When to Quit, When to Push Through, and When to Start Again

What is going on everybody welcome to the Warrior Soul Podcast. My name is Chris Albert Palmatessa and Kind of today solo Albert is on a trip right now He'll be back soon. He'll be back next week But I wanted to come out to you and get an episode over to you real quick If you listen to the last episode we had a great discussion about coming home and transitions and we talked a bit about both mine and Albert's experiences in business and kind of pushing through difficult times and we got a question from one of our listeners and she said this I Started a business a few years ago and imposter syndrome won out this led me back to a corporate job in retrospect I didn't take the business seriously I can honestly say that failing was the best thing to happen and I'm going for round two I will not be in a cube next year moving data and spreadsheets Would you and Albert please discuss when and how you decided to pivot decided to push through? Decided it was time to quit and when you decided it was time to try again Not on the grand scale necessarily more of a focus case study for those coming up to the transitions or moving through it. So It's a pretty deep question actually because you know, I think one of the hardest things to determine in your life is When it's time to make a change, right? So like a lot of us we have this like never quit mentality, right? Like we're going to keep going no matter what but The problem with that and that's an awesome mentality to have the problem with that is when you're constantly doing the wrong thing and you're not quitting doing the wrong thing Like you're going about it the completely wrong way and you're just so pigheaded That you don't want to quit that you don't want to stop what you're doing, right? I mean, it's like Like to equate it to something like maybe it's like your grandmother's racism or your grandfather's racism, right? They're wrong They're completely wrong, but they're so bullheaded They don't want to change their ways don't want to change their thinking right? Maybe that's not a great example Maybe it's like, you know, you've got a father who's super strict on his children, right? And he just wants the best for them But he's going harder and harder on them and he doesn't realize the bad impact is happening on them, right. So like we as human beings we do this all the time. We keep going down paths that we're not supposed to be on like when I was working on my PhD, I was, you know, four years into my PhD right eight years into my higher education four years into my PhD when I started asking myself Is this something I really want to do and when I actually explored the question I figured out no This is something my family wanted me to do. It's not something I actually wanted to do So I had to leave and I had to get out of it very quickly right, and I think you know a lot of us like we build these stories up in our minds about who we're supposed to be and So many of these stories aren't really who we truly are but they're who other people wanted us to be so When you're asking me like when it's time to quit I think that's something that each and every one of us has to do is We have to constantly explore ourselves every week right every day a little bit I think this is where meditation helps so much but at least like every week and every month We have to do an assessment of ourselves What are we doing? Why are we doing it? and is this something we truly want to do right again, this is why I think self-exploration, meditation, and psychedelics are so important because they pull back the curtain on our true motives All right, you need this in your life or you need honest friends You need like good people around you who are gonna tell you the truth But there's a lot of us out there who won't even listen to people right who won't even listen to people So so that's the first thing I would say now When do you decide to push through? All right, when do you decide to push through after exploring yourself and really figuring out that this is the path that you truly want to be on right no matter what the difficulty. If this is the path you truly want to be on then that's when you push through right if it's what you want, right? You know and and I think success and failure are are like such subjective definitions right like like you could be doing something you love and not have a lot of money or Not have what society would term a lot of personal success, but you love doing it. So keep doing it, right? But maybe you know, you're not in a great place and maybe what you're doing is killing you, you know, maybe you're We get I'm in comedy. So I see a lot of like quote-unquote starving artists out there Like if you literally have no money and you can't feed yourself Maybe it's time to say okay. How do I make money? While pursuing this dream like maybe I should get a job and and do this after hours things like that, right? But like there's there's there and and we have this thing in our heads that says like You know the most difficult way is probably the way to go right and I don't always believe that right like for example Like again, I see a lot of comedians out there. They're like, I'm just not gonna have a job I'm just gonna do comedy all the time, right, but maybe there's there's ways you could make money Maybe you could start a side business. Maybe you could maybe you could try to get some passive income, right? maybe you could be smarter about how you're making money and Free yourself up some more time