Jason SurfrApp's Blog, page 8

Slow And Steady Wins The Race (But It’s HARD!)

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Episode Summary

It’s really easy to hand out business advice and platitudes when everything is going well (as the person giving the advice). Sure, slow and steady does win the race, however, it can be difficult to fight your urges to go faster!

Where Will We Be In 5 Years? Why Aren’t We Doing Public Speaking? Q&A Part 2

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Episode Summary

This is Part 2 of 2 of a Q&A we did via Instagram and here on YouTube! Some of the questions we answered in Part 2 include:

How did we know we were done speaking or attending conferences?
Where do we see ourselves in 5, 10, 20 years??
What is our step-by-step preparation for launching a new product?
What would we have done differently to have better balance?
What business dealings/associations have helped and what would we avoid?
How have we handled Caroline not being able to work as much?

A big thanks to Catherine Ruddell, Amanda Nelson, Fernando (Ferny) Marron, Nara Lee, and Laura Rahel Crosby for the questions in Part 2 of our Q&A.

QUESTION FOR YOU: Did you enjoy this? Want us to do more Q&As in the future? Let us know in the comments on YouTube AND tell us your favorite thing you learned

Are We Having Kids? Are We Vegans? Q&A Part 1

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Episode Summary

This is Part 1 of 2 of a Q&A we did via Instagram and here on YouTube! Some of the questions we answered in Part 1 include:

Are we going to have kids?
Are we vegan or plant-based eaters?
Do we ever have arguments around business/work?
Would we ever live in another country long-term?
How do we turn off “work brain?”
Has Caroline learned any good tips for dealing with her anxiety?
What is the best thing about our relationship?

A big thanks to Nina B, Lisa Criswell, Rawa Majdi, Maddy Beard, Marshall Haas, Caleb Wojcik, Julie, Jay Nesta and Alex Lawton for the questions in Part 1 of our Q&A.

QUESTION FOR YOU: Did you enjoy this type of video? Want us to do more Q&As in the future? Let us know in the comments on YouTube AND tell us your favorite thing you learned

Don’t Share This

When was the last time you hit publish on a piece of content and immediately crossed your fingers hoping it would get shared? When was the last time that plan worked out?

That approach hasn’t worked for you, has it? It certainly hasn’t worked for me, either. We’ll spend countless hours creating an article, post, video, etc, only to feel like the crickets aren’t even interested in it (the jerks!) The problem is that often times we create content from the entirely wrong angle.

Too many content creators think, “how can I make shareable (or viral) content” instead of thinking, “how can I make really helpful or entertaining content?”

 

500,000 People Agree With Me, Getting An Article Shared Does Not Require “Growth Hacks”

A few years ago I wrote an article about a 30-day detox I took from social media. I can distinctly remember the 2014 version of myself sitting at my laptop and cranking out word after word for that article. I remember asking myself a few questions while I was writing what would become a 6,000+ word post:

How can my experience not using social media help someone else?
What did I actually learn from my social media break that I can share?
I felt really great at the end of my detox, how can I help people feel that too?
How can I make this article not suck??

Do you notice anything about those questions? None of them have anything to do with making that article share-worthy. None of them involve some viral growth tactic to get tons of shares, likes, RTs, etc.

And yet… That 6,000+ word article has gone on to be viewed by over 500,000 people since it was published.

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Fancy charts are fancy.

There are a few things to note about that article that may surprise you:

There are NO social share buttons (never have been)
There is NO call-to-action to share the article anywhere
There is NO freebie, download, opt-in, which incentivizes sharing

All things considered, I may as well have written, “don’t share this!” across the top and bottom of that article (obviously styling the text to match the yellow CAUTION tape you see at crime scenes).

So, why/how did that article get shared and how is this going to help you create content that gets shared?
First: Let’s talk about how to create shareable content by not thinking about creating shareable content.

If your intent is to create something under the guise that it will be shared you’ve almost already lost your battle to get attention from other people.

You need to create content that focuses on one or two things:

Your content needs to be helpful
Your content needs to be entertaining
Bonus: Your content needs to be both helpful AND entertaining

You can play all the keyword research games you want but if your content doesn’t help someone or doesn’t keep them entertained while reading it, you’re donezo. And kudos to you if you use words like “donezo” in your writing.

There is too much content in existence on the Internet nowadays and we’ve all developed a strong bullshit radar for growth-hacky content.

Second: You must prepare your content for success (aka: do a tiny bit of SEO work).

