Episode 143: Why QUITting can be OK
In this quick tip episode, Fiona talks about a framework she thinks can be helpful to those who are planning to quit something - whether it's their business, work, or a project they are working on. Listen now to learn what QUIT is.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Quitting
Question everything
Understand
Investigate
Take some time out
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to Episode 143 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today it is a quick tip episode. And that's really where I'm going to give you a tip, tool, or tactic that you can use immediately. So if you're new here, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for tuning in. And if you're not new here, and you tune in every week, then massive hugs to you as well. I have been loving it connecting with all sorts of businesses and business owners from across the globe. As a result of this podcast, I feel like every week, we are getting all sorts of messages from people from "I've just started and this has been really helpful..." through to "I'm in this profession. And I'm going to take a career change because of the pandemic. And I'm thinking of doing X, Y, Z, or I'm 10 years into my business and I've never considered this, you know, different framework or something else." We just love hearing from you. So if you have not connected with us, please you know, get in touch. You can find me at Instagram, I'm just at @mydailybusinesscoach, you can email our team at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com We would love, love, love to hear from you.
Now before I get stuck into today's quick tip episode, I just want to of course pay my respects and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the land on which I record this podcast. I am living in North Warrandyte which is beautiful bush land. It's a kind of green wedge in Melbourne and this is the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been seated. So today's episode is something we all grapple with. I know I've definitely grappled with it. And I think every small business owner, and even people who don't run a small business, go through this all the time. So what am I talking about? Let's find out.
So today I'm talking about quitting. Yes. Quitting? Oh, my goodness, this is like, sensitive topic for some people. And maybe it's just even the word makes you feel really emotional, or makes you feel some kind of way. I mean, maybe that's kind of where I should start. How does the word quitting make you feel? If you have to quit on something? Does that bring out negative emotions for you kind of negative energy? Does it make you feel like you haven't tried hard enough? Is it perhaps that, you know, someone told you once that you just quit on everything. So you know, you feel the sense that you can't quit on stuff. So I often work with small business owners who are, I guess the phrase like that flogging a dead horse, like they're, they're doing things in their business, because they've set them up. And maybe it worked for a while and it hasn't been working. Or maybe they set it up when the business was newer, and the audience has changed, or the needs of the business has changed. And so they're continuing to do it, even when it serves no purpose. And it doesn't bring them any kind of joy or happiness. And maybe it doesn't even align with their values anymore. And yet, there's this resistance to stop because we see it as quitting. We see it as I could have tried harder, I could have worked more I could have done X, Y, Z for this thing to work and for me to walk away from it would be quitting. And I don't know what kind of things came up for you when I said what do you think of when you hear that term?
But for lots of people quitting is same as the thing you just don't do. And especially in business, you know, I'm totally against the whole idea of hustle, I can't stand that word. I'm very much anti-hustle. Even like the tagline of my book was sidestep the hustle. Because I just don't think that you have to hustle in order to build a business that aligns with your values and the life that you want to live, I just don't. And in that I don't think that you have to keep, you know, rise and grind and like work, work work and all these people that just sort of celebrate and boast almost about oh my god, I only slept these many hours and I've been, you know at my desk until whatever on, I've worked all weekend, I guess I don't fall into any of that I work three days a week in school hours, I have plenty of time for my family, for trash TV, for walks with friends, all of that.
And so I guess what I want to talk about today is, if there's something in your business that you would like to stop, you would like to cease doing it. But yet, there's this voice in your head that's like, "Oh, so you just gonna quit, you're just gonna quit." Or I'm not going to stop even things like say email sequence funnels, or areas of funnel or areas of your customer journey that are just not working the way they used to. And maybe you've tried, maybe you've tweaked things worked with somebody adjusted things. And it's just no longer the way perhaps that your audience finds you. You can quit this is your permission slip, you can stop doing something, if it's not working for you.
Or you could stop doing something not just because it's not working, say financially, but maybe emotionally, it just, you just don't enjoy it anymore. If I ever get to the point where I don't like doing this podcast, or I don't like sending my Sunday email, there now probably stop doing it. And I'm sure I'm sure if I was to do that I would go through a period of like, this is the right thing to do. I should just keep doing it. Because I have always been doing it. I mean, obviously with the podcast, I've been doing it that long. But with my Sunday email that's been going for years now. And if you're not on the list, get on the list. It's a free email that comes out every Sunday. Yeah, full of business insights. And you can subscribe over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/subscribe. But yeah, I'm wondering how you go with quitting. And I guess in terms of quick tip, today, I wanted to share a little kind of framework that I've made up. And if you are on my Sunday email, you'll know that I am kind of into acrostic poems at the moment. Because my eldest son, who's in grade two has been working on acrostic poems as part of his homeschooling. So if you don't understand acrostic poems, it's you know, those kind of like cards and things you used to do when you were younger. So say you might take someone's name, and every letter leads to a new line. So if it's Fiona, it would be like, flowering indigo, you know, and on and on.
And so I kind of created this framework that I think could help when it comes to deciding if you want to quit something, regardless of what it is in your business. But if you want to quit something, and of course, we'll have this link in the show notes, which will be available at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/143, as this is Episode 143, but I thought I'd share it with you.
So it's literally Q.U.I.T, you know, quit. And for each of those, there's some actions for you to take.
