave to the business. You're creating this business so that it can fund a better life for you, whether it's the actual business itself— you're enjoying doing what you do every day, and, you know, the revenue and the money that makes for you, the profits serve your life. So don't get it twisted. You know, the whole point of doing all this work is so that it serves you. Your business needs to be proving something, not only to your audience and to your customers, but to yourself. Like, is this worth it for me?

Yeah. People forget that piece. Like, I have to be enjoying the process.

Yeah. So if you're getting nothing back and it's damaging your life, it's ruining your social life, financially, physically, mentally, You're like you're not getting anything in in exchange for this business. Then you need to consider like dropping it. You could try a different business. You could try a different venture. You could take a break if if entrepreneurship is not your thing. The important thing you need to remember is a business will always challenge you in some way, but stress isn't a signal. You should feel like okay, I'm going through a challenge. Am I happy to persevere and go through that challenge and see the other side? Am I gonna be proud of myself when it's all over? Or am I gonna say like? That was just horrible from start to finish.

It's kind of that difference between the stubbornness and the persistence, where I'm just literally persisting for the sake of it versus am I learning and growing each time I'm going through these challenges? Or as I'm experiencing these challenges, I'm actually getting something from it, not just another day, I'm going to keep going, I'm going to go at it again.

Willpower is not unlimited.

I'm actually learning and growing, and every setback has taught me something that pushes me in the right— keeps me moving forward versus literally just, I'm just going to keep going no matter what.

Yeah, I don't think that's sustainable. We talked about this many times, but, you know, I had a clothing line called Zenhom Designs. It was my clothing line. It was a custom tailored clothing line for tall men. It was a profitable business, quite successful business, quite overwhelmingly successful. But I didn't enjoy it. I was frustrated. I was burnt out. I didn't enjoy the day to day. I kind of cringed at the thought of like, okay, this weekend I have to like find the tailor and talk to him about these new designs. And then after that, I gotta go to the warehouse and like make sure that the, you know, all that stuff is packed properly. Then I gotta talk to like, uh, you know, my warehouse manager to make sure that, you know, arrives on time for these orders. All these things I didn't enjoy. I like, I just, it was like a burden, but I was like caught up in the business.

Mm-hmm.

I already started it and I had customers and people relying on me and people, this inventory's already been sold, so I gotta fulfill it. It was just like an obligation, and I just basically just shut it down because I was just so frustrated. It's like I don't want to deal with this anymore. Stop! No more, please. And you know, it was actually such a relief for me to do that. You know, one of my biggest regrets is like I should have sold it. Like why didn't I sell that business? But I was so burnt out; it didn't even cross my mind. I was just like I just can't take another day of this. So keep this in mind. This is a reality. Sometimes we We get caught up in things, and we can probably see this in our personal life. Maybe it's relationships, maybe it's a routine, maybe it's where we live, where we just do things over and over on autopilot just because we feel we have to. You don't have to do anything. You could choose what to do, and you're gonna have to just obviously deal with the consequences of that choice. But sometimes those consequences are not that bad.

Right. So it's okay to walk away. It's okay to give yourself that permission.

Step 5 is what I mentioned at the top of the episode, is asking yourself this question. Michael, if you're listening, if you're watching, Anybody else who's in this situation, ask yourself the question: If I can get all my time back, all my money back, every hour, every dollar, if it was returned to you, would you continue this business even though all that sunk cost is actually back in your pocket, back in your time bank of your life? Right? Would you choose to continue the business? If that's the case, then you know that this business is worth pursuing because you're not making a decision based on that sunk cost fallacy of thinking like, "Oh, I invested all this time and money energy. This has to work." You know, like, what if you had all back? Would you, would you do? Probably not. So like, one of the things that I learned through playing poker, I play a lot of poker for fun. It's one of my favorite things to do, um, is that you're gonna lose sometimes and you're gonna, you know, make some bets and you're gonna not win the pot. Somebody else is gonna win it. Am I going to go on tilt, which means get angry, get stubborn in poker and be like, you know what? I'm gonna go even harder next time. Like, why am I? No. If I have a bad hand, I fold. Right? You have to just like next mentality, next play mentality of this idea of like, hey, I don't have to continue if this is not serving me, right? I don't have to continue if this is not, uh, you know, put in more money and more time and more effort. I, I often think about when we were in our teaching careers and we would always feel like, oh, we're too old, we're too late, you know, we're already in our 30s. Do we quit our jobs and start this whole like entrepreneurial career again? And the thing is, is that like I could stop now, stop my career and go full-time, and I cannot waste any more time, right? The more umming and ahhing I'm doing, I'm wasting more time, more hours, more days.

