#254: When to Quit - Lessons from World-Class Entrepreneurs, Investors, Authors, and More

I'm very excited to share this episode. It's our first "roundtable" approach to discussing a single topic. This came about when I asked 5-Bullet Friday subscribers (sign up here if you're interested https://tim.blog/friday) to send me questions, and one that stuck out was: Where's the line between stubbornly pursuing an idea that isn't working and the patience and persistence needed to actually make it work? In other words -- when should you give up and quit and when should you push on? Since this is something I myself have struggled with, I came to the conclusion that I should reach out to people who might have a better answer. So, I sent the question to the following entrepreneurs, authors, and innovators: Scott Belsky https://tim.blog/2013/09/23/youd-like-to-be-an-angel-investor-heres-how-you-can-invest-in-my-deals/ Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/08/03/seth-godin-on-how-to-think-small-to-go-big/ James Altucher https://tim.blog/2014/07/11/james-altucher/ Debbie Millman https://tim.blog/2017/03/25/the-secrets-tactics-and-creative-processes-of-high-performers-and-achievers-debbie-millman/ Adam Robinson https://tim.blog/2016/12/20/becoming-the-best-version-of-you/ Chase Jarvis https://tim.blog/2014/05/26/the-tim-ferriss-show-episode-8-chase-jarvis-master-photographer/ Rhonda Patrick https://tim.blog/2017/05/04/smart-drugs-fasting-and-fat-loss/ Their answers are a thorough overview of how to assess your own ideas and opportunities, and determine which ones worth pursuing. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Shopify https://www.shopify.com/tim. With the help of Shopify, many readers of my blog -- first-time business owners -- have ended up making millions of dollars each with their side gigs. Back in 2009, I helped create Shopify's Build a Business https://www.shopify.com/tim, which is now the world's largest entrepreneurship competition. The goal of this competition is to entice would-be entrepreneurs to get off the couch and make things happen, and all you have to do to qualify is open a store on Shopify and start selling https://www.shopify.com/tim. Top sellers in each category then have the exclusive opportunity to learn from mentors and experts like Tony Robbins, Daymond John, Seth Godin, Sir Richard Branson, and me in a location like Necker Island. Listeners to this show can go to shopify.com/tim https://www.shopify.com/tim to sign up for a free, 30-day trial and gain access to video courses that will help you get started -- including "How to Quickly Start a Profitable Dropshipping Store" with Corey Ferreira and some goodies from me. Check it out at shopify.com/tim today https://www.shopify.com/tim! This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The Tao of Seneca, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Adam Robinson?

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Shopify. I have known and loved Shopify just about forever. Back in 2009, when they had something like eight or 10 employees, now they have more than 2,000. I helped them as an advisor to create the Build a Business competition, which is now the world's largest entrepreneurship competition. And many readers of my blog, first time business owners, have ended up making millions and millions of dollars each, many of them as side gigs to their full-time jobs. So, the goal of the Build a Business competition is to get would-be entrepreneurs to get off the couch and make things happen. All you have to do is open a store on Shopify and start selling.

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  And you can join in July or after July to be eligible to win. What does winning mean? You have to be one of the top performers, top sellers in a given category. And the prize, the reward, is an exclusive opportunity to learn from mentors and experts. And in the past, that has happened at places like the Gatsby Castle, where we had Tony Robbins and Damon John and Seth Godin and so on, or on Necker Island, which is Sir Richard Branson's private island. It's nuts and super, super fun. I'm also involved. So, there's a special offer for people listening to this show. Go to Shopify.com/Tim and sign up for a free 30-day trial.

• 1:46Tim Ferriss?

  You will get all sorts of exclusive free video courses to help you along and to get started, including How to Start a Profitable Drop Shipping Business with Corey Ferreira. You will also get some goodies from me. That's all free. It's all exclusive to people who are listening to this podcast. So, check it out. Shopify.com/Tim. And remember to sign up for the free 30-day trial.

• 2:12Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for ages, since even before podcasting was a thing. And I've used them for all sorts of graphic design needs. They are fast and they are convenient. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, I've done competitions, for instance, for book covers related to the four hour body. 99designs makes great design accessible to everyone, and it makes the process so much easier. And I used them recently for artwork and illustrations inside of my Tao of Seneca set of books. So this is a collection of Stoic writing and modern interviews and so on. So for the Tao of Seneca, I decided to use

• 2:54Tim Ferriss?

  their one-to-one project service. In this case, you invite a specific designer to your project, agree on a price, and then work together until you're satisfied. And the artwork just blew my mind. You have to check it out. I kid you not. So you can check out some of the artwork from Tao of Seneca, as well as some artwork and logos and so on that your fellow listeners have had made at 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim. I really suggest you check it out. And right now, you guys can receive a free $99 upgrade on your first project. This gets you, I think, 130% more submissions. So people who want

• 3:37Tim Ferriss?

  to work with you and give you first drafts of what you're looking for. To access your free design, please visit 99designs.com/tim and click the link on the landing page. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to tease out the habits, tools, tactics, routines, favorite breakfasts of some of the world's greatest performers, whether they are leaders, athletes, business icons, chess prodigies, military strategists, or fill in the blank, your favorite category. This particular episode is one I am very Excited about it is an experimental format. It does not focus on the lessons of one particular person. Instead, it shares the tips and tricks of multiple people on one topic. So you can consider this the first ever roundtable conversation on this podcast.

• 4:39Tim Ferriss?

  Now I'd love your feedback, so please let me know on Twitter at T Ferriss, T F E R R I S S, what you think of this. Zero to 10, how much do you like it? What would you change, et cetera? And here's how it came about. Sometime ago, I prompted subscribers to my Five Bullet Friday newsletter, which is free. Every Friday, I send out a very short email with five bullets of things that I am reading or that I've discovered experimenting with, et cetera. Could include supplements, articles, books. Who knows? I find a lot of weird stuff that I end up enjoying. And if you want to check that out, you can sign up. It's always free. It is just tim.blog forward slash Friday. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. And I solicited questions.

• 5:22Tim Ferriss?

  These were upvoted and one of the most upvoted questions was one that I struggled with. And this is from J F Kearns. Here's the question. Where's the line between stubbornly pursuing an idea which isn't working? And the patience and persistence needed to actually make it work? In other words, when should you give up versus when should you push on? And I thought about how I would answer this and I realized I actually struggle with this. So rather than make up some bullshit and just play that off and give my own response, why don't I reach out to a number of people I think would have better answers to this? And that's exactly what I did. So I took that question and I sent it to a number of friends of mine

• 6:07Tim Ferriss?

  and past guests on the podcast and they dug into it. So when should you quit? When should you persist? When do you know if an idea or how do you know if an idea is a bad idea? That just isn't going to work versus a good idea that you haven't made work yet? So. The first person we're going to start off with is Scott Belsky. He is an investor and entrepreneur, best known perhaps for co-creating Behance, an online portfolio platform. In 2010, Belsky was included in Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business list. Then you'll learn from 17-time, I think it is, bestselling author Seth Godin. And then we have hedge fund manager, author, entrepreneur, James Altucher, Debbie Millman, whose episode on this podcast is still one of the most downloaded of all time.

• 6:52Tim Ferriss?

  Adam Robinson, the co-founder of the Princeton Review, and advisor to some of the masters of the universe out there. And then we have incredible photographer and also CEO Chase Jarvis, and many more. So I am excited about this. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think of this format. @Tferres on Twitter. One quick housecleaning point. This is very, very important for any of you who receive Five Bullet Friday or subscribe to any of my email. Here it is. I clean my email list every six months so that email service providers know I am only emailing people who really want what I am sending. Because you've got to remember, it's not the size of the list that counts. It's how you use it.

• 7:34Tim Ferriss?

