When do you give up?

As business owners, we’ve all thought of this at one point or another. 

When you’re lying awake staring at the ceiling, wondering how you’re going to pay your employees tomorrow because there are negative dollars in the bank. 

When key personnel suddenly depart, you’re left working three jobs for an unknown period. 

When the economy takes a nosedive, rising costs rapidly chip away at any promise of profitability for the year because you can’t simply pass on the increase and expect consumers to keep buying.

When you hit one incredible milestone after another and finally reach the mythical success you’ve always dreamed of, and then realize it isn’t what you dreamed of.

Have you ever thought of giving up?

I recently heard an opinion that owners give up when they’re tired of the effort and the people. They can’t see a strong reason for continuing to do what they’re doing, so they exit the company.

I can confidently tell you that business owners who’ve been through the thick of it have thought about this topic more times than they could count. However, when they’re ready to make the leap, something “good” happens to give them another spurt of energy to make it over the next bump; this could be closing a large multi-year deal or winning an industry award. They sit on the plateau for a while and contemplate the same question: do I want to continue? Should I continue? Why am I doing this to myself? Of all the alternative comfortable paths that are available, why have I chosen this one to torture myself mentally and physically?

Mr. Beast, the YouTuber with the most subscribers worldwide, recently admitted on a podcast that he’s not entirely happy with his life. Imagine having to produce complex content daily and manage his other growing business endeavours, such as his Feastables confectionary venture and game show Beast Games.

“There’s a reason no one can make videos like me: because no one wants to live the life I live or be in my head; they’d be miserable.” — Mr. Beast on The Diary Of A Ceo podcast.

As beginners to entrepreneurship, we often think it’d be easy because of all the seemingly overnight successes we see in the news and on social media. “Wow! All they had to do was post on TikTok, and the sales poured in?! I can do that.” What we aren’t prepared for is the complexity of staying in business beyond the first batch of orders you receive. What we aren’t ready to do is to put in the time and effort to make the miracles happen…continuously. Day after day, month after month, you, as the business owner, get to make that cash register ring. And if it doesn’t, well, too bad. This isn’t a fairytale, and no one is coming to save you.

As you grow the business, you get stuck in the day-to-day, month-to-month cycle of earning money to cover the bills. If you’re lucky, you run it with a decent margin, so you’re also putting away some savings. Around and around we go to keep on building until we reach a point where we come to terms with the fact that we no longer want to live the entrepreneurial life, where we’re responsible for solving the most challenging problems no one else wants to solve and for everyone’s feelings and livelihoods. The part of the business that you loved at the beginning seems to shrink and shrink while the problems and issues seem to get bigger and bigger.

We’re just tired, but we can’t be tired. We want to break this deadlock, which often leads to Founders exiting.

Is there a correct answer as to when you pull the plug? Or whether you stay on? No. I want you to know that you aren’t alone in thinking that maybe you need a break from running a business. You’re allowed to be tired. You’re allowed to want to quit. You can always start something that invigorates you and makes you want to get out of bed daily. Listen to what your body and soul are saying. Are you willing to pay the price and suffering needed to reach the undefined next stage in your business? Or, would you rather be doing something, anything else?