Now… hold on. Don’t flip over your desk in anger about how much you hate SEO and how much it confuses you and makes you want to punch pillows ’til the cows come home (a saying that I believe is catching on).

(Hopefully this isn’t you right now.)

When I talk about preparing your content for success, I just mean doing a couple of simple things that put you in good standing with search engines:

Writing a compelling headline (read: not click-bait, but interesting)
Making sure you use H2, H3, H4 headings with your focus topic (keyword)
If there’s a question to answer in your article, do it early and plainly
Use a WordPress plugin like Yoast SEO*

*Obviously this only pertains to WP users. For everyone else, just skip this step.

If you want to dive deeper into my extremely rudimentary process for SEO, read the full guide I created: Everything You Need To Know From My Experience With SEO

The reason to think about SEO just slightly when you’re writing content is to set yourself and your content up correctly from the beginning. Read: Do the things Google wants you to do so it can find and share your content for you!

Third: You have to be patient.

Don’t aim for virality, aim for longevity.

For every single person reading this article (myself included), none of the content we create will go viral. And truthfully, virality should NOT be the goal. Viral content is a flash in the pan. It’s over and done with faster than you can blink, usually with zero long-term net gains.

However, long-lasting, quality content can continue on an upward trajectory. This is especially relevant if you create a piece of content, like my social media detox article, which was written before people started talking more and more about taking breaks from social media.

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Thanks to my buddy (and SEO wizard) Brendan Hufford for helping me find this Google Trends graph!

You have to be patient with your content. My social media detox article didn’t start gaining organic search traffic and shares for months. In fact, it wasn’t until a year after originally posting it that people started to include a link to my article when they did a social media detox of their own and wrote about it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’ve had a handful of other articles follow the same pattern of how they took to get organic sharing and growth as my social media detox one:

Start A Business With No Money: Took 2 years to gain traction
How To Write A Pitch Email: Took 2 years to reach #1 on Google
I Failed P90X: Took 12 months to get consistent readership
How To Get Sponsorships: Took 18 months to land on page #1 on Google

There’s a recurring theme here and it’s that content worth sharing can take time to be found and to be shared. And again, none of those articles have share buttons, ask for shares, etc.

 

 

Here Are Your 5 Actionable Takeaways From This Article

Takeaway #1: Don’t set out with the idea to create shareable content. Create helpful or entertaining (or both!) content.

Takeaway #2: Unless you can prove to me that those god-awful share buttons cluttering up your beautiful website are working, it’s time to remove them. They do not work. Great content gets shared because it’s great, not because a few buttons make it easier to share.

Takeaway #3: You have to do set yourself up for success by doing a little bit of SEO work. Just a little bit! You don’t need to hire an SEO professional.

Takeaway #4: Patience is incredibly important. If you’re creating helpful and entertaining content, publish it, share it where you can, then move on to the next piece of content you’re itching to create.

Takeaway #5: I didn’t mention this anywhere else but it’s probably time you go back through your older articles and see if you can make any of them go from good to GREAT. It’s easier to improve something that already exists than it is to create from scratch.

Don’t share this.

Unless this article helped you. Unless it inspired you. Unless it motivated you and gave you actionable steps you can take on your journey to having your content shared.

Otherwise, onto the next article you have open in those 43 tabs in your browser.

Community Post: 6-Month Goals From Wandering Aimfully Readers

One of the things we value most about Wandering Aimfully is the amazing community of creative folks we get to interact with (that’s you!)

However, because we don’t have comments on articles and we aren’t always active on social media, there isn’t a great way for you to meet or hear from your fellow creative peeps.

That’s why we decided to ask in a recent email for our subscribers to reply with the answer to a simple question: What is your biggest business/life goal in the next 6 months?

Our hope in sharing the replies we received that it does a handful of things:

Let’s Stop “Running” Our Businesses and Start Walking Our Businesses

If you own your own business you’ve undoubtedly said that you “run your business” or that you are “running a business.”

We’ve certainly said this on multiple occasions about our various business ventures.

But a funny thing has happened over the years as we’ve learned from our mistakes “running” our businesses: We’re damn tired of feeling like we’re always running!

With Wandering Aimfully we’ve made the public announcement of striving for enough. Not more. Not maximum profits. Not some arbitrary 7-figure annual income number. We actually did the math and figured out the amount of money we want to make to sustain the lives we want.

In this journey to enough, we’re also shifting our thinking from “running a business” to “walking a business.”

