Success Requires Quitting Something

How are you? Well, come on in here. It's so good to have you here today. Let me ask you a question. Are you a good quitter? Are you? I used to be. I think my skills are slacking right now.

You should be a good quitter. If you haven't thought about it, let's have a discussion about that today on this program. It is the Daily Boost. From MotivationToMove.com, yeah, my quitting skills are kind of slacking.

They really are. I'm a good quitter. I really, truly am. Sometimes you get in trouble for being such a good quitter. I don't know. I'm having a hard time right now.

There's a couple of things going on. One of them is, well, there's two, but I like the people. There's nothing wrong with what's going on. It's pretty good.

It's okay. I don't really have a lot of complaints about it, except I complain all the time. Why? One day I kind of recognized that, well, what it was doing, it was kind of holding me back.

It was taking energy away from other things, too much thinking, you know, right? So I'm hoping on this show, we're able to teach me to quit better again, because I think I've lost that skill a little bit and I'll teach you too. It's good stuff. And it'll explain in detail why you need to do that.

Before I go, my inner circle members, my Fisher Passion inner circle members, I meet with them twice a week. I've done this for, gosh, pushing three years now.

And we've been, I don't advertise it a lot. I don't talk about it a bunch. They said, we need some new members. We only have 13. We thought we'd get a few more.

And I said, okay, well, that means I got to go market down. They said, no, just do what you do here. Just do a coaching program. Just do a thing. Have a coaching session.

I invite everybody to come in and do what you do with us. I said, okay, I can do that. It's easy. I like that. Plus, it's probably the best thing I do.

So, would you join me? June 11th, 2 p.m. Eastern. We're going to get together. Me and you and maybe 50 or 60 other people. I'm going to take you through the very same process I do twice a week with my inner circle members.

Nothing's going to be different. You're going to learn. You're going to do exactly what I asked them to do. I'm just going to guide you through it. You're going to have a great time.

You're going to learn like crazy. I might say you're going to have some fun and leave there very energized because that's what we do. Really do make a difference with people.

No sales pitch, by the way. Oh, come on, Scott, you're going to sell. Not really. I don't have to. We don't need that many people. And yes, you're going to see what I do.

And if you're interested, I will say, go look at this thing. It's just a document. It tells you how it works. And if you like it, you can join. I'm not going to spend 20 minutes pitching you.

You are numb. I have way too much respect for you to do that. Those days are over. So go to motivation2move.com. All spelled out. And right on the top of the page, you see an orange button that says workshop registration.

Register. MotivationToMove.com. If you can't make it live, I get it. Everybody's busy. Get registered so I can send you the replay right away. Can't send it otherwise, right?

Talk about quitting. Quitting is one of those things. Let me start by saying, are you a good quitter? Let me ask you. Just pause for a second. Let's take this in for just a second.

Are you a good quitter? Are you? Is it good to be a good quitter? I know I caught you off guard a little bit anyway, right? But are you a good quitter and is it good to be a quitter?

You're probably not a good quitter. Sometimes we see good quitters as kind of rude, right? It's a society thing. And yet sometimes we look at people that are good quitters and go, my gosh, I wish I could make decisions like they do.

It's some pretty good advice if you know how to quit. Now, before I get going, let me just say, it's not about quitting, you know, stuff you should be doing.

It's not about being lazy. It's not about any of that stuff. It's about really paying attention to what you need to be paying attention to, allowing yourself to quit and move on with your life.

Now, this is something I learned a very long time ago and started practicing. And it does, I think it's like a decision-making still. I do think it perishes if you don't do it a bunch. Plus, it's really confusing.

Because sometimes the very thing, I mean, think about it, you get a job, you work with a client, whatever it happens to be, whatever, it could be just anything. You get in, you kind of go through that infatuation period of whatever you're starting, it's brand new, you're interested, and you kind of get a relationship going, and now you're in. You paid all the price, you paid the bills, everything is there, and suddenly it's not quite working anymore.

There's a lot of holding here. We call it the pain of disconnect. There's a lot of reason for you not to want to quit. Of course, there are other times when you just say, that's it, I'm done.

I get news for you. Those are great moments. And I've said for many, many years, you'll change when you wear yourself out. And the truth is, when it comes to quitting, what you're doing is you're just kind of weighing it out and you haven't worn yourself out yet.

Is it anything fancy that's going on here? Not really. What's happening is this happens in your mind all the time. The negative that is driving you crazy is also interspersed with a bunch of good.

So whatever you're trying to quit at one time was good and probably has a lot of good right now. So your brain's going back and forth and yeah, but, but, but, but, but, but, but.

How can I quit? It's good, but it's not. Oh no, right? The challenge is on the other side of the quitting, you don't quite know what's going on. And until you can put a picture together of what it's going to be like, you're likely to stay where you are.

We call that the crossing the Rubicon moment. So I started getting onto this a ways back when Seth Godin wrote his book, The Dip. Probably still on bookshelves, I'm sure it is. Written a long time ago, maybe 15 years ago, maybe a little bit more even.

Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations, he says. There's a hard line, though, between casual quitting, lazy or avoiding work. A lot of that going on right now. They call it the slow quitting or the quiet quitting.

People working remotely now and just not really working. Slowly quitting. That's wrong. I don't like that. It's not right. There's a big difference between that and strategic quitting.

Ending something on purpose because it's a smart move to put your energy elsewhere. That's the whole point. You quit dead ends because it frees you to do the things you want to do, things that matter.

A lot of companies go through this. It can be confusing. In fact, you can go through it with your relationships and everything else. You take off running fast.