  So if you subscribe to any of my email and you want to keep receiving them, please open a recent message from me and click on any of the links within. Doesn't matter which. I'm going to be doing a big purge soon, getting rid of people who have been getting a lot of emails and not opening any of them because it's just crowding up your inbox and it's a waste of everyone's time. So I'll be doing a bitch purge. That's not what I was going to say. I'll be doing a big purge soon, getting rid of people who are not opening email and removing folks from the list. So if you are interested in still getting those, please just open one of my email, doesn't really matter, a recent one, and click on any link and that will keep you subscribed. And if you're interested in checking out what more than, I suppose at this point around a million people get every Friday,

• 8:18Tim Ferriss?

  check out Five Bullet Friday at tim.blog/friday. Okay, back to the episode. This one covers a wide range of stories and lessons and will ultimately, I hope, help you determine when to keep pushing forward and separate that from when it is wise to quit. And I did this one for myself as well, so enjoy.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  Hey Tim, it's Scott Belsky, entrepreneur and investor, responding to your question about when to keep going and when to call it quits. I've been thinking about it. There are many times in the middle of any bold journey where the ambiguity and the self-doubt, endless iteration get you down and really make you question everything. It's especially hard before you have any customers, before anyone even knows what you're building. I always like to say that anonymity is both a blessing and a bitch. It's a blessing in that you can play and iterate as if nobody is watching. It is a bitch because nobody is watching, because nobody cares. Every journey is like this to some extent, so you can't quit because of it. Hardship means you may be doing something special and creating something defensible

• 9:26Speaker 04

  from competitors and copycats. The question, I think, is whether or not the difficulties are making you question your core assumptions and belief in the final vision, or if they're just getting you down. I guess the trick is to separate the hardship in tough times from what you're learning. If you're learning that your assumptions were wrong, that customers don't want your product, and that you're potentially building something in the wrong space, or just building the wrong thing, then you should ask yourself the classic question: knowing all you know now, would you pursue this project all over again? Would you invest the money and energy you have invested to get as far as you've come in solving this problem?

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Or, knowing all you know now, would you just do something different? If you still believe in the vision, and while impatient with progress and deflated by the process, you still have conviction, then don't quit. Keep on trucking. You are just having some of those mid-journey blues. Society's immune system is trying to squash you. Don't let it. Keep going. But if your answer is hell no, if you think, geez, if I could go back before I got into this mess, there is no way I would head in this direction, then ask yourself, why are you still trying? Are the sunk costs keeping you from quitting? Are you overvaluing the plan you have only because of how much you've invested in it so far?

• 10:53Speaker 04

  I have heard the human tendency behind this is referred to as divestiture aversion, or more simply, the endowment effect. You know, we have this tendency to disproportionately value things just because we own them, regardless of how we got them. And I think you're liable to believe more in your vision and hold on dearly to the progress you've made thus far because of all you've invested in it. I find the winners never quit mantra to be very elementary because I think it goes against what we've learned from many successful startups that have pivoted from their original vision with great success, Twitter, Pinterest, and Airbnb, to name a few. If you've lost conviction but refuse to change because of past progress you've made

• 11:36Speaker 04

  or past investments from others or just investments from yourself, then you've become misaligned with your own vision. You're officially doing things for the wrong reason. So I guess to sum it up, if your conviction remains, if the vision is still something that gets you all giddy and teary-eyed, don't let the incremental obstacles and setbacks push you to quit. Instead, use these periods to build muscle. I remember and will never forget, even if I want to, the bootstrapping years of Behance where I encountered this quite a bit. You know, doing, being just a few months away from running out of money and having tons of fits and starts because honestly didn't have the right experience and expertise on our team to get it right the first time, we felt beaten down quite a bit.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  But the vision of organizing the creative world's work never got less interesting. You know, despite all these hardships, I don't think we ever lost conviction in, you know, what that might look like, you know, getting excited about it. So we just got tired and despondent a lot while trying to achieve it, but we never, we never really lost that conviction. So we didn't quit, we just tried to learn how to become more resilient. You know, when we were low on cash, we tried to become more resourceful. We had a saying on our team, you know, when anyone wanted to hire new people, refactor, refactor, and then hire. And we became super fucking resourceful as a small team, and this definitely made us stronger. But always keep asking yourself, do I still believe in the vision here?

• 13:03Speaker 04

  Would you embark on the same journey if you knew everything that you know now? If the answer is no, save yourself the struggle by making an inflection sooner or quitting and trying something entirely new. Don't just stick with it for the sake of it. Only put up and put in the hardship when you've got enough conviction. Hope that's helpful.

• 13:24Seth Godin?

  Hey, it's Seth Godin, and I might be the only person you know who's written a bestselling book about quitting. It's called The Dip, and I want to explain it to you now. There are two big ideas. The first one is this: Things that are scarce are more valuable. And creating something that's scarce is difficult, because if it was easy, it wouldn't be scarce. So what we have is a situation where lots of people start a project, and then they hit the dip. The dip is the thing that makes that project worth doing in the first place. So, for example, consider the case of doctors. To be a doctor, you've got to go to medical school,

• 14:08Seth Godin?

  and the dip in medical school is organic chemistry. Organic chemistry is designed to winnow out people who aren't going to make it the rest of the way. If it weren't for organic chemistry, there would be a lot more doctors. And if there were a lot more doctors, being a doctor wouldn't be as valuable. Or consider the case of washboard abs. Many people aspire to have them, but they're difficult to get. So lots and lots of people join the gym in January to much glee and celebration. But by February, half of them have quit, and by March, half of the rest have quit. Why? Because it's hard. And the only people who get out at the other end have made it through the dip because they didn't quit.

• 14:52Seth Godin?

  So the first lesson we take away from this is that it doesn't make sense to repeatedly start projects and quit them in the dip, because you're wasting an enormous amount of time. If we think about it from the point of view of a company, somebody like Amazon, worth $7 trillion or whatever it is today, how many of you were their customer the first week, or the first month, or the first year, or even the first decade? That what happens is it's fun to start a company because you've got nothing but blue skies and then it gets difficult. In the case of Amazon, it got difficult when the headlines were amazon dot toast and it was never going to work.

• 15:35Seth Godin?

  But they persisted and they made it through the dip and came out on the other side. Their competitors didn't have the temerity and the stamina to make it to the other side. That's why it's so valuable to be Amazon. Okay, so I said that was the first thing. What's the second thing? The second thing is that knowing the difference between a dip and a cul-de-sac or a dead end is critical because persistence alone doesn't guarantee success. That persistence is one of the requirements, but so is a smart strategy and generosity. So is doing something that might work.

• 16:16Seth Godin?

  Too often, we find someone stuck in a cul-de-sac because they don't have the guts to stop because they're telling themselves the story that winners never quit and quitters never win, which is baloney. Everybody who's a winner has also quit. You don't see many high-powered 50-year-old executives walking around in tutus. That's because they took ballet when they were four, but they quit. We don't do everything forever. We have to give up some of those things to get the energy and the resources we need to get through to the other side of the dip. So I think we can all agree that cigarette smoking is a dead end, that it leads to emphysema and death. It makes sense to quit.

• 17:00Seth Godin?

  There is no dip when it comes to cigarette smoking. But it may also be said of your freelance career, or it may also be said of this huge plan you have to change the world, and you've gotten those emails as much as I have, Tim, those plans to change the world like a thresher through a wheat field, like a hot knife through butter, if only, if only, if only, if only. And the poor person is doing it, has been doing it for seven, 10, 12 years because they think they're in a dip. They're not. It's a dead end. And how do you tell them apart? Well, I am afraid I cannot give you a map, but I hope I can give you a compass. How do we tell them apart? We tell them apart.

• 17:40Seth Godin?

