Tempted to Quit or Ready to Commit? – Toss the Top Ten Reasons for Quitting into the Trash!

 

Should I call it quits? It is the question that every aspiring entrepreneur asks themselves at some point. It is rooted in the deepest of anxieties.  It is symptomatic of toxic thinking that cheats people out of the hope and possibilities they have to become master of their destiny.

 

But there’s only one reason you should ever quit. Before I  get to that, I am going to list off all the insidious, self-sabotaging reasons that cause entrepreneurs to give up on their dreams.

 

There are ten far too common reasons that entrepreneurs use to give up on good business ideas prematurely. Let’s look at them a little more closely and hold them up to the light for a proper examination.

 

Expecting Fast Results

Aristotle said: ‘Patience is bitter, but its fruits are sweet’. There is nothing of lasting, concrete value that has been created by an entrepreneur that didn’t require significant patience.

 

If you started out as an entrepreneur expecting overnight success, the only thing you need to give up is that expectation itself. Stick around. Play the long game.

 

Losing the Faith

They say that it is mandatory that a great salesperson believes in three things: The product they’re selling. The company that sells it and themselves.

 

They have to believe in their abilities as a salesperson to do the selling.

 

Being a salesperson is much easier than being an entrepreneur. When you start as an entrepreneur, you don’t have a product or a company to believe in. That only leaves you.

 

Every entrepreneur is figuring it out as they go. When we start, we don’t have much of an idea of what it is going to take – or the capabilities we need – so we develop them along the way.

 

Self-belief is your greatest asset. We aren’t talking about grandiose, overblown ideas of yourself and your abilities but a quiet acknowledgement that you have what it takes, the humility to know that you will stumble and fall but also that you can keep on keeping on. Everyone else who has succeeded before you felt it too, but they continued anyway. It’s the continuing that guarantees a big win. Keep the faith in your ideas and your talents.

 

Missing the wave

Entrepreneurship is all about dancing on the cutting edge.

Why is it that young people are so drawn to the entrepreneurial world? It’s simple: The cutting edge is where they grow up, they don’t know any other way to be.

 

Age is irrelevant if you want to be an entrepreneur; you have to stay future-focused. The most successful businesses capitalize on emerging trends. The most successful entrepreneurs are always looking at the pointy end of innovations. They utilize that edge to get an advantage in the marketplace. Like a surfer scanning the ocean to identify a wave, you too need to stay open to upcoming developments in your field so that you can catch the wave and ride it!

 

Never allow yourself to quit because you can’t keep up. The thing about being cutting edge is that you qualify yourself to be there just by going there.

 

Dwelling on mistakes

 

Got burnt by a partnership gone sour? A falling out with investors? A deal falling through?

Are you beating yourself up because you made a mistake or took a wrong turn?

 

Get over it! 

 

If you don’t, your baggage will prevent you from succeeding in the future. Your backwards-looking fascination with “figuring out what went wrong” will scare you from trying again.

 

Entrepreneurship requires crazy levels of optimism, which means that you have to reframe your past mistakes into learning experiences.