If you're a company, it goes fast. You get some traction. You start making money. You start being a success. And then it kind of comes crashing down. Is it over?

Not necessarily. Most success is followed by a time when you kind of rebuild. You have to get new computer systems. You have to hire new people. Whatever happens to me, as you grow, you have to change, right?

That happens. Sometimes a relationship, you start off hot and heavy, and then boom, it drops. Is it over? Not necessarily, but you do have to change from that early dating period to something more long-term.

So if you make that dip, Seth talks about the dip, strategically, you can get your way out of it. Or maybe... It is a dead end. Or maybe it is a cul-de-sac and you're going around in circles.

Most of the people I work with are going around in circles. Smart people, professionals, business people, highly educated, in circles when they get to me.

And I recognize it immediately. And I just have to kind of sort that out, right? Annie Duke, you know Annie Duke? A former pro poker player. She wrote a book called Quit, right?

And she argued that the best decision makers are the best quitters. I agree with that. Her core idea kind of flips the script on waste. Wasted resources are not behind you.

They are ahead of you. And if you keep going down the wrong path, you're not going to get to them. And most people quit too late. Not too early. It feels like it.

Because we kind of overvalue grit, ignore the hidden costs that's just sucking us down. People really want to hustle and grind it. They're like, man, I'm into this thing. I've got to make it work.

I'll tell you. Eventually, you'll figure it out. A little bit of wisdom will tell you when to quit. Now, it's confusing sometimes because there's a lot of marketing out there.

People these days are very good about communication. They're very good about keeping you doing what they want you to do. Why do I say that? It's not being a bad guy here.

But in the past probably 10 years, everybody has had the Internet. Everybody has learned to do this stuff. Everybody has all the negotiating skills and the marketing techniques and all the things nobody had before. So if you're dealing with anybody who's even close to business and a lot of other people too, they're kind of savvy to this stuff.

We're watching stuff on television now that teaches you how to do this, right? Shark Tank. We can all evaluate a company right now, right? Stuff like that.

It happens. A Chinese proverb, one of the best strategies is to know when to quit. That's the best. I have found in my past that the very first time, that my brain says, I need to get out of here.

That's probably right. But again, it's kind of confused with all the things that are going on. It's like, I can't be really kind of fleeting, kind of pops in and out, you know, just it's gone before you know it.

But truthfully, I found in my life and all the people I work with. And even today, we had conversations today about this. Everybody has something sitting there. They need to quit.

Everybody. And it's a very dramatic conversation because it's amazing what happens. You know, when you get a conversation with people who need to quit things, it's like gossip.

People can argue and they can talk like crazy about the stuff they hate. And then they get up and they do the same thing again. So, you know what, I'm not talking to anybody, to you like, you haven't heard this before, you're not living this, you are. What do you do?

Well, when you first get that idea, when that first glimmer comes in your brain that maybe... This might have to come to an end. You have got to accept that because that thought has passed in your brain. You're going to do a couple of things with that thought.

You're going to say, no, it's not. Or yes, it is. Or you're going to say, let me sit on the fence, get splinters on my ass and just drive myself crazy for the next couple of months.

That may be the way to get out of it. Honestly, it will be because your brain works that way. If you don't know, you got to figure it out. And that takes time.

I don't know where you are with that stuff. But is there something right now that you just know you need to move on from? There's only so much you can do.

Only so much you can do, so you've got to let some things go. Plus, your mental health is, man, it's important. Peter Drucker, if you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

He's a management legend. Quitting the opposite is the opposite of progress. Quitting is the price of admission. You can't pick up new things with both hands full.

I'm talking myself into quitting today, by the way. Not this. No, don't worry. I'm here. A ways back, probably two years ago, I used to have a premium podcast membership.

I had it for 15 years. I dropped it. People are like, what are you dropping it for, man? Well, I dropped it because, honestly, the pricing was getting lower and lower.

That was part of it. But it really wasn't the reason. It wasn't about the money. But the cost of doing it, maintaining it, all the customer service around it got to be kind of crazy.

And the biggest cost of doing it was it distracted me from the things I really wanted to do. Instead, I was playing around with this premium feed that was sitting there just doing what I was doing.

So I gave about a year's notice, tell everybody I was going away, and then I pulled the plug. And you know what's really crazy about it? When I pulled the plug, people said, what took you so long? And even crazier, even crazier, I stopped billing people for it like in December and like in September, October of the next year.

Scott, I haven't been getting your podcast. What's going on? I'm a paying subscriber. I said, no, you're not. I paid a dime. It didn't matter. Frank Suddenberg, quitting isn't always a weakness.

Sometimes it's a strategic choice to focus on more meaningful pursuits. Whoa. Crazy, crazy, crazy. So what do you think? Is there something today that you just know has got to go?

It doesn't have to go today. It could start going today. I have news for you. If something just came to mind, something you think you've got to change, very likely it's been in there for a long time.

You just haven't got to it yet. A lot of the work that I do, actually a lot of the work we'll do on Thursday at 2 p.m. Thursday, June 11th at 2 p.m. When I get together with an inner circle gathering of you guys, I can guarantee you,

Guarantee you, promise right now, probably at least 50 to 60% of the people I talked to on that call, we got to get rid of something before we can get something else.

Guarantee it. And you may not even see it, but I'm going to see it loud and clear because I do this every single day. All right. Be a good quitter. And join me.

Go to motivationtomove.com. Get yourself registered. Show up on Thursday at 2 p.m. That's a really good time. It's going to be a neat, really good. I'm going to show you a piece of software I did as well.

I want to show you what you can do with AI as well. I want to show it off. That's all. It's cool stuff. It's how you can kind of reinvent yourself along the way.