When to Quit and When to Persevere in Your Business with Margo Aaron

It's ok to quit.

Consistency can be critical to success, but knowing when to quit is an equally valuable skill.

So, how do you know when to quit and when to just push through the hard parts?

You've heard me talking to business owners who credit being consistent as the key to their success.

But failure is also a part of being an entrepreneur and one we talk about a lot less because it's not as pretty. Most successful business owners have at least a few failures in their rearview mirror.

I had 2 businesses that were marketing and branding successes and abject financial failures before I started ScaleSpark.

Failing sucks, there's no doubt about that. But those failures are a big part of what motivates me to teach financial skills and why I believe that your numbers tell you a story about what to do next in your business.

Deciding to quit something is so hard and emotionally wrenching. I also wish I'd listened to the story my numbers were telling me on both those businesses and quit earlier.

But you don't always know if you're failing. Maybe you're just stuck in what Seth Godin calls "The Dip:" that point in every project where you have to figure out if something is genuinely not working or if you have to push through.

Today my guest and I are talking about how to know when you should quit.

Margo Aaron is the cohost of the YouTube show Hillary and Margo Yell at Websites and the author behind That Seems Important. She's a psychologist turned accidental marketer and she's fantastic at getting to the heart of the entrepreneurial mindset. Her email newsletter consistently gets right to whatever mindset fog I'm in at that point in time and always manages to encourage me to keep going.

Margo and I have both quit businesses. And in this interview that we originally recorded in September of 2019, we explore what it meant to quit and how we each realized it was time to let go.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The client call that made Margo realize she had a major disconnect between what she was getting paid to do and what she wanted to be doing
• What questions to ask yourself to assess if you’re in “the Dip” or if it’s time to let go
• Why product-founder fit is as important as product-market fit
• How to build a business that aligns with your values and defines success on your terms
• Why you need creativity, intuition, and experimentation in your business, not dogmatic models and rules

Learn more about Margo Aaron:

• That Seems Important
• Hillary and Margo Yell at Websites

Learn more about Susan:

• Scalespark.co
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab your free ticket to the Autonomous Creative Conference for May 13-15 at beyondmargins.com/autonomous