 

Creating 1,600 Videos While “Running A Business” Led Me Four Years of Serious Burnout

In May of 2013, I hung up my final t-shirt for my IWearYourShirt business and at the same time closed the flip-out LCD on my Canon DSLR video camera. After filming, editing, and uploading over 1,600 videos in a 5-year span (an average of nearly 1 video per day for 1,600 days straight) I no longer wanted to even think about creating a video, let alone touch a video camera. I was burnt-the-hell-out.

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Admitting to a room of strangers in 2013 that I was completely burned out and my business was shutting down.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that it took nearly FOUR whole years to get over the negative feelings I had towards creating videos. Just thinking about the video-creation process gave me a swirling feeling in my stomach. Reaching for the video camera put me in a bad mood. Imagining myself having to edit any footage I shot made me depressed.

My feelings of burnout when it came to filming videos had come directly from “running” my IWearYourShirt business. I spent countless hours overworking myself to publish videos on a completely arbitrary schedule I’d forced myself into.

I left the 9am-5pm corporate world to chase down my own big idea (IWearYourShirt) only to find myself in a 9am-9pm job that felt like a career dungeon.

Maybe you feel the same way with your business right now? You’re stuck in a career dungeon?

You’re currently running, running, running, with no end in sight and are afraid if you slow down everything will crumble around you?

As business owners, we often don’t realize the traps we set for ourselves and how much we over-work until it’s too late.

After four years of getting over my burnout, I could pick up the video camera again

In 2018 I started creating videos again consistently with my wife but with a much more relaxed production schedule. I was NOT going to repeat my past mistakes. I was NOT going to work my fingers to the bone to push videos out quickly and at an unsustainable rate.

Instead, my wife and I…

Committed to a more relaxed production timeline (weekly videos)
Streamlined the video creation process and removed effort where possible
Reminded ourselves we didn’t need to create perfect videos like well-established creators
Started a recording batching schedule to get ahead of our publishing schedule
Brought on a video editor (Hi, Nina!) to take on our WAIM Show edits
Would be okay if we missed a self-imposed publishing deadline

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An example video on our Wandering Aimfully YouTube channel.

This new mindset when it came to video production took me from feeling like I was always running around and burning the creation-candle at both ends to having a calm schedule that I could stick to and even get ahead with! (Novel idea!)

 

How Can You Tell If You’re Currently Stuck In “Running A Business” Mode?

It can be hard to know, in the day-to-day of operating a business, if you are in “running mode.” Do any of these things hit too close to home for you:

You’re always having to wake up early and go to sleep late
You have a to-do list that’s never ending
You rarely get to spend long, focused hours in your work
You want to create content, but can never do it on a consistent basis
Your email inbox is a complete shit show
You feel like you tend to let your customers down because you can’t keep up

If you feel the pain of those things we’ve been there with you. It’s incredibly common for business owners to get stuck in the spiral of these things for weeks, months, and even years.

Sometimes you DO have to run your business

Instead of running, think about short sprints.

We get it. You are creating a new thing. You are making a big transition. You are starting from scratch. No matter what, there will be times when you have to run and not walk. But you should think of these times as short sprints where you absolutely must set boundaries for your running time otherwise you’ll just continue to run.

When you need to put in the extra work, think of it as a sprint, not a marathon. Short sprints of additional working time that you will stop doing at a certain point and not allow to become bad habits.

We’ve all been preached the gospel of Hustle at one time or another. As I wrote in another article, We’ve Reached Peak Hustle-Porn.

Hustle should be reserved for short bursts (sprints!) Running your business should only need to happen for small periods of time. If you’re always going 100mph you’re going to get burned out.

You might not be cut out for this…

I’m a firm believer that we’re all unique snowflakes, let’s get that out on the table. I truly think that every person has a unique skill and can offer something to the world in the form of their own business if they so choose.

However… That doesn’t mean everyone is cut out to operate their own business (running OR walking).

For some folks, the pressure and anxiety that come with the uncertainties of owning your own business are too much. That’s OKAY! That’s why there are a plethora of “real jobs” out in the world.

There is absolutely no shame in admitting that working for yourself is not the right path for you.

As much as you may want to work for yourself and chase down a big idea, it just may not be the right fit for you. Should you give a shot to see how it goes? 100% yes! But if it doesn’t work out you shouldn’t beat yourself up and you shouldn’t force yourself into debt, depression, or other negative things many of us go through.