So for Q, it starts with question everything. So question everything. But if you're looking to quit, so say for instance, you had an email sequence set up, or you were sending. So let's say you're sending a newsletter all the time. Now, I'm not wanting to suggest that people quit their email because I think email marketing is definitely alive and kicking and does very well in terms of return on investment. But let's say you were just like not enjoying it. I hate doing it. I don't feel like it has a great return on investment, then the Q, part of this quit framework slash acrostic poem would be to question, what was the objective in starting the email? Why is it not enjoyable anymore? Is there an adjustment? Could you tweak something to make it more enjoyable? What about it is tedious? What do you just not like? Could you adjust who in the business is looking after it? Could you outsource it? Do you want to start again? Like do you want to, you know, change up the email format? Or do you just not want to do email?
And again, probably a bad example that I've chosen because I really am a big advocate for emails. But when you're wanting to quit, the start of this whole framework is the Q. So it's question everything. So really, write out some questions and then give yourself space to write out the answers to these and really think about it. Am I wanting to quit because right now there's all these other stresses such as homeschooling and other things going on? But actually, I don't want to quit the whole thing. I just sort of want to press pause on it for a minute. And that might be what you do. So the Q is to question everything.
The U in the QUIT framework is to understand.
So to sit and think, again in this email idea to understand what role email plays in your business. So is this absolutely an essential part of your customer journey or not? Likewise, if you were to say, "Oh, you know, I don't want to be on Instagram so much", then understand what role Instagram plays in your business. And for some people, some businesses, it plays next to nothing, it is a very minimal role. And really, they've put a face there to kind of keep up appearances and have their account. But in terms of whatever their business objectives are, whether they're to make more money, whether they're to, you know, have a life of freedom, all sorts of things. Maybe Instagram plays no role.
So the cue is to really understand what this thing that you're wanting to quit brings into the business, what role does it play in the business and also understand the ramifications of removing it. And this is not to say that you can't quit, but just that you're working through the steps to understand, "Okay, if we take this away, what potentially might be the kind of falling out of that?"
The I, so we're up to Q.U.I, so that I is to investigate.
So investigate what would be an alternative for you. So if you were to quit, say, using Instagram as a platform, where else would that traffic potentially that you had come from, or where else would be a great way for you to communicate and connect with your audience. So it might be, I'm going to quit this, but I'm going to start a podcast or I'm going to quit this, because I really know that we get a lot more traffic from Pinterest. And that traffic is actually converting or it's working, it's taking action on the thing that we most want to happen. So we're going to, you know, take our effort, if it making energy of Instagram, we're going to shift it to Pinterest, or, you know, in the idea of like the email, we're going to stop doing that. But we have built up this community group online, and we're going to talk to them through lives. Or maybe we're going to, you know, get people to sign up to some other kind of portal where they can get information from you, or become a member or something else. So you want to really be investigating what alternative options are out there. And it could be so with email that you're like, I don't want to quit the connecting point with my audience. But I want the emails to be more fun. Or maybe I hate the back end of using a tool. So maybe you just don't like MailChimp or you don't like ConvertKit. And you really want to use Flodesk. And so that is where you're investigating. It's actually the tool that is making this tedious, rather than connecting with my audience through email. And so that's where you're investigating. What are, you know, what are the alternatives?
And then the T is to take some time out.
So if so we've kind of gone all the way through Q.U.I.T. So if you are making this decision, and it's one that you've really kind of thought about if you've considered or or maybe you've been thinking about it, but it's just like at the niggling at the back of your mind, like, "Oh, do we need to keep doing Instagram? Is there a better option for me, but I shouldn't quit Instagram...", then take some time out, like set a deadline and take some time out. And it could be that you're taking a couple of weeks off posting on Instagram, maybe you are going to just hit pause on your emails for a couple of weeks. And just take that time to really consider all the other things that we've gone through. So you've questioned everything, you've sought to understand what the ramifications are, you've investigated an alternative way. And then you're going to take some time out and just sit on this, consider how or work. And then in that timeout, if you've decided, "Yep, this is the way to go." Then take the time to plan that out and set some deadlines.
So that is my kind of quick framework that I just sort of made up. But you know:
Q - Question everything
U - Understand the ramifications
I - Investigate alternatives
T - Take some time out.
So I hope that that little framework has helped you in some way. And then if you are sitting there thinking about quitting something in your business, then work through those questions and ask yourself, Is this something I really want to do? Am I doing it because of panic? Am I doing it because my competitors have stopped doing something so I should or do I really want to do it and I understand the ramifications on my business.
So that is it for today's quick tip episode as always you'll be able to find the full show notes over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/143. And I did mention in there when I was giving the examples, I think I said that, you know, you might want to start a podcast instead of doing you know, your email or spending time on Instagram. If you want to do that, if you're like, yes, when you said that it really struck a chord, then I have a short course called How To Start a Podcast. And at the time that I'm recording this, it is really affordable, it's $97, we will be increasing that price significantly in 2022. Just because I actually started it with the intention of like, this is going to be a one hour course. And it's not it is quite in depth. And it goes through everything from the equipment to use, how to set up the different tools that are available. And then really, really important, the systems and processes so that you can get this out every single week, if that's your frequency, or fortnightly or whatever it is. But I think that's the biggest thing that's often missing. It's like Yep, cool, I can tell you all the equipment to use and I can tell you which places to record on. But the system is what's going to make it sustainable. So I just thought I'd mentioned that because I had talked about podcasts if you're interested in that. I'd be getting it now before January 1, because we will be upping price. So yeah, that is it for today's quick tip episode. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