  By first understanding that someone else must have gone down this road before us. The chances that you will be the first person, the first human to get through this particular dip are very, very low. So it makes sense to put your resources into projects where others on similar projects have gone through a dip. If there's no one who has, then yes, go be a pioneer and I'm cheering for you. But it's a low-profile way to move forward. The second thing is to ask yourself, do you have more assets than you had a week ago or a year ago? Is it adding up? Is there forward motion?

• 18:24Seth Godin?

  So back to the Amazon example, every day, Amazon had more customers than the day before. Every single day. That's forward motion. If, on the other hand, you're living from paycheck to paycheck, from funding to funding, from short-term customer to short-term customer, and it's not adding up, then you might be in a dead end, not a dip. So, to summarize, and the book's only 85 pages long, I hope you'll check it out. But to summarize the book, it's pretty simple. We know that Rogers' adoption curve shows us there's a big, fat middle if you can get through the chasm. That chasm feels like a dip. That chasm feels like that moment when you should quit, because that's when most people do quit. And the people who push through it get to the other side where they are the best in the world.

• 19:08Seth Godin?

  They're being seen as being the best in the world. The best blogger, the best podcaster, the best online store, the best eyeglass maker, the best tailor. Once you are seen as the best, you are rewarded by the search engines, you are rewarded by your customers, you are rewarded by the marketplace. But to get there, you must have the resources to make your way through the long and lonely dip. So, if you're going to start, understand it's harder than you think. If you're going to start, commit to not quitting in the dip. And if you're going to start, practice understanding the difference between a dip and a dead end. Thanks for letting me chime in, Tim.

• 19:53Speaker 06

  Hey, this is James Altucher and you can find me, or at least the cyborg part of me, at jamesaltucher.com. And then there's links to me at Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all sorts of other fun places. This is such a fascinating question, Tim, because it's not as if people should quit, or it's not as if I have quit things that are going bad and stuck with things that are going good. There's really three types of situations and two things that can happen in each situation. So, there are things that are going bad that you should stick with. There are things that are going bad that you should abandon.

• 20:36Speaker 06

  There are things that are going neutral, which you should abandon. And there are things that are going good, and even great, which you could either abandon or persist and step on the accelerator of. So I'm gonna give some examples. And actually, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start at the top. So I've been in several situations that were going absolutely great and fantastic, and those were important situations for me to abandon. And a classic example, before I get to me, a classic example is Jerry Seinfeld. So GE, General Electric, offered Seinfeld

• 21:20Speaker 06

  a hundred million dollar bonus if he would just do another season of Seinfeld at the end of his run. And he still said no. So Howard Stern asked him, "How could you do that, Jerry? The entire country wanted you to do another season and you were offered a hundred million dollars. How could you say no to that?" And Jerry Seinfeld said, "Howard, that's why those people are not writing the best show on television, and I am, because I know exactly when to quit." Sometimes, when things are going very well, every project in the world has a half-life.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  Every brand, every personality, the sales of every book, or movie, or business, everything at some point has a half-life, where it starts to decline after that. And you could say, okay, well, I'm gonna diversify revenue sources, or I'm gonna find other things to do. But, one thing is for sure, is that when things are going great, often at the peak, when things are, feel so good, you can't imagine how they can possibly go bad. That's the exact time you need to say, you know what? I need to diversify my life, or I need to stop this at the top and pursue

• 22:42Speaker 06

  other creative or entrepreneurial pursuits, or I need to expand my life in other ways, instead of continuing, you know, this thing that I've, that I've built up and I feel so good about. Now's the time where I can be proud of what I've done, and it's time to move on. So, in my very first business that I sold, we were growing really fast. I was, I was building websites for mostly entertainment companies. So we did the websites for just about every record label, Bad Boy Records, Loud Records, Interscope, Jive, and so on. We did HBO.com, Miramax.com, New Line, tons of movie websites, band websites, and so on.

• 23:23Speaker 06

  We were doing great, we were growing, you know, a hundred percent, or two hundred percent, year over year. And yet, I had this sense that I didn't really know what was going to happen in the next phase of the internet. And we had, I, I didn't know if I needed to build more software skills among my employees, or more strategic skills among my employees. And I felt the ability to make websites was gonna get commoditized. And, we had such a great brand at that point. And everybody was making an offer to acquire us. My own partners felt, you know what, maybe we should keep on hitting the accelerator and grow as much as we can.

• 24:07Speaker 06

  But I felt, you know what, if they're, if they're learning how to build websites in junior high school, something's going wrong. And so we sold at the top of our game, and I'm glad we did because two years later or a year and a half later, the, the internet bust happened. And there was no way to predict that. I could have sold maybe at the very last minute. There was no way to predict. But sometimes you want to just sell or change gears at the top. When you've learned everything you feel you, you could have learned at that phase, when you've been through the steepest part of the learning curve, and now it's, it, the slope is very flat and it's very difficult to learn new things, you can either say, okay, well, I'm gonna try really hard and pour all of my energy into learn, getting incrementally

• 24:51Speaker 06

  better at something. Or I could be proud of what I did, start a new project at the bottom of a learning curve, and begin again. And so that's not always the best answer, but it's a perfectly valid answer, to, to abandon something that's doing great. Now, other times, you might say, well, we're continuing to grow, we're continuing to serve people, I have a very clear vision of what the future holds, I have so many ideas of what could happen next. Like with my own, with my own writing, for instance, I always have ideas of directions I want my writing to continue. So even though I might not always write in the same genre, I always just love writing.

• 25:34Speaker 06

  This is a personal passion I feel, so that when I do it, I feel this nice feeling in my chest when, when I do it and I feel good about it. Doesn't matter the genre, sometimes I switch that, but I always feel good and I always want to learn more and more about writing because I, I personally love it so much and I feel it delivers value not just to myself, but to an audience. Because everything you do has to have an audience. You can't think of just yourself. You have to determine also Am I delivering value for others? And you get feedback on that and other people will tell you. So how does this apply, for instance, to the Seinfeld situation?

• 26:16Speaker 06

  Clearly, he was getting feedback that his show was great and he was at the top of his game. He was super creative, but he had basically run out of ideas to continue his show about nothing. And he had that since then. He was hitting a wall that he had never experienced before, so he decided to abandon it. Whereas for me right now with something like writing, I can see 10 different directions it can go. I can picture the future a little bit about what directions I can go in for the next one, two, three years. So it's something I continue. Now, the other thing, what about if something is only going okay? It's not bad and it's not great. It feels like you should persist because it's going well and you're ma- and let's say you're making money

• 27:01Speaker 06

  and you're feeling creative and people are noticing. When do you persist and when do you abandon? So here's a small example. I was doing a podcast for a little over a year. We did 177 episodes. It was called Question of the Day. In fact, a young man by the name of Tim Ferriss was a guest host on the podcast. My co-host on the podcast was Stephen Dubner, who is the co-writer of a little-known book called Freakonomics. And we were having success. We were the number one podcast in iTunes when we launched. And we were getting a good, we were always in the top 100 or so. We were getting a good amount of downloads per month.

• 27:42Speaker 06

  We were making a very nice profit on advertising. We did some live events that were fun and were sold out. And we were, and Stephen and I are good friends. We were having just fun getting together and joking around for a few hours every day while being recorded. So everything was going well, but.

• 28:06Speaker 06

  The number of downloads that we were getting, and this is almost a meaningless metric in every other case, but the number of downloads was not going up. It wasn't going down, nor was it bad. It was enough to create a profitable business for everyone and to pay some employees and to take care of the people selling ads for us. So it was a great little business. It was a fun, creative podcast. It was with my friends. We had many great guest hosts, including, you know, of course, Tim Ferriss, Brian Koppelman, the director of, or the writer and creator of Billions and Rounders and other movies, Marina Franklin, who's one of my favorite comedians. We had all these great guest hosts, A.J.

