“Winners never quit and quitters never win” that’s crap
There’s a popular saying in the motivational world:
Winners never quit and quitters never win
Whilst this saying is true in some cases, it is certainly not a hundred percent of the time.
There are plenty of situations where the winners answer will be to quit. One of my first sites was tutorial based for a somewhat obscure programming language, if I’d continued to put all my energies into that site, I’d of had an authority site in the tiniest of niches which would never make reasonable money, the sensible option was to quit developing the site.
The way I look at projects is, are the potential rewards worth the effort and if the answer is no then it’s time to quit (or better yet not start). The best time to quit a project is at the very beginning, that way you don’t waste any time or resources. It’s just unproductive quitting what could be a successful project as it is hanging in with a project that just eating your time.
Having said if you have a great idea that you’re committed to developing then the advice of “Winners never quit” is a sound one to follow. I think a better saying wold be:
Winners never quit but when they do they quit first
This post was heavily influenced after listening to “The Dip” by Seth Godin, a very cool book.
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it’s a good point, you’ve gotta learn when you’re flogging a dead horse…
I actually got the chance to do this make money online thing full time and spent a couple of months wasting my time on a similar site. If only I would have quit earlier, I might not have had a day job today.
Part of winning is testing what does and does not work… so I wouldn’t exactly say that ending one project is quitting so to speak. It’s merely just that you have gone so far and found that there isn’t enough to gain from it and therefore, not worth your time and resources.
If I say someone has “quit” then I would think that the person who had a dream and goal of working for their self has given up because it was too hard and has gone back to working for someone else.
Having an exit strategy should be a part of every business plan. How many of us even have a business plan?
Troy, I think you hit a nerve…
The word “quit” in this context could be misleading. For example, if you have a project that is not turning out as expected, it would be considered a choice not to waste further effort on it. It’s not quitting, it’s more of learning from the project and moving on to something different and more worthy of your effort.
Have you been reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich?
This post is also known as Seth Godin’s book “The Dip”
The post was certainly influenced by “The Dip” and I sould probably of said that, of an editing I go
Right now I’m in the process of ‘quitting’ a number of time-wasting projects, to concentrate on the bigger fish. By the way guys, I was featured in the Financial Post today!!! I’m hoping that will in turn drive some additional bigger fish my way
Financial Post - congrats on the free press Justin, hopefully you can get some valuable exposure from it.
Massive congrats on hitting the Financial Post, if it’s anything like the Financial Times over here then that’s massive kudos, well done.
Yeah, it’s basically the Canadian equivalent. Here’s a link to the article: http://www.financialpost.com/small_business/story.html?id=455852
I’ve always thought of the quote as referring to the larger, life-encompassing goals. Sure, you may quit a job or project, but if your overall goal is to be happily married and financially successful, those are goals you should never give up on.