so when do you quit
advice you probably shouldn't take
i have always been bad at quitting. my parents think i am the most stubborn human being on the planet, a character flaw of sorts. they are not wrong.
it is evident in the friendships that spanned decades that i should have left much sooner, all because i kept telling myself, “i can see that they’re trying”.
when i quit my software engineering job and decided to leave nyc, it was something i had ruminated about for over a year.
i told myself two years. i will give myself two years to figure-it-out on my own, whatever that means, and if things don’t work out i will go back to corporate and never ruminate about meaning or fulfillment ever again.
right when i was about to quit, things looked promising. after being stuck at 600 subscribers on youtube for almost one year, i started growing. i got monetized. a video popped off. i grew to 5k in less than two months. i was working on a start up with a friend. we had interviews with startup accelerators.
then right when i left new york my channel plateaued (an ongoing struggle), we got rejected by all the accelerators and then my co-founder and i split. i was back home with my parents with.. nothing.
the daughter who had previously overachieved and exceeded all expectations her entire life, all the way from kindergarten was back home with nothing to show for.
did it feel good? absolutely not.
i felt lost and embarrassed. it had only been six months but i wanted it to be over.
but i was also aware that it had only been six months. barely a quarter way through the 2-year experiment. a part of me felt like i had to suck it up. another wanted to run back to my life in nyc of k-town thursdays and bottomless brunch on sundays, one that i had desperately gotten tired of and found no meaning in.
instead of doing the normal thing (lol) which was to seriously apply for jobs and re-introduce stability to my life, i lived with friends across different cities. and i did apply to jobs, not because i was serious about job-searching, just to get interviews to prove to myself if i wanted to, i could be employed. normal behavior.
in a compromise with myself, i told myself instead of two it would be one. two years of, whatever this was, was way too daunting. i couldn’t stomach it.
but as i neared my first year, my new co-founder decided to quit her job to work on kawara full-time. i made friends because of youtube. i found myself enjoying what i was doing despite the fact i had nothing to show for it. so okay, maybe not one year, but two years!
despite how i felt, the reality was in the last year i had over 400 something rejections. that doesn’t even include the lack of growth on youtube despite my weekly uploads (lol)
the experience of rejection does not get easier with time. anyone who was sane would have interpreted it as a sign to stop. it is the normal thing to do. but if you have consumed my content in any form, you know that i am not sane.
a normal person would also presume that if something is hard to do, it simply isn’t meant to be. that rejection means something out there is better for you.
but i am of the belief that deferring to fate and meant-to-be isn’t how you find opportunities that truly are aligned with yourself. you ought to create opportunities for yourself! keep trying! even when it feels like you are not supposed to! even if you feel like you are about to die!
because no one is going to fedex your dream life to you. nobody is going to make your dreams come true but you.
saba kanejad, the founder of veed that hit $40mm annual recurring revenue this year, went through multiple funding rejections. i watched this interview and nearly cried, because i felt so seen. at the end, he said something so valuable:
The company could have failed at so many points... but every single time, we kept going. And I'm so grateful for all of those learnings
even the rejections or lack-of-growth that feels like a giant “you should quit” sign plastered all over town isn’t final! saba’s success is evidence of that!
but you also, conversely, can not not quit everything. simply because you can’t do everything and life is about making choices and sacrifices.
there are some things you need to leave in order to open up a path that is far better than you. you can’t expect to be in your dream relationship if you can’t let go of that situationship. you need to let go of things in order to make space for the things you truly deserve.
at the same time, just because you are with the right person doesn’t mean it will be easy. just because you are on the right path doesn’t mean it will be lubricated for you.
so when should you quit? how do you know you are on the right path?
i feel like the right answer depends on you, only you know what is right for you. this also depends on what you believe to be true.
there is a book called the dip by seth godin where in the pursuit of something valuable you will inevitably experience “the dip”: a challenging period where progress slows, or even plateaus!
Every day people are quitting. But if you feel a deep calling to get to where you want to go, you're not gonna quit.
A strong internal calling is essential to push through “the dip”. External motivators like money often fall short during difficult times. Deep passion and belief in your path fuel perseverance despite doubts, fears, and setbacks.
the book discusses the importance of knowing when to quit the right stuff. ultimately it shouldn’t be determined by some external metric, but an internal feeling. which makes it all the more harder to answer. the answer is something you can’t quantify. almost like an art.
but over a year into the game of building kawara and youtube channel full-time, meeting people who have done ten-figure exits and grown their channels to millions, i am convinced of three qualities that make up the greats:
they never let anyone determine the trajectory of their lives
they kept going even when it felt crazy, especially when it felt crazy
they felt like the path they were on was a life calling
it feels crazy to be comparing myself to the greats when i am barely at three-figure mrr. i am well-aware that they are probably better at me than at a million things and i am just a girl who likes her journals and her pastries crispy. but i believe the path there all begins with sheer delusion and simply, not quitting.
constantly going without knowing how to quit does sound insane and painful. but it feels like the requirement to do anything truly truly great.