• 28:51Speaker 06

  Jacobs. We had so much fun doing it, and yet it didn't feel like something we should persist with because we knew the podcast audience in general was going up for the world, and we were wondering why our downloads were not going down, but they weren't going up either. So we felt like something was wrong. And after 177 episodes, we only had so many questions of the day left. And meanwhile, it was taking a lot of creative effort away from our other projects. For instance, our own individual podcasts, our writing, our other business endeavors. I missed doing the podcast. It was great. It was fun.

• 29:35Speaker 06

  It was successful in terms of profits, but it wasn't going up. And sometimes to feed that extra bit of creativity, you need to have a sense that you're improving at what you do. And so even though there was no complaint and no criticism and everything was fine, we decided to give it up. Now, sometimes... When you are learning and you feel like, oh, I'm learning really hard. I, I love playing golf, but I'm stuck at a, a, a five handicap. Sometimes you're at the top end of a learning curve where the subtleties of improvement are so nuanced

• 30:16Speaker 06

  that it becomes very difficult, every little millimeter of improvement that you have. And yet, because you've learned at this point to appreciate those subtleties, that even though it feels like everything is going flat, it's those moments when you should persist the most. Because every little improvement you have will feel so incredibly good. And I have felt this not only in business and in writing, but even in, in games like chess where I'm a, a, a, a tournament chess player and I constantly seek to improve and I'm already at a high ranking. So every little improvement that I notice feels so pleasurable to me that I get to another level.

• 31:00Speaker 06

  That even though it's not like I improve a lot, I, it just betters my life to see myself improve at that level. And I, and there's many areas that I, I feel the same way, that I persist with. Now, what about when something is going poorly? There's many reasons why something could be going poorly. It could be nobody likes what you do. It could be that your partners, uh, in something are no good or, or you don't enjoy being around them. It could be that financially you can't seem to figure it out. Either you're not, uh, making a profit or you're not raising money or you're not getting customers. So this, obviously, it seems like most of the time you should abandon that situation and I would agree with that.

• 31:43Speaker 06

  If you're, if you're running a business and no customers like what you do. There's a very big danger of smoking your own crack. That because you, you think, it's a cognitive bias. That because you put so much time and effort and energy into thinking of the idea and building the idea, or the product, or the service, you think this must be good. Your brain tells you, you would not have wasted that time on a bad idea. But, the reality is, you always have to take a step back, and this is really important. I, I've had to do this on, on every business I've ever been involved with, both good and bad. You always have to take a step back and say, "Am I smoking crack about my own idea? Or should I put this down and move on to the next idea?"

• 32:27Speaker 06

  And, and often, just asking that question every day and being very analytical about it, uh, and, and determining what metrics you're gonna use to judge success in advance, and seeing if you're meeting those metrics, that will tell you very clearly whether you should abandon something. So, there was one period where I created several different websites at the same time, uh, this is in the mid-00s, to see if I should, i- i- if there's a, a business in any of these. And nine of the websites I created, no matter what I did, no matter what marketing I did, I just could not generate any traffic. And even members of my own family were telling me, "You know what?

• 33:10Speaker 06

  I would never use this website you created." Finally, I created a website, Stockpicker.com, which i- it combined various loves of mine, uh, my interest in finance, my interest in software, my interest in, uh, writing, and combined them all together in one site, uh, and it was almost like this idea sex that created this one business idea. Within a month or so, I had millions of users, I had ads, everything. So, I'm glad I very quickly abandoned, um, the first nine ideas, so I could focus on that 10th idea. So, you have to recognize very quickly when something's, A, not working out, and B, not worth persisting in.

• 33:55Speaker 06

  Now, other times, something might not be working out. Uh, so a recent example is, I have been involved in a great business, but it wasn't working out for me. I was having a problem with one of my partners. No, nobody's fault, it's just sometimes two people don't get along for various reasons, or, uh, one person's busy on other projects while the other person wants to remain focused on the project in front of them. And so it wasn't working out for me. This busi- and I really felt like, this business is not working out. It's gonna cause a lot of problems for me, uh, personally and, and financially. And so, I, I did consider abandoning it.

• 34:36Speaker 06

  But, where, what I did was, I persisted just a little bit, and I said, you know what? At the very least, let me explore buying this partner out. And so I pitched the business and all the numbers and everything to about five different people, uh, or companies. Three were interested, one did the deal, and now I have a great partner, a thriving business, more profitable than ever. And, uh, it was an example of where something was not working out. In fact, it was just a personal disaster in many ways. And it ended up through a certain amount of persistence, and I would say six or seven months of persistence, that were painful many of those months.

• 35:18Speaker 06

  But it was worth it, because I knew at the end, I had something really good and valuable that I personally could enjoy doing if I just had the right partner. So you have to, you have to really identify the metrics by which something, by how you judge success, and by whether something is either working or not working. So in the case of the, the podcast question of the day that I was doing with Stephen Dubner, the, the metric wasn't, um, the number of downloads or the profits, because both of those were, were doing well, but the rate of improvement. The, the fir- to use calculus, the first derivative of downloads was negative, and we decided that would be our metric, and we, and we got out so we could pursue things,

• 36:00Speaker 06

  uh, where the first derivative of improvement was positive, or we felt the growth. Uh, so that was something that was mediocre, that we decided to abandon as opposed to persist. And- I had the sense with the thing that the, the business that wasn't working out because of the poor partner, that you know what, with the right combination of things and, and, and with the right fixes, which I could clearly imagine and picture, you know, i.e. I could find a different partner who could buy the first partner out, this has the potential to work. And I was correct and it worked, even though initially it was failing miserably,

• 36:41Speaker 06

  at least personally for myself. That said, many times if you're writing a book and you're stuck for months and you have no idea how to continue, or if you have a business where there's no customers and you can't raise any money and it doesn't seem like there's any, gonna be any customers and you, you didn't properly picture an audience before you built, uh, the first product or the first service, many situations like that you should abandon. Um, and sometimes, sometimes when there's personal things happening in your life, that's also a good time to abandon projects. So, one time I was starting a business

• 37:22Speaker 06

  and the business looked like it was gonna go well, but I had a, a, a personal disaster, uh, essentially a, a breakup and I had to focus on, uh, family and friends and my own health in order for me to be the best potential person I could be. And that one business did not require, uh, you know, it wasn't like the world needed that business more than it needed a best potential version of me. So I decided to abandon it because of something unrelated to the business, but more a, a personal situation. So again, determine

• 38:01Speaker 06

  your metrics, be fluid, but every situation, whether it's working out, whether it's mediocre or whether it's doing well, you always have the option to, to not do it or to persist and improve, uh, you know, and in other words, to either abandon or grow. So, so remember that. It's not just about whether something's failing or succeeding. There's lots of metrics involved. Be clear about what those metrics are and what's important to you from the beginning and use those metrics to determine.

• 38:35Speaker 06

  What your next step should be. And you should always be thinking about what your next step should be. Don't get locked into any one path. There's, we're, we're free people. We're not in prison. So every day is a new choice to make. And thanks very much for asking me this question, Tim. Good luck.

• 38:58Debbie Millman?

  Hi, my name is Debbie Millman and I am the host of the podcast Design Matters and Chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. You can find me at Debbie Millman on Twitter and Instagram. I recently met a very engaging young person and asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her answer astounded me, both in its optimism and its confidence. When I asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she answered everything. I was the opposite. I went through a whole series of career aspirations, but never quite felt that I was

• 39:38Debbie Millman?

  good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, or thin enough to do much of anything, let alone everything. In 1979, when I went off to college, I decided that majoring in English literature would give me the most options to ultimately choose from. And I minored in Russian literature because I loved Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I often joke now that I got my college degree in reading. Despite my grand dreams of being an artist or a writer, the lead gene in my decision making was to be utterly self-sufficient. I never once felt that I had what it took to make a living making art.

