Good Life Project - Chris Guillebeau: The Upside of Giving Up

Episode Date: April 8, 2016

Finish what you start.Don't be a quitter.When the going gets tough, the tough get going.It's a lesson we all learned from well-intended advice-givers somewhere along the way. It's all about character.Life's hard, things get hard, the people who survive and do great things in business and life are the ones who keep going, no matter what the road throws in our way.But, what if that was wrong?FWhat if the people who do great things are are the ones who aren't afraid to quit a parade of wrong things in the name of making the space needed to see and then do the right ones?What if finishing what you started was only half the story? The other half being the potential benefits?This is what today's GLP Guest Riff is all about, and it comes from World Domination Summit founder and New York Times bestselling author of the new book, Born For This, Chris Guillebeau.Chris delivers some straight-shooting myth-busting about "stick-to-it-iveness," or when it makes sense to keep going and when the best option, both for you and for those you eventually seek to serve, is to just walk away. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's Good Life Project riff is a guest riff from a friend of mine, Chris Guillebeau. You may know him from a series of bestselling books as the founder of the annual conference. I don't even know if it's a conference or an event or a festival called World Domination Summit, where thousands of people come from around the world and flock to Portland, Oregon every summer as the person who literally visited every country in the world. And he's got a new book out called Born for This. And I asked him if he would just share a little bit, an idea or two around something that's a little bit provocative. And it's the idea of quitting and actually the upside of quitting. So

with that said, turning it over to Chris Guillebeau. What's up, Good Life Project? It's Chris Guillebeau. And I'd like to talk to you about the power of giving up. Or if at first you don't succeed, give up. And I'm going to do this in the context of speaking a little about the new economy or the changing world of online work and hybrid work that many people have been pursuing over the past decade in particular, but I think it has some greater relevance as well. And speaking of new economy, lately I've actually been using the phrase new economy because there have been a lot of changes and there's been a shift taking place.

Just like every social network has a natural lifespan, it kind of rises and then falls, so too do many of the mediums that we use, as well as the business strategies that we use. And so in this shift that's taking place, there's a lot of tactics that people have used for a long time that simply don't work, or at least they don't work as well. And I think there's even strategies that don't work or don't work as well. This isn't anyone's fault. It's just kind of the way it is. It's the changing world of work.

And so if you've been trying to build a business the way that someone told you to three years ago or five years ago or whatever, what worked before doesn't necessarily work now. So you might need to take a totally different approach. And I've been looking at that lens through a lot of different perspectives, different stories and case studies. And it's helped me to think about this whole expression of the definition of insanity. And the definition of insanity, as you've probably heard, I think it comes from Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. And it's really interesting because I don't think most people are stupid. I don't think most people actually, you know, do the same thing over and over and expect different results based on no

evidence or no historical precedent. I think if we try something and it doesn't work and we try it again, maybe then we kind of just move on, right? I think the danger and what's far more common is when something works for a while and then it stops working. But we keep doing it because it worked at one point or it worked for someone else. That's where I think the real danger of insanity, doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results come in. And we keep doing that because it's familiar. It's what we know how to do. So in my new book, Born for This, I spent a couple of years talking with people, trying to distill the lessons of

those who have found or created their dream job. They've found like this amazing role. They've built this amazing role in an organization or a company, or they've built it entirely on their own as an entrepreneur, as a consultant, a freelancer, something totally different. And what I saw is, you know, all these people have different backgrounds. They're doing different things, but most of them did not follow a linear path in life. Most of them had a lot of false starts. Most of them had no idea when they were young what they wanted to grow into. They might have had an inkling or an idea of something, but it usually changed a lot along the way. And there were usually many times where, in fact, they had come to a fork in the road and they chose one path. And then they kind of went back actually. And they went back

to the path that they had initially passed up and started going down that again. And so it's a very nonlinear journey for most people who are very successful, for most people who identify as having found the work they were born to do or the work they were meant to do, which is the whole concept of the project I've been working on. So I talked with someone who had built eight successful businesses in his life. And some of these businesses were very successful. And I asked him, you know, were there any other businesses, right? Because you always hear about the eight. And he said there were actually nine total businesses that he had built in his life. And so my first thought was, that's a pretty amazing track record. Like I have to learn more about your conversion rate because that's huge. But the second thought was, okay, where was the ninth? How did that kind

of fit in? And he said, well, the ninth was actually the first. He spent three years, you know, investing his savings and, you know, doing everything he could to make this first business, maybe 20 years ago or something, maybe longer than that, a success. And it didn't work. For two to three years, he thought he was going to turn the corner and he never did. So he finally just gave up on that and moved forward, eventually started a second business that was a success. It was a great success. And that led to the third and then on and on and on. And I think, you know, what if what if he had stuck with the first one? What if he had followed what is very traditional, very typical advice, especially in our American or let's say Western entrepreneurial culture, our manifest destiny, our pioneering spirit. Many of these are positive characteristics. But what if he had kind of taken this advice, which is never give up, right? Never give up. Like always keep going. When you're going through hell, keep going. Like all of these sayings, you know, that would have been terrible advice for him. And the very best thing he could do was what he did do, turning his back on that

first project and then going forward to find something else because he was able to navigate that shift. He was able to navigate that transition. He didn't let it destroy him. So speaking of sayings, I've been thinking a lot about this one. I wrote about this in the book. There's this very popular inspirational quote from Wayne Gretzky that says, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And if you want to get a lot of likes on Instagram, you know, you can put this quote on a nice picture and upload it and people will like it and be like, yeah, you know, take more shots. That's awesome. The problem is if we're talking about sports metaphors, you know, in any particular athletic contest, you don't have an unlimited number of shots. You know, you don't actually have the

opportunity to just keep trying like over and over the same thing, expecting different results. Like you're going to lose if that's what you do. If you're playing a team sport, they're going to stop, you know, passing you the puck or the ball or whatever it is. They're going to come up with their own inspirational saying, we miss a hundred percent of the shots we pass to that guy or that woman. So yes, you should try again, but you should try again in a different way. I think that's the lesson. The lesson is increase your odds by taking better shots, by being able to navigate the shift, by looking at the present and the future, looking at what's coming, what's happening now, as opposed to what worked three years ago, what worked five years ago. And again, I think this is true in your life as well as your business. Good life project, the sun rises every day,

the sun sets every day, change is the only constant, and we have to embrace the new. So if it's not working, if you're out there doing something and it's not working and you're no longer motivated for it, but you're just, you know, continuing to do it because you think you should, I think you should stop. I think you should stop doing it. I think you should give up on it. And I hope you do that. I hope you find something to give up on. And I hope it leads you to something so much better. Thanks so much, Jonathan Fields. Thanks, Good Life Project. You guys are amazing. helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just click on the reviews tab and take a few seconds and jam over there. And if you haven't yet subscribed while you're there, then make sure you hit the subscribe

button while you're at it. And then you'll be sure to never miss out on any of our incredible guests or conversations or riffs. And for those of you, our awesome community who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.