Like Sisyphus, I find myself dispensing the same advice to new entrepreneurs over and over again.
Well, not exactly, since Sisyphus was pushing a large boulder while wearing a loincloth. I’m usually sitting in a comfy chair sipping a beverage. Maybe it’s more accurate to describe me as a parrot. But you get the idea.
Anyway, I repeatedly say things like:
Dig in and go deep
Put your head down and go. Don’t quit.
Keep working at it
Pretty clear, right?
The problem with pithy statements, though, is that their very pithiness leaves them open to interpretation. Inevitably after I’ve given this advice and an aspiring entrepreneur has pounded on their idea for a week, a month, or a year, they will come back to me with something like, “This doesn’t seem to be working. I know you said not to quit, but should I drop it and try something else?”
I usually give them a pass, because I know this makes sense from the perspective of a new entrepreneur. I know you told me not to quit, but you didn’t mean EVER, right?
Good question. I’ll try to answer it more clearly. Here’s when you don’t quit on your business idea:
– You don’t quit when it gets hard
– You don’t quit when it gets boring
– You don’t quit when you hit a dead end
– You don’t quit when you haven’t a clue what to do next
– You don’t quit when others tell you to quit
– You don’t quit when you think you can’t possibly do this any longer
When do you quit? Never. Cue screams of agony and outrage.
“Quitting” for a new entrepreneur is dropping one idea in favor of a completely different, brand new idea – new to the entrepreneur, at least. Most aspiring entrepreneurs start working on an idea, keep their head down until one of the things in the above “You don’t quit when…” list happens, and then they start thinking, “This is stupid and it’s not working. But this shiny new idea over here seems like a good one. Let’s stop working on this thing and hop over to that thing.”
If you’ve seen the Pixar movie Up, it’s the entrepreneurial equivalent of Dug the Dog yelling “SQUIRREL!” every three minutes.
That’s quitting. It’s insidious, and it happens to many new entrepreneurs over and over again until they eventually decide that they suck at entrepreneurship and go get a job doing something they hate working for someone they loathe.
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Don’t be that person. Never quit. Ever.
But what if my idea isn’t working? What if I’ve hit a dead end?
That’s a sign that you need to KEEP working, not stop working. When you’ve worked on an idea long enough, dead ends become apparitions that appear to others but not to you. When you really put your shoulder into your idea, when you spend so much time on it that you know more about it than anyone else on the planet, you begin to see tiny cracks in what to others looks like a dead end. Cracks that you can drive your fingers into, create some leverage, and expose new avenues for pursuing your idea. Taking one of these new avenues is known as “pivoting”, and pivots lie past the dead ends that send lesser entrepreneurs packing.
Never, ever quit on your business idea. Beat on it until those cracks appear, then keep going.
Success lies just beyond the next dead end.