• 40:18Debbie Millman?

  My only marketable skills were the tasks I learned working at my college newspaper, basic design, layout, and piece-up of a publication. When I graduated college in 1983, my first job was in the design department of a cable magazine, earning $6 an hour. I lived in a fourth-floor tenement walk-up in Manhattan. And because my paychecks were so low and my rent was so high, I had to make a monthly decision about what I would use my money for: eating, rent, or paying off my student loan.

• 40:53Debbie Millman?

  When the first September came around after graduation and I felt the autumn in the air, I knew I had compromised. But I felt trapped. I could barely make enough money to pay my rent working as a commercial artist. How could I ever conceive of making a living as an actual artist? I assumed it would be harder and never considered that I had any other choice. About a year later, I was offered a position in a real estate development company in Westchester as their Director of Marketing. It was a big title with a big increase in salary. Now I would be making $25,000 a year. And it came with a car. I took it. Everyone congratulated

• 41:37Debbie Millman?

  me on my good fortune and the potential of this prestigious new opportunity. But on my first day of my new job, I hated it so much that when I finally got home after my long commute, I climbed into bed, pulled the blankets over my head, and cried. I hated my new job for the entire time I was employed there. I loathed the work, and I loathed real estate, and I loathed my very mean boss. And this was settling. This job and the job before that were jobs I had taken because I thought pursuing my dreams of being an artist or a writer were too hard. I was stubbornly persisting and pursuing and working hard

• 42:22Debbie Millman?

  at something I didn't even really want. Who was I kidding? Every job is hard. Design is hard, and marketing is hard, and working at McDonald's and Starbucks and Walmart is hard. Why does it feel easier to do something we don't love than do something we actually feel passionate about? I think we lose our courage to pursue our creative dreams when we feel that the only way we can make a living is to conform. I realize now that making a living doing what I love requires a personal belief, and I need to have something meaningful to contribute. What makes this particularly difficult is that making a living doing what you

• 43:07Debbie Millman?

  love doesn't come with a real rulebook. There's no one process for anything. So in many ways, making a living doing what you love is an anti-process. So if you are considering settling because going after what you want seems too hard to do, remember that hating what you do every day is even harder. The flip side of settling is infinite persisting. How long should you do something without the success you envision before giving up? When should you throw in the towel? How much rejection is too much? My answer to this first is a question. How much do you want this?

• 43:52Debbie Millman?

  If you want it more than anything, I say keep on trying until you get it. It may require altering your approach, refining your ideas, perfecting your methodology, or revising your intent. But if you want it more than anything, I don't think you should ever give up. But you will also have to manage how you feel about rejection. Personally, I don't take rejection particularly well. I tend to take it very personally, and I get very dejected with myself. This will lead to my wanting to abandon my efforts or to throw in the towel. But then I try to remind myself that I don't know anybody that really puts their whole

• 44:37Debbie Millman?

  self into something, who really feels any differently in the face of rejection. Why would they? Why should they? If you want something badly enough in the face of rejection, you must keep persevering. Many, many, many, many people, far greater than I, have been rejected numerous times, and many of those people have ultimately achieved real greatness in spite of, or even because of, the rejection. So this is the thing. I don't think rejection is ever final until you stop trying to succeed. Some questions I recommend you consider when thinking about settling.

• 45:18Debbie Millman?

  If you're willing to give up on your dream of doing what you love, ask yourself this. Why do you feel that you need to give up? Why do you feel that you should settle for something else? What are you most afraid of? Settling or hating what you do? Is it possible for you to continue to support yourself in other ways while you experiment with your approach to fulfilling your dreams? If you feel that you are not capable of achieving your dreams, is it because you are really not capable of achieving them? Or because you're really afraid to put your whole heart in and try?

• 46:03Debbie Millman?

  What scares you more? Heartbreak or rejection? What scares you more? Resentment or rejection? And what scares you more? Regret or rejection? I had one student who told me that the main reason he was afraid of going after what he wanted was that if he didn't achieve it, he would die of heartbreak. Well, if you try as if your life depends on it and you don't give up until you get what you love, I contend that you are far less likely to find yourself in that predicament. So this is the thing about persistence.

• 46:47Debbie Millman?

  If you're doing what you think you should be doing rather than what you want to do with your whole heart, you are not persisting. You are resisting the truth about who and what you are. If you're doing what it takes to make your heart sing, never, ever give up. Remember, it's not a failure until you accept defeat.

• 47:11Adam Robinson?

  Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me back on. This is my third contribution to your podcast. The first was episode 210 and 219. And today you've asked me to address the question, when should you quit? And before I go any further, if people want to know anything about me, they can follow my Twitter feed, I am Adam Robinson. Or they can, if they want to get in touch with me, they can email me at [email protected]. So the question, when should you quit, is such an important question. And it's, it brings up a whole related constellation of questions.

• 47:52Adam Robinson?

  For example, when should you quit a job versus when should you quit a relationship? Or when should you quit a dream? They're all different questions. And, you know, when should you quit a dream? Like, when should you give up on becoming an actor? Or making the NBA? Or, or launching a startup? Or when should you quit a job? Is the, is the job satisfactory? Does it fulfill you? Is there another career path? And we tend to romanticize persistence. There's that great Mark Twain quote, "If at first you don't succeed, try again, then quit." And you're just being a damn fool about it. And so the question is, when, when should you persist?

• 48:37Adam Robinson?

  And when are you being a damn fool? And Rudyard Kipling once said, "If you don't get what you want, it's a sign either that you didn't seriously want it, or you tried to bargain over the price." So you should quit if the price is too high. And sometimes it is. But you have to weigh that against how seriously you want something. And sometimes people think they want things. And it turns out, they didn't really. All kinds of people say, "Oh, I want to write a book," or "I want to run a marathon." And you ask them how many miles they've run, or how many pages they've written that week, and you discover they haven't written anything or run anything. And

• 49:20Adam Robinson?

  So you have to question whether they seriously want something. But sometimes the price is just too high. But there are other reasons you should quit if a better opportunity comes along. In Silicon Valley, the ethos is fail quickly and iterate and move on to the next version or next startup. You should quit if, you know, you should quit if you're trying to prove something, either to yourself or to other people, but especially if you're trying to prove something to other people. And if you're doing something merely because you feel you owe it to someone, definitely quit. But it's never a good motivation and it will always lead to resentment either on your

• 50:04Adam Robinson?

  part or the other person's. And finally, I think you should quit if it's not fun, if you don't love it. You ought to love what you're doing. I once read an interview of Borishnikov, one of ballet's greatest dancers, and he said it was just a job to him. He never really loved ballet, which was such a shock for me because he was such a brilliant dancer and yet he never loved it. It was merely a job. And I think we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the world to do things we love to do and they're at least fun. Not all aspects of every pursuit are fun, but you should at least love it. So quit if the cost is too high, quit if you're doing it because you feel you owe

• 50:48Adam Robinson?

  it to someone or that you should do it. And quit if it's, if it's not fun. If you don't love it, quit. Move on to something else. So related to the question, when should you quit, is when should you not quit? And if it's merely a matter of obstacles, if you're running into roadblocks, I would say don't quit. There's that great quote, "Obstacles are what you see when you take your eye off the goal." If you seriously want something, if it's a mission, if it's a passion, don't give up merely because you've encountered obstacles. I'm reminded of the, of the story, the tragic story of John Kennedy Tool.

• 51:30Adam Robinson?

  And John Kennedy Tool was a young man who committed suicide in 1969. He had written a book, A Confederacy of Dunces, and had sent it to dozens of publishers and he had got rejected across the board. And he killed himself in despair and depression, which is tragic. And his mother, Thelma, was obviously heartbroken. Imagine what she felt. And she was determined that her son's book would see the light of day. And mind you, it took her 11 years to get the book published, 11 years after her son's suicide. So it's an interesting contrast.

