Hey there, my friend, welcome to episode 318 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.

Thanks for leading me your ears right now – I know you have lots of other things you could be doing or listening to – so I appreciate you.

Last week on the podcast I talked about what I would do and what I would recommend if you started your business from scratch today (or started again).  Slip back and listen to that episode when you are finished here today.

But today, after a few heart felt, sometimes teary conversations I’ve had this week with clients, I am approaching a subject that’s hard, difficult and makes me a little nervous.

When, as a business owner is enough, enough? When do you let go of that dream of owning and running your current business simply because it’s not working for you? It’s not giving you what you need, what you want, in fact it’s sucking the life out of you.

I am going to lead with a statement to say that this podcast episode is not advice. I have no idea what is really going on in your business, in your head. Anything here today is general advice only and you SHOULD 100% speak to your accountant and/or financial advisor before making any decisions.

But the reality is that business owners do have to consider when it’s time to call it quits. There might come a point where enough is seriously enough.

Now, I will premise this conversation with the fact that things are freaking hard right now. Consumer confidence is down, people are hanging onto their money and as my friend said earlier this year “it’s a doozy of a year”. So, perhaps now might NOT be the time to through it all in.

Some people say that if your expenses exceed the profits for more than 12 months, it’s time to quit. To those people, I’d say, “have you ever run a business?” and seriously, clearly, you’ve never run a farming business! Thank you, mother nature, or not thank you – depending on the year!

I have been running my own business in one form or another for almost 23 years – some were highly profitable but sucked all my goodness, most had ups and downs and you rode the waves, but all taught me so much about business, life, family and myself!

But let’s go through some scenarios – general in nature.

If you are working 70 hours a week, when you started this business for more freedom. And you aren’t paying yourself, you are working to pay the bills, your credit cards are maxed out and it’s your job to put food on the table – then enough might be enough.

We often joke about being “unemployable” because we are small business owners and the reality is that I really don’t want to front up at 9 am and go home at 5 pm, 5 days a week – so that makes me pretty unemployable, but that’s a me problem, if I had to, I’d have to get over this and go to work!

Depending on your situation perhaps working 9-5, 5 days a week and having NO responsibility, just go to work and do your job and get paid consistently on time, might be heaven and oh so much easier than what you are doing now.

Maybe you’ve been in business for more than 3 years and you still haven’t managed to pay yourself a wage – is that sustainable long term?

Here’s a difference between a hobby and a business. If you’ve had a hobby for 3 years with no wage or no profit – that’s very different to working on something full time and have no reward.

Maybe it’s not time to call it quits, but maybe it is time to fess up and take a long hard look at your business, your business model, the products or services you sell, your profit margin, your pricing strategy, your marketing, and your target audience, for instance.

I’d say before you make any decisions, you think about all those things, ask the experts, get advice, tinker, fix and polish.

If you’re feeling down about business and wondering if enough is enough, perhaps flip your thinking from time and money spent to amount of knowledge and networks you have build during your business journey.

Maybe if you look at it that way, you aren’t throwing away your years in business but preparing yourself for the next stage – whatever that might be for you.

In business and in life we win, or we learn. There’s no such thing as failure. If you’re feeling like a failure, reach out to your network, your friends, your family, get backup, get assistance, have someone you can talk to – potentially immediately.

But in reality, be really prepared to acknowledge the difference between being persistent at what you’re doing or just being stubborn.

What’s the difference?

• You are being stubborn if you think that “if only you had more money” your business would succeed. Business failure is a painful way of you being told that it is time the work.
• You are being persistent if you are prepared to make seriously painful cuts to your pre-conceived needs (e.g. nice office, fancy car, anything ego related, assistant, non-performing staff (including you), etc).
• You are being stubborn if you are just doing the same things over and over again…
• You are being persistent if you are actually listening to people’s reaction to your pitch and adapting accordingly. You are being stubborn if you just repeat the same pitch over and over again wishfully hoping that one day you’ll meet the client who sees your brilliance.
• You are persistent if are prepared to make yourself vulnerable and aren’t just knocking on doors you know.
• You are being stubborn if you think you can run before you can crawl. Focus on finding a few clients first before planning to take on the world.
• You are being stubborn if you are continuing your business because you worry what people might think of you.

It’s been a pretty shitty podcast – yes? Hard to discuss this stuff, right?

But my reality is that if I am having these conversations on a micro level, with a couple of people, then the world is having macro conversations about the same subject.

I won’t say here at the end, did I help, let me know etc, because the reality is this is a hard as crap decision to make, but perhaps I might have enlightened you? Made you think about things a little differently? For better or for worse?

Maybe the question I’ll leave you with today is are you being persistent with your current business model, or the end result you are trying to reach – your big hairy audacious goal? Because perhaps if you aren’t married to the business model to get you to the results that you are married to, then persistence will pay off. To get to where you want to go, there are many paths, I’m sure, so perhaps the path needs changing, not the goal?

See you next week on the podcast for episode 319 – which I promise will be lighter and more positive.

But in the meantime, let’s hang out on social and get social on social – you’ll find me on Instagram, Facebook, and my fav LinkedIn.

But whatever you do,

…….. remember small business peep, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!