to do comedy or whatever else it is. You're trying to do, right? So like again, I think like those are two questions again You got to ask like is this what I really want to do? All right, and then ask yourself am I? Going about it the best way possible, right? Am I am I trying to do this in a way that is gonna be good for me good for those around me? If particularly if you have a family right because it's not just you right and am I doing this the smartest way possible? Am I am I putting any undue pain on myself, right? Like I think some pain is always necessary but am I putting any undue pain on myself that doesn't need to be there because Why put more pain on yourself in a world where you know, everything's trying to kill you. Anyways, right? And then when do you decide it's time to try again, right so like for business, this is a If we're talking business and exclusively business When do you decide it's time to try again? Well, do you have a product right? Do you have a service that nobody else can do right? Do you have a business model right? Is that stuff set? Right. Do you have a financial plan for how to bring it to fruition? Do you have a marketing plan? Do you have your team built up, right? Do you have the people in your life right now that that you're gonna need in order to get this stuff done, right? That's that so strictly from a business sense Those are the things you need to have but then the other thing you need to have is everything I've already mentioned Right. Why are you doing this? Is it to satisfy your ego? Is it because it's truly something you want to do? Are you doing this because you see yourself spending the rest of your life doing this, right? Because I think when a lot of us are going after a goal We kind of think of it in terms of oh, there's a finish line and then we stop right? particularly with business like You know, there is no finish line right like you your finish line is like, okay I got this business open and I've been dreaming about this for years now I'm in it, but now the real work starts and then I get past my first year and that was a struggle But I've got you know, most businesses died within their first five years So I got four more of these years that I got to survive this and then You know, once you get past that first part, okay, how do we scale? How do we grow this business? How do I grow my team? Who do I need to hire and then once you start hiring people and you're growing you got other worries like, you know Should what should I go public? Should I take this company public and then if you go public you like oh man now It's all about satisfying shareholders and making profits for them, right? There is no friggin end to it until like you sell the business and you exit right completely You get rid of all your shares if you don't went public like the only end is like retirement or death All right, that's the end alright, and there is no like Like I feel like a lot of us like we view ourselves as young people at the end and it's not Like you're gonna be very old very almost decrepit when the end happens, right and then you're doing to die So like you have to realize that if you're trying to start something again No matter what you're trying to start. It's the same to start in the first place You have to picture yourself doing that for the rest of your life You have to picture yourself doing it through major difficulties like Your boyfriend your girlfriend's gonna break up with you or your husband or wife is gonna leave you or your kids are sick or like All this other shit that's gonna happen. Like you got a picture yourself being able to do it through all of that All right, and then if you can picture yourself doing that then Do it right and I just go back to what I said earlier is like, you know You need to find other people who are gonna help you along the way. It can't always just be you, right? You're gonna have to scale at some point. You're gonna have to find a team. All right That's kind of everything I got there. So I hope that all makes sense You know I've been through a lot of Failures, I've had some successes, but I've been through a whole lot of failures I could tell you much more about failure than I could about success, and man, you know, there's not There's no worse feeling in the world than sitting there and knowing that you gave everything you could at the time and still not have any everything come through right? Like some people say like oh at least you gave it all just like the worst feeling in the world to me cuz like there's things I've done where like I put it all on the line and Like I pushed and I pushed and I pushed and it still hasn't come through and maybe I should have pushed some more, you know But um, you know, it's this podcast one of those things like I used to do this podcast full time right I should publish three-four times a week and I love doing it like it was my passion, but it wasn't making enough money and I was destroying myself Right. So now I publish, you know once a week sometimes once every other week and you know Burning an income to build other things right like and that's where I'm at Maybe someday I'll be able to do this podcast three times a week again, you know, I didn't quit I'm pushing through But I'm also, you know trying to figure out how to make this thing work like as I'm talking to you guys, so That's what I got for this week guys. I'll be back at you soon with Albert when he comes back and You know, I love you all this is Chris Albert Palmatessa with the Warrior Soul Podcast and I am out