• 52:15Adam Robinson?

  The son committed suicide after a few dozen rejections. And we can only imagine his heartbreak, but imagine his mother's heartbreak. And she was determined to see her son's legacy appear in print. And one of the persons she she contacted repeatedly was was the great Southern author Walker Percy, who persistently rejected her appeals as often as she persistently made them. And one day she showed up in Percy's office with the manuscript in hand. And he didn't have the heart to turn her away. So he thought he would read a few pages. And after a few pages, he realized the genius of the book.

• 53:00Adam Robinson?

  And with his endorsement, it was published and became a perennial bestseller. So again, you have the contrast between the son who committed suicide and the mother who persisted over the same same work. So if it is merely obstacles, don't give up. If it's some if it's a mission, if it's a passion, if it's something that you seriously want, persist. So let's say you know, Tim, that you should quit. How do you quit? Often, people don't quit because they're afraid to. They're afraid that there's nothing on the other side. For example, people are afraid especially to quit a relationship when they know they should, but they don't, they persist. They're afraid, they're afraid of hurting their partner's feelings,

• 53:45Adam Robinson?

  or they're afraid that maybe they're not lovable, or they won't find a partner afterwards.

• 53:52Adam Robinson?

  There are times when people have put so much into something that they persist merely because they've invested a lot of time or money or emotion, which is known in behavioral finance as the sunk cost fallacy. So the more you put into something, the more you're invested in it and the harder it is to quit. So if you're gonna quit, it's best to do so as soon as you can, as soon as you recognize you ought to, because the longer you stay, the harder it will be to quit and the more costly it'll be when you eventually do. So one reason the sunk cost fallacy is so hard to escape is we recognize the cost of something.

• 54:36Adam Robinson?

  And what we don't reckon is the opportunity cost in holding on. As long as you hold on to something that's not providing you satisfaction, that's not fulfilling your dream, then you're passing up all the opportunities that await you when you do let go of whatever you're holding on to. Again, whether it's a job or a relationship or a dream. So if you find it hard to quit, focus on the opportunities that you're passing up in staying, in persisting. And I think the last two points I'd like to make are, if you know you're gonna persist, but it's difficult and you feel like quitting, but you know you shouldn't,

• 55:21Adam Robinson?

  then one way to persist and to stay in the game is to connect your dream to a mission, to something larger than yourself. Because you may not feel that you want to persist. You may not want it anymore, but the mission is larger than you. And if you can make the dream larger than yourself, if you can connect it to a mission, you'll be able to persist despite the obstacles.

• 55:50Adam Robinson?

  And the last thing is, sometimes there's a black and white, should you persist or quit? But there's a gray area, and the gray area is, maybe you should pivot. For example, maybe your dream was to become a player in the NBA. And maybe you fell at that dream and should quit, but maybe you could become a coach in the NBA. Right? Or a talent scout, or maybe you can own an NBA team. There are many ways that you can realize aspects of a dream. And one thing to think about is why you want the dream in the first place.

• 56:32Adam Robinson?

  So for example, if someone said he wanted to become an actor because he wanted to become well-known, well, maybe there are other ways to become well-known. Maybe you could become a well-known director, or a well-known writer, screenwriter. There are other ways to fulfill your dreams. So sometimes you ought to pivot on the dream as opposed to giving it up or persisting in that dream. So your choice is not the binary one, persist or quit. It's not black and white, it's persist, pivot, or quit.

• 57:12Speaker 08

  Hey, everybody out there in Timland, how's it going? Tim, thanks for having me on the show. I'm Chase Jarvis. Tim asked for a short bio. I am the founder and CEO of a company called CreativeLive, which is the world's largest live streaming education company focused specifically on creativity and entrepreneurship. We've got 10 million students, we're online at creativelive.com. We've had billions of minutes streamed. It's a great place to learn from folks like Tim, Gary Vaynerchuk. Mark Cuban, Richard Branson in the entrepreneurship space, and then the top designers, photographers, you name it. There's a super highly curated group of folks that you can learn from. In a previous world, and I think maybe a lot of you may know me as a photographer.

• 57:57Speaker 08

  I founded a successful career there, developed the first iPhone app that shared photos to social networks called Best Camera. Anyway, that's a little bit about me. Where to find me on the internet? I'm at Chase Jarvis on everything. That's YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. And I'd also appreciate if you check out at CreativeLive, which is their, that's their handle on every place as well. I want to answer the question that Tim put forward about how do we know when to persist or to push on versus calling it quits? I think this is a fascinating question. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and put my answer into two buckets. I think it's a two-part answer.

• 58:40Speaker 08

  First, I value intuition massively. I think over the next, you know, as we tap into human potential and we have, you know, from biochemical stuff to mindfulness to all this stuff, I think we're gonna, we're gonna find over the course of the next chapter, the near term of history here, that intuition is the most powerful tool that we have as humans. And, you know, within the concept of intuition and listening to that voice inside you, there are two ways of thinking about that. One is just the one, your gut. You can feel it in your body. You know that the right answer every time you've looked back, whether to keep dating this person or to bail on this job and get a new one.

• 59:25Speaker 08

  I think we can most always say that at our core, we had a really strong, strong feeling one way or another. The second part of intuition, which I think is really interesting to Tim's audience because of the background that Tim has, you know, calls himself the human guinea pig, Tim, we love you, but there's a scientific rigor that goes around with that. And so if intuition is a little bit squishy for you while you're listening to this, there is a new philosophy, or rather, theory coming out about intuition that I'm hearing more about recently. And I can't, I'm sorry, I can't quote the studies, maybe Tim can, but it's that our bodies are recording data all the time, our memories, our emotions, all those things.

• 1:00:09Speaker 08

  That's the equivalent of RAM, you know, we take in however like a billion pieces of data a minute or a second or something like that, and we only make use of a very small amount. And the way I do think about this is the equivalent of RAM in a computer, like what's right there on the surface, or just below the surface that we can recall. And this, this theory about intuition is that while we are recording these billions of data points throughout our entire life, moment to moment, that we do actually have an archive of those in our body, in the cells of our body. And that intuition is sort of the parsing,

• 1:00:51Speaker 08

  the, what is it called, when you refactor, like you go back and you look at data that's already there, but you have to, you put it through a different process. And to me, this process is intuition. So it's the answers, like you would have come into contact throughout your life with a bunch of things that would inform this particular decision, even though they're not in your sort of conscious working memory. And whether that bears out to be true, or some other version of it, you know, part one of my answer is that you know in your gut. Deeply around intuition, whether something is worth pursuing or not.

• 1:01:34Speaker 08

  So there's both the instinct part, which is the feeling, and then there's this, what I'm saying is a new, more scientific approach to what data in the body feels like, and that that's actually intuition. And I believe, summarily on this first point of intuition, is that there's going to be huge strides in the next short term about how valuable this is. Every creator that I know who has made really successful things, not all successes, but that you would look up to and say, "Well, that person's a badass." Every time I've talked to them, there's been a really strong element of intuition.

• 1:02:15Speaker 08

  Now, we can be wrong about that, and there's all kinds of other theories, but that's mine, point one. So point two is this concept, a rubric, a series of questions that I ask myself. This is maybe more spot on in Tim's way of approaching something. But it's a couple of questions that one can ask oneself to determine whether to call it quits or to keep going. Well, the two questions are, is this something that brings me joy? And/or is this working? Am I making progress? And that progress can be internal progress, external progress.

