Knowing when to Quit!
Sometimes it’s better to end something and try to start something new than imprison yourself in hoping for the impossible.”
– Karen Salmansohn
We all live in a fantasy world. A world where we imagine things, we dream and we then set out on a quest to find that world.
Since that world is very unlikely to exist, we then set out to build it!
Everything in that world is a fantasy till the time we don’t build it.
And when we are finished building it, we raise our hands and celebrate our victory.
But what if we fall out of love in between?
What if, in the middle of the journey you start to feel that the fantasy world you were chasing is after all not the one you wanted?
The Content Creator’s world is very strange.
If I go by the sheer statistics, 95% of creators fail and quit in under a year. And of the remaining 5%, only a handful make anything decent to be called income from creating content.
I very recently came across an interesting chap in one of my consultation calls.
He had just one question, “Is it worth continuing and should I continue?”
Now, here’s the status of this guy’s podcast –
- He had released about 65 odd episodes with about 5000 downloads
- He had no real reason why he was doing it except for the thought of making money and becoming famous
- He had lost consistency and was releasing episodes on and off
My response to him was another question, “What do you feel about the next episodes? When do you want to record it?”
He went silent for a minute and then said, “Actually I am not finding the motivation to do it. In fact, I don’t feel like recording another episode. If I do it, I will be dragging myself to do it”.
As a content creator who has been in business for 17+ years, I know one thing for sure.
If you don’t love what you are doing, you should continue doing it.
Over the last 17+ years, I have created more than 150 websites. I sold off almost all of them except for the 5 that I am managing right now.
I made money while I had those websites and then I made money again when I sold those websites.
But, if I was making money, why did I sell them?
The answer is simple.
I fell out of love with that “niche website building” business.
There was a point, I was dragging myself to manage them.
And it made perfect sense for me to exit the business.
One very important lesson that I have learned over the last 20-odd years of working in a corporate is that, if you ever stop loving what you are doing and you feel as if you are dragging yourself to work, then it is time for you to look for something else that you can love.
It’s the same in the creator business as well.
So if you are in the podcasting business and have missed publishing a few episodes on time and you are unable to find the motivation to follow that process of recording, editing, publishing and promoting, then ask yourself these 3 questions –
- Is there any love for the process, still left in you?
- If you continue, will you be able to continue doing it consistently for another 6 months?
- Are you finding yourself leaning towards something else?
If you answered “YES” to any of these 3 questions, then it is time to move on.
Quitting isn’t always bad.
Sometimes it is a conscious decision that you have to take to stop you from hurting yourself.
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Found on the internet
Here’s what I found on the internet this week.
I have been working with ChatGPT for some time now and I keep exploring and testing new prompts. This thread that I found on Twitter, is a nice way to train ChatGPT to sound exactly like you.
Considering we spoke about how things aren’t as hunky-dory as it is made to look, on the content creation side of the world, this LinkedIn post was something I absolutely needed to share!
What am I reading?
This week I am continuing to read “Building a Second Brain”, which I started reading last week.
But I also brought a new one that I had been following for some time. And the book looks to be promising.
If you are somebody who likes “story-telling” in content creation, then you will surely like this book.
This book is “Stories that Stick” by Kindra Hall.
That’s it for this week!
