On Quitting

This post has been really difficult to write, probably because digging through the archives of all the times I have quit has reminded me of the totally ridiculous situations I had gotten myself into in the first place!

There are plenty of places you can read about the subtleties of quitting, like when and how, but I look at quitting a little differently, and that’s what I want to talk about today. Quitting is not the decision to stop showing up. It isn’t the making of a formal announcement or any other action like that. Those actions are what I refer to as “leaving the building.” Quitting is the private moment in your head when you know you’re done, however or whenever that moment arrives (even if you won’t admit it to yourself). You can keep showing up long after the time you have actually quit, and that stretch of time after, the longer it is, can be so damaging. Here’s what I mean.

In 2009, I started a business. It was a “real” business in the sense that without all the trappings like licenses and bonds and background checks, I couldn’t be in it. But I did it. And I had a very willing set of first round customers and the relationships to be able to deliver. These are all good things. I almost couldn’t believe a business is really just a matter of starting. By the way, remember how I said to focus on your first customer? Yesterday I read some similar advice on Open Forum yesterday, and I gave myself a little high five Ok anyway.

At the same time as I worked on the basics of my business, I entered into a sort of joint venture with a partner who would supply the technology to deliver to these customers. But as it sometimes goes with partnerships, personality issues arose. I have never had an issue with someone before that couldn’t be worked out with some compromise and common sense, but there I was. I started traveling out of state on a regular basis, even sharing an apartment with a friend there, and showing up to my partner’s office on a daily basis. Without getting into the details here, let’s just say that the culture was broken to the point that people showed up and just sat, doing nothing. I don’t mean “doing nothing of value” or “doing nothing of importance.” I mean… literally nothing. My partner, on the other hand, was an idea person- the type who sits and thinks of new ideas and calls and talks to people about these ideas, and then thinks up another idea and on and on. Getting all the parts of his grand vision in place would be an impossibility (or at least an eternity), and so for the most part, we didn’t even use what we had. The stupid thing is that we were making money from people who licensed the software and used it themselves, and we made money in the few months where we I threatened bodily harm if we didn’t use it ourselves, but that wasn’t enough to commit my partner to a consistent delivery plan for my customers.

This carried on for at least eight months. The traveling was stressful, the dealings were incredibly frustrating, I spent a ton of money (two things I learned about money from doing this in another post), and tried all sorts of plans and changes to motivate people to use what we had to make money, and worry about implementing the rest later. But the ultimate decision-maker lorded over everyone in such a way that they feared the consequences of taking action at my direction (their customer!). In August of last year, I called off the partnership, and in April completed the process to close the business and cancel my license.

Here is the worst part. In all those months, I already knew this would happen. It made me half-hearted in most of my attempts, and when I was genuinely ready to fix this lack of delivery, the motivation lasted a day, maybe two, at a time. That isn’t how a business gets off the ground, and certainly not how it can be sustained. I had actually quit early into the partnership, but I let it suck the life and money out of me for months more until I finally left the building.

The problems with this are obvious. I was so mad at myself for a long time. I should have seized the opportunity to sell the business that came at a few different points. I should have done all these other things. Shoulda woulda coulda. The problem that is starting to eat away at me now that I’m making peace with the others is the fact that not only did I lose time and money and gain the kind of cynicism in dealing with people that is going to make me a very ugly old lady, but there was also an opportunity cost in not quitting and leaving the building on the same day. I wasted months of energy on something I had already quit. To say nothing of the monetary benefit had I cut my losses early, I also didn’t use that time to build something valuable either in the same business but with a different partner, or in a different business entirely. That is a huge loss of time that I’m never getting back.

I struggled during the time with the concept of quitting. I thought, “Do I quit everything I start? Do I quit the moment it gets challenging? Certainly a mere personality issue wouldn’t have stopped any number of founders and CEOs I can think of.” Call it what you want, but my half-heartedness was already the quit. That agonizing over whether I should leave the building was an ego issue, a fear of  solidifying the failure in my head.

Except for the lost time, I’m over the rest of it. Life goes on. I did learn a ton of things, and there are mistakes I made that I never will again. Those things are valuable, in that “yeah that sucked” kind of way.

What do you think? Have you ever quit, but continued showing up?