And look, this is, I mean, the fact that Michael has again asked the question and is taking stock is, yeah, it takes a lot to get to that point and to be self-reflective enough to say, okay, this might be the line in the sand, but I'm taking this moment now. To decide, yeah, keep going.

Or if I was talking to a friend, one of the things I say a lot, and that you always kind of smile when I say this, is when there's doubt, there's no doubt. You know, sometimes we just— it takes us a while to admit it to ourselves that like, this is not working, I need to change something, I need to do something different. I need to— like, when, when that doubt is there day after day, you have to trust your intuition sometimes, but you got to trust but verify. Like I said, look at the numbers. The numbers don't lie. And often we don't want to look at the numbers because you feel like the numbers are going to confirm something that makes you feel not so great. But it's better for you to just like feel that and then move on and then not waste any more time and effort, or not wasting more time and effort doing the wrong thing, changing your direction, pivoting, and having a better business on your hand.

And I think that's the part of his question where he's asking, am I just being persistent or am I being stupid?

Yeah, I would replace the word stupid with maybe being blind. Like, sometimes we just don't want to see the answer, hoping that something will get better. But, you know, sometimes the facts, the data, the information, everything we covered today are going to tell a different story. You might realize, actually, it's not doing as bad as I think it is.

Right.

Maybe, maybe I just need to make a few small changes, you know, go into a new market, get some more of the customers that are doing— that like my product and service, my best customers, find more of those people, and I'll be fine. You know, sometimes the problem seems bigger in our head or in our gut than it actually is. But you're never going to know unless you actually go through these steps that I mentioned. So just to wrap up today's episode, here are the things that you need to remember. You got to look for trends, right? A month down, 2 months down, not such a big deal. 3 months or more, start paying attention. 6 months, red alert. OK? You need to make sure that your business is moving in the right direction consistently, especially in the early days. You know, you want to make sure that You know, your first year is a year where things are moving on the up and up and you're getting some traction. Before you kill the business, ask whether it's a market problem or if it's an actual offer problem— what I'm giving my customers, right? Most failures are usually I'm just implementing the offer wrong, or maybe I'm talking to the wrong people.

Packaged wrong. Yeah.

If you do decide to stay in the business, do yourself a favor and talk to as many customers as possible. Have conversations with people that have Yeah. People that did not buy from you or canceled. Learn. Have no ego about this. Sometimes they're going to say some things you're not going to like, but that's okay. Again, you have the permission to walk away from the business if it's damaging your life, if it's hurting your mental health, if it's hurting your physical health. If you feel like it's not giving you anything back and you've really given it a red-hot go and you've tried different things and you've experimented and it's still not working, that's okay. You can close shop. And start something new and stop dumping money into a leaky bucket. And then lastly, ask yourself the question, like I said, about the sunk costs. Like, hey, if I can get all my money back, my time back, would I continue this business? Do I still have that passion and that love and that need to see it through? Is there any way that the market could absorb what I'm offering if I change my offer, if I pitch it to the right market? If that's the case, awesome. If not, that's okay. It's okay for you to say, hey, this is not serving me anymore. Time to change.

Great final thoughts, Omar. If you'd like Omar to answer your question here on Q&A Wednesdays, just go to 100mba.net/q, submit your question, and we'd love to tackle it here on Q&A Wednesdays.

100%. And just one last thing before we wrap up today's episode. One of the things I always say is that business is one of the best personal development programs ever. One of the things that you probably have noticed about today's episode and the struggle that Michael's going through and anybody else in this position is that like you have to have a lot of self-awareness. You also have to regulate your emotions. You can't just let the way you feel dictate all your decisions. You have to verify these feelings. You have to see what's going on. You have to be objective in some way. And this is actually really good for you in your personal life where you start to question like, am I really bad at XYZ? Am I really, you know, an unhealthy person or am I trying in certain ways? You question the thoughts in your head. You don't just always just go with it. whatever your gut is telling you, which is very helpful in life as well, like I mentioned. If you want to continue your path into growing your business, we have a recent episode that you should check out. It's called What to Do When Business Is Slow. Sometimes you're just in a slow period where maybe it's a slump, maybe it's outside your high season, maybe it's not the holidays, and you want to be able to pick business up a little bit. You want to make a few extra sales. Maybe you want to know how to like do a sale. To your email list or whatever it might be. Check out that episode. It's going to help you a lot. Thank you so much for being here with us on Q&A Wednesday. We're here to help you along your journey. So make sure you ask those questions, like Nicole said, to submit your questions so that we can answer them. You're not only helping yourself, but you're helping other people that have similar challenges in their business. Thanks, Nicole, for being here.

Thanks, Omar. See you next week. Take care.