• 1:02:59Speaker 08

  Do you have the concept of progress? Is the thing that you're doing working in some capacity? That's question one. And then question two is, do I still care about this? Do I believe deeply in the mission or the vision of what I'm talking about doing, such that I'm willing to endure? It's a very simple two-question paradigm, because you could see a world where if these things are in... Is it working? Yes. Do I believe in it? Yes. Shit, obviously you're going to keep going, right? That's a no-brainer. Is this working? No, man, I hate it, I'm miserable, it sucks. Do I care about what I'm doing? Do I believe in it? No, I used to care about that one, you know, a long time ago, now I don't.

• 1:03:43Speaker 08

  Okay, that's really obvious that you wouldn't continue. It's, it's, calls into question though, what about when these two things are conflict, in conflict? Is it working? Yeah, it's working great, but I don't believe in it. Then you have to go like, ah, so should I keep doing it? Or, in the spirit of the question, is this working? Not really. Am I, am I, is it bringing me joy? Or is it hard? How do I know when to tweak and keep pushing? And if, say, you're, you're, it's not working, but you still believe deeply in it? Then you have to consider the upside. So, this is a structure that I got from a friend named Chris Gilbo.

• 1:04:24Speaker 08

  I think it's one of the most powerful frameworks that we can have, because knowing that what we're working on is the right thing, when we're all limited by time, I think is a massive advantage. It's not just work harder, it's not just work longer, but it's work smarter. And this is one of the, I think, a key way of thinking about it. And Chris has a quote that I think is worth noting, and that's, you know, he studied all kinds of people in his book, Born for This, it's a great book, that he studied all kinds of people who had had, you know, gone through these, these, the process of trying to make a living and a life doing what they loved. And it wasn't that, like stubbornness and pushing through was the thing that predicted success.

• 1:05:08Speaker 08

  In Chris's words, flexibility was the number one predictor of success. And again, the framework, ask yourself, is it working? And two, do I still believe? And usually, you can, you know, through that two by two, you can narrow down a lot of the information, such you can focus on, you know, is it working? Do I still believe? And I think, I'll give some personal examples where I've used this framework.

• 1:05:39Speaker 08

  I think we have to at first address, before we get into my specific examples, the concept of winners or success. And we have a, what I believe is a false narrative in our culture that says that winners, they just pull those through at all costs and they never quit. And to that, I say bullshit. I think winners quit all the time. And it's understanding, A, your intuition and B, having a framework for decision-making that I'm sharing with you here, that helps winners understand when and why to quit. Winners quit all the time. My, my personal example, I've got a, just from a career perspective, a couple of things that I quit.

• 1:06:20Speaker 08

  I was a successful soccer player as a young kid. I went to college on a soccer scholarship. I played on the United States Olympic development team and a very clear path to being able to continue on and play professionally. And I looked at that and it said, is it working? You know, what's your intuition? My intuition says, nah, I think I might be done. Okay, well then let's go to this rubric. Is it working? Are you getting joy from this? Yeah, it's clearly working. I'm, I'm, I'm good at it. I'm making all of the teams and whatnot. Do I still believe in the mission that if you can play professional sports, you should? That was a red X for me.

• 1:07:03Speaker 08

  And what, you know, without going into the, the details, I think it's a little bit superfluous for this conversation, but again, it's this, this framework that was really quickly able for, for, to, to help me get to a decision that I needed to quit playing soccer after my senior year in college so that I could go on and do other things. The same is true. From, from there, I, I went, I was bound for medical school. I took all the prerequisites and, you know, the MCAT and did all that stuff.

• 1:07:35Speaker 08

  And is it working? Yes, it's working. I have an opportunity to go to medical school. Do I believe in it? At some point, I stopped believing in it because I realized that I was going to become a doctor for all of the wrong reasons. The reasons that, you know, I was the only person in my household to, you know, complete college. And if you're going to be, quote, "socially successful," then you are either a doctor, or a lawyer, or a pro athlete. See, you know, earlier point. And, you know, it was very clear to me, using this rubric of intuition plus, you know, these two questions, that it wasn't for me. And, you know, one other thing that I quit is I then went to, you know, I was going around experimenting. I then entered a program where I was going to get a PhD in philosophy, the philosophy of art.

• 1:08:20Speaker 08

  But I also quit that two years in. And I think an important aspect is this, you've heard the iteration. This is what I was doing. I was exploring each of these things and realizing that despite I had aptitude in each of them, I stopped believing in the mission. And in case you're wondering if you should push on in a world where you don't believe in the mission, but it's working, to me, that is, um, that is the failure of the opportunities that we have as humans to pursue the things that we love with joy. And my belief is that when you talk to the most successful people, and success can be

• 1:09:05Speaker 08

  by, you know, any myriad of definitions, that there was a mission and/or a vision that was greater than themselves, and they were very passionate about it, such that when shit got hard, and it 100% will get hard, that you have the energy and the stamina, stamina is a key word here, to push through. And if you're working on, say, something different than you're passionate about, it's just a market opportunity where you can go, quote, "make a bunch of money." And when shit gets super hard, are you going to believe enough to push through? And the answer, generally, I find when people are pursuing money or just some random market

• 1:09:44Speaker 08

  opportunity, that they lack the conviction necessary to succeed or to push through when you should push through. So I'm going to wrap it up and say, "Thanks, Timbo, for asking the question, having me on the show." Just to recap, I believe in two buckets. One, considering the question, "How do you know when to push on or to call it quits?" And first, intuition. Intuition is both that feeling you have in your gut. And then for the folks that are a little less woo-woo and a little more scientific, I believe we'll see a lot of science that's just, in the near future, is just starting to emerge around the data that is stored in the body that we have a slower ability

• 1:10:29Speaker 08

  to recall, or it's recalled in a different way than just in the mindfulness. That's one of the reasons that intuition feels like a gut feeling. And then the second part is this sniff test that I'm borrowing from my friend Chris Gilabou from the book Born for This. And that's asking yourselves two questions. One, is it working? Are you finding success? And two, do I still believe in the mission? And if those are both aligned, then you don't have to dig deeper. It's only when they're in conflict do you have to say, like, "Is this still working? Yes or no? And do you still believe?" So I hope that's helpful. Timbo, keep doing what you're doing. And to all those listeners out there, again, I'm Chase Jarvis. You can find me at @chasejarvis.

• 1:11:13Speaker 08

  And I would love it if you'd pay attention to CreativeLive. Thanks, y'all.

• 1:11:19Speaker 09

  Hello, everyone. This is Rhonda Patrick. I am a PhD scientist, but what I'm arguably more well-known for, as opposed to any bench work I've done in the lab, is my science communication efforts online, especially through my YouTube channel and my iTunes podcast called Found My Fitness. That's Found My Fitness, all one word. In fact, how I ended up doing that in the first place is a little bit of a story of having to choose one of two somewhat diverging paths, and for that reason, might speak a little bit to Tim's theme question for this podcast episode, which is, how do you decide when to persist or when to call it quits? So, in order for that to make any sense, I think it's helpful to sort of have

• 1:12:00Speaker 09

  a little background on the typical career progression for a PhD scientist. The epitome of academic success is to land a tenure-track faculty position and have your own research lab, preferably at a good university and ideally in a city that you'd like to live in. But to give you an example of what it takes to get there, only around 65% of all PhD holders actually go on to do what's known as a postdoc, which is around a four- to five-year continued training intermediate step towards professorship. And only about 15% to 20% of those postdocs then go on to a tenure-track faculty position. And then for those that actually get to the faculty position stage, the average time it takes

• 1:12:44Speaker 09

  to get funded on a big R01 NIH grant is about four to five years, because all the junior faculty members are competing with a well-established, famous, already-tenured faculty for funding. Getting that R01 NIH grant is actually a crucial step, because it's what ultimately secures a professor's tenureship in the long run. So while Found My Fitness was what I would call, you know, in its early embryonic stage of development, towards the end of my graduate studies, it was still enough to get the attention of at least one of the professors that I was interviewing with for a postdoc position, who happened to be at one of the more prestigious institutes that I interviewed at.

