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Overview

"Should I stay, or should I go?" When faced with the question, "What do we do now?," you have three options. Mike breaks those down and shares a personal story of when it was time to quit, and what led to what is now Simple Modern.

Learn

3 options when facing, “what do we do now?” Answer: Persist, Quit, Pivot
Why it’s hard for entrepreneurs to quit
Sunk cost fallacy
Changing the narrative on quitting

“Wisdom is learning when your persistence is going to take you the wrong direction.”

— Mike Beckham, Co-Founder and CEO, Simple Modern

Episode Transcript

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Episode Highlights

An example of an idea Mike had difficulty “quitting” (0:55)
How strengths can be a weakness in a different context (3:15)
Knowing when to quit, persist or pivot (6:30)
Signs it might be time to quit (9:00)
Knowing when you’re headed in the right general direction (13:05)
Changing our mindsets around quitting (17:50)
Creating an environment where it’s safe to fail (25:30)
Mike Drop Moment: Persistence and failure are two sides of the same coin. Quitting is a necessary part to get to success. (32:00)

Powerful Quotes

“Persistence and failure are two sides of the same coin and quitting is a necessary part to get to success. When we're resistant to failure or resistant to quitting because of emotional issues that we have. And when we work through those, and make the best decision possible, that's where we ultimately get where we want to be.” -Mike

“Developing the ability to persist is this like fundamental building block to success. But the piece that I didn't understand was that persistence isn't always necessarily a helpful thing. Sometimes it can actually be unhelpful. Sometimes it can actually keep you going in the wrong direction.” -Mike

“Wisdom is learning when your persistence is going to take you the wrong direction.” -Mike

“Quitting and failure can produce learning. And when we view it that way, this is why it's a necessary part of success. It's the toll that you have to pay to get to success.” -Mike

“It's very difficult to create a culture where quitting and failure is viewed as anything other than a negative thing if the leader is unwilling to show weakness. If the leader is not sharing examples of failure and quitting in their life, and how that produced growth and how that helped them, then it is very difficult for anyone else in the organization to really believe that thought process.” -Mike

“Persistence and failure are two sides of the same coin and quitting is a necessary part to get to success.”

— Mike Beckham, Co-Founder and CEO of Simple Modern

Questions to ask yourself about persisting vs. quitting:

What's an area of your life where the future is uncertain? Should you keep going? Should you stop? Should you change course a little bit and pivot?
What's an area of your life that if you're being realistic with yourself, you should just quit altogether? Where you're investing time, energy capacity resources because of decisions you made in the past, but if you look at it today, it doesn't really make any sense?
What's an area of your life where things are hard, but the feedback you're getting is that you're actually headed in the right direction?
What's one area of your life where a slight change in approach could be really helpful?