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Welcome to 1% Better. A weekly newsletter where I provide simple playbooks to grow your following, earn more revenue, and live a happy life.

Today at a Glance:

• How to determine when it’s time to give up what you’re working on

• How to determine when you should have hyper confidence and keep pushing

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When You Should Quit

One of the most popular questions I get as a creator/entrepreneur is “I’m not seeing much growth, should I give up?”

Every creator/business owner faces this at one point or another. They’ve been tweeting/recording videos/sending newsletters/promoting their product for months or even years, and they’re not seeing much growth.

When should you quit, and when should you keep pushing through?

Every fake motivational speaker on X has the same trope: KEEP GOING! KEEP PUSHING! BE CONSISTENT! NEVER GIVE UP!

That’s a load of shit. Smart people give up. Smart people quit. And they do it quite often.

Being a creator/entrepreneur is a constant balancing act between hyper confidence and honesty. Sometimes to succeed you need to be blindly confident. Sometimes to succeed you need to have intense honesty and know when to quit.

You need to be hyper confident enough to experiment and try every strategy possible. But you also need to be honest with yourself when it’s time to give up and try something new.

You need to be hyper confident enough to turn on the camera and try a live stream. Confident enough to put your honest thoughts out there online. Confident enough to build that product then sell it to your audience.

But you also need to be honest enough to know when it just isn’t working and you need to admit defeat.

Some examples from my life:

When I started livestreaming on X several months ago I streamed video games. I’d turn the camera on and played Fortnite. It took an insane amount of confidence for me to turn the camera on for my audience. But after weeks of doing that, my stream was seeing 0 growth. I had to be honest with myself. I fucking sucked at video games and nobody wanted to watch it.

So I failed quick. I pivoted. I tried reviewing profiles and content instead. Ever since my stream has been growing consistently.

I had insane confidence to start, but was honest with myself about what was and wasn’t working.

This is the key: you need to have confidence to experiment and try everything, and the honesty to quit. It’s a mixture of both.

So how do you know when it’s time to quit?

You need to be honest with these questions:

• Am I truly enjoying what I’m doing?

• Do I have room for improvement?

• Am I willing to put in the work to improve?

• Am I marketing this venture/skillset to the best of my ability

• Would my time be spent better trying a new project?

If you’ve given it your best shot, are struggling, and that struggle is making the project frustrating and not fun, you should quit.

If you feel like you have no room for improvement, have maxed out your skills, and people still aren’t interested, you should quit.

If you are you not willing to focus more on improvement, you should quit.

If you are marketing what you’re doing well, have high awareness in your audience, and they still don’t care, you should quit.

If your time be spent better building new skills and trying new ventures you should quit.

I had to ask myself these same questions when I started my career. My first job was as a software engineer.

I struggled big time. I struggled so much that it just wasn’t fun for me. I didn’t enjoy the process of improving.

Even though I spent $160,000 on a computer science degree, I quit and went into sales and tech consulting.

I didn’t stay consistent. I didn’t GRIND. I quit. And my life and career are 100x better off because of it.

This all can be boiled down to one piece of advice:

Experiment aggressively. Fail as fast as you can.

If you build the confidence to try everything, then the honesty to quit when it isn’t working, you’ll find your calling unbelievably quick.

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Have a great weekend everyone!

-Alex