• 1:13:27Speaker 09

  It's important to note that was what was particularly impressive about this lab was that a whopping 80% of all post-docs in this lab went on to secure tenure-track faculty positions. The problem was is that it was put to me in no uncertain terms that at this point I would have to give up my little side project of Found My Fitness, like completely, full stop. And this represents, you know, the first of two major crossroads I encountered. This could have been, and actually should have been, a tremendously anxiety-provoking moment for me. I mean, consider those statistics I just gave you a moment ago. Each stage of the academic funnel narrowing precipitously, with only 15 to 20% of post-docs

• 1:14:11Speaker 09

  ordinarily moving on to that final stage of, you know, tenure-track professorship. And all the factors leading to that point also play a role. So, the impact factor of the journal that you publish in, and indeed, the lab that you do your post-doc in are all very important. But the good news is, is that at least in this particular case, I actually had a get out of jail free card. While the vast majority of my professional mentors urged me to go with option A, post haste, even being a little bit pissed off at me for dragging my feet a little bit, option B ended up being a perfect fit for me. A much smaller institution, but the opportunity to work with one of the greats in science, Dr. Bruce Ames.

• 1:14:54Speaker 09

  Not only did this actually end up being a good opportunity, but in fact, there was better overlap with what I was doing with my side project, because Bruce's research at the time was focused at looking at the effects that micronutrients and nutrition had on biomarkers of aging and inflammation and metabolic disease in humans. Which actually is a pretty broad canvas, if you think about it. You know, unfortunately, as a result of the somewhat perverse influence of funding mechanisms on science, many scientists can actually be forced into a very narrow field and, you know, they're forced to ask narrower and narrower questions throughout the course of their career. To the point where they not only don't have time to do any other side projects, but they

• 1:15:39Speaker 09

  may not even have the opportunity to research something outside of a specific protein that they're looking at. And that's the reality of science, you know, unless you're very lucky, or you plot your course very carefully. So ultimately... Passing up the "sure thing" to do something that more coincides with your natural passions is a little bit riskier, but in my opinion, it's the more rewarding path. The second stubbornly persist versus call it quits crossroads that I faced was probably towards the very end of my postdoc, when I was being pursued for a tenure-track faculty position by a good university. They wanted me to spend about 50% of my time lecturing students and the other 50% of my

• 1:16:24Speaker 09

  time starting a lab and writing grants. While this wasn't the same thing as telling me I had to shut my podcast down, the responsibilities would imply it. And this was actually a much harder choice for me because I didn't have a get out of jail free card this time. And I knew that if I found my fitness aside, that it would surely be dead in the water. So when faced with a crossroads decision like this, I think it's helpful to weigh in a few factors. For me, it came down mainly to impact. If I valued, for example, teaching, which I do, then as a professor, I can expect to spend about 50% of my time doing just that. But the conventional teaching model still championed today is one that really doesn't

• 1:17:09Speaker 09

  scale. So if you consider the average university classroom size, that's anywhere between 25 to 55 students on average, depending on the institution. But if we compare that to a video lecture, for example, in my experience, a bare minimum of 10 to 12% of views or viewers conservatively will watch an entire video from start to finish, regardless of how long the video is or what the content is about. And I consider these "real views" on a video because they hold the most likeness to a traditional classroom, because the viewer is actually consuming all of the content in a way it was intended.

• 1:17:50Speaker 09

  So even if your video flops and only gets a few thousand views in the long run, you still have the equivalent to an exceptionally large classroom here, what you've had to say. By thinking about impact in this way, I think it's clear that as a teaching apparatus, even a video that is not very successful is still probably way more successful than a typical lecture. So while I did not end up pursuing the university position, instead choosing to focus on Found My Fitness, that decision was not without its own anxiety. Ultimately, you know, passing up an opportunity like that means it may be very difficult or altogether unlikely that it will come around again. But since then, you know, I've continued my academic writing.

• 1:18:33Speaker 09

  I've met many leading scientists, you know, as a function of the interviews I conduct. And when I conduct an interview, I also try to read as much of the work the scientist has done as they possibly can. So by necessity, I feel that if anything, you know, I continue to broaden my expertise in a way that at least shares some overlap with what I would have done, you know, in my responsibilities as an investigator. Finally, one thing I should mention, you know, when faced with a decision where you have to choose one path over another, I think it really helps to have done the work to make the decision easy. So if we go back to our conversation about measuring impact, I actually might have chosen differently at my personal crossroads. If Found My Fitness had not already reached a level of community interest

• 1:19:18Speaker 09

  that merited my belief it could actually go further and become something bigger. That meant having a few videos or conversations that I'd already done, you know, under my belt on my channel that had enough of those quote unquote "real views" I mentioned earlier that actually could fill an imaginary small baseball stadium. It also meant that I was fortunate enough to have already reached that 1,000 true fans milestone articulated by Kevin Kelly. In other words, actual supporters willing to put a few bucks on the line to keep things going. So I think that when you put the hard work in today, you make those transition decisions so much easier. And of course, a little good luck and opportunity along the way helps too.

• 1:20:02Speaker 09

  So that's my story. Thank you for listening.

• 1:20:06Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:20:49Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for ages, since even before podcasting was a thing. And I've used them for all sorts of graphic design needs. They are fast and they are convenient. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, I've done competitions, for instance, for book covers related to the Four Hour Body. 99designs makes great design accessible to everyone and it makes the process so much

• 1:21:34Tim Ferriss?

  easier. And I used them recently for artwork and illustrations inside of my Tao of Seneca set of books. So this is a collection of stoic writing and modern interviews and so on. So for the Tao of Seneca, I decided to use their one-to-one project service. In this case, you invite a specific designer to your project, agree on a price, and then work together until you're satisfied. And the artwork just blew my mind. You have to check it out. I kid you not. So you can check out some of the artwork from Tao of Seneca, as well as some artwork and logos and so on that your fellow listeners have had made at 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 1:22:19Tim Ferriss?

  I really suggest you check it out. And right now, you guys can receive a free $99 upgrade on your first project. This gets you, I think, 130% more submissions. So people who want to work with you and give you the first drafts of what you're looking for. To access your free design, please visit 99designs.com/tim and click the link on the landing page. That's 99designs.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. I have known and loved Shopify just about forever. Back in 2009, when they had something like eight or 10 employees, now they have more than 2,000. I helped them as an advisor to create the Build a Business competition,

• 1:23:02Tim Ferriss?

  which is now the world's largest entrepreneurship competition. And many readers of my blog, first-time business owners, have ended up making millions and millions of dollars each. Many of them as side gigs to their full-time jobs. So the goal of the Build a Business competition is to get would-be entrepreneurs to get off the couch and make things happen. All you have to do is open a store on Shopify and start selling. And you can join in July or after July to be eligible to win. What does winning mean? You have to be one of the top performers, top sellers in a given category. And the prize, the reward, is an exclusive opportunity to learn from mentors and experts.

• 1:23:45Tim Ferriss?

  And in the past, that has happened at places like the Gatsby Castle, where we had Tony Robbins and Damon John and Seth Godin and so on. Or on Necker Island, which is Sir Richard Branson's private island. It's nuts and super, super fun. I'm also involved. So there's a special offer for people listening to this show. Go to Shopify.com/tim and sign up for a free 30-day trial. You will get all sorts of exclusive free video courses to help you along and to get started, including How to Start a Profitable Drop Shipping Business with Corey Ferreira. You will also get some goodies from me. It's all free, it's all exclusive to people who are listening to this podcast. So check it out. Shopify.com/tim.

• 1:24:30Tim Ferriss?

  And remember to sign up for the free 30-day trial.