 

It’s Time To Commit To Walking Your Business

We’re not going to lie to you and pretend you can just whisper our mantra of “I’m committing to walking my business” and POOF everything will change for you.

What we can do is tell you that IT IS possible to adopt the walking a business mindset even if you’re currently running.

We’ve seen it firsthand for our businesses and my example about our video production schedule is just one part of how we’ve made our shift from running to walking.

Here are a couple ways you can think about transitioning from running to walking your business…

Walking Your Business Challenge #1: Define your enough number

Instead of focusing on never-ending growth, pick a number that you want to make monthly and when you hit that number stop. Don’t keeping going and working just because you can. Be content to use your extra energy and free time to enjoy the life you’ve created for yourself.

A tip for defining your enough number:

Look at the last 3 months of business expenses and create a monthly average
Look at the last 3 months of life expenses and create a monthly average
Add an extra $$$ each month to account for taxes (15% of monthly revenue is a good ballpark)
Add an extra $$$ each month you want to put aside for savings (maybe start with 10% of monthly revenue)
Add an extra $$$ each month you want to give to charity

Total all of those up to find your enough number. If you want to read more about how we defined our enough number go here.

Walking your business challenge #2: Set and cap the hours you want to work

How many hours do you actually NEED to work each week to accomplish your tasks and financial goals? If you don’t create a cap, you’ll fill every waking hour with work. Caroline will often ask me around 5pm: Do you have more work to do today? And the answer is always, “there’s always more work to be done.”

If you own your own business, it’s hard to shut things down each day because our to-do lists constantly ongoing. By creating a cap of 5, 6, 7, or 8 hours of working time you won’t stay attached to your computer afraid of FOMO.

Do you need help managing your time? We have a few tips for you here.

Walking your business challenge #3: Force yourself to take the next 2 weekends completely off of work

For some of you reading this, taking any time off from your business will sound impossible. For some of you reading this, you may already be doing it (hurray, you!)

If it feels like you have to work on the weekends to keep up you are stuck in the “running a business” mode and you are going to burn yourself out.

Take the weekends completely off for the next two weeks and compare your revenue and work completion to the previous two weeks. Was the outcome drastically different financially? Did your customers throw up their hands in anger because you didn’t get back to them over the weekend? Did you enjoy time with your family or maybe get to some of those household projects you’ve neglected for years?

Those are just a few simple ways to transition from running to walking. Only you will know the areas of your business that are currently in control of you instead of the other way around.

From our own personal experience, we know that running our businesses only leads to health issues and burning out. Slowing down may seem incredibly difficult but if you are able to build better habits and make your business as efficient as possible, you can absolutely start walking your business.

Related: If this article left you feeling like you wish you had more to dive into to organize your business, especially how you manage your time and money (making your biz more efficient), we’d highly recommend going through our Back To Business Basics Guide. There are actionable worksheets and exercises to free up your time, generate more revenue, and get a better grip on your overall biz schedule.

An Extremely Honest Conversation About Anxiety

Don’t Need Video? Listen Now

Episode Summary

This episode will be a bit different than the rest as we share Caroline’s story in dealing with anxiety. It’s something she’s been confronted with for years but recently it hit her extremely hard, to the point of feeling she couldn’t even get out of bed for weeks on end.

We wanted to have an honest conversation about how it feels to go through a mental health issue and talk about how it affects our relationship, work, and more.

Our goal with this episode is that it helps anyone with anxiety or depression feel some sense of hope and that you are not alone.

 

 

Want to support us and our show?

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We recently created a 100% free, no strings attached Test Drive of our Wandering Aimfully Membership. You can kick the tires and see all the goodies we have to offer, along with a hands-on preview of our newest program Build Without Burnout Academy (a 6-month guided program to help client-based business owners transition to digital products).

You’ll also be able to see inside our “Vault,” which contains 30+ courses and workshops to help you grow your business or make big changes in your life. Give the WAIM Test Drive a shot and don’t hesitate to reach out and set up a quick 1-on-1 call with us!

Joining Wandering Aimfully is the best way to help support us on our journey AND help yourself grow your business (or start a business) with intention and on your own terms.

Our Secret To Success: Doing Things Differently

Don’t Need Video? Listen Now

Episode Summary

We aren’t going to bury the lead, our secret to success is: Doing things differently.

That might sound nebulous and generic but when you dive into this week’s WAIMSHOW episode you’ll hear specific ways we use “doing things differently” as a filter for everything we do: Building companies, selling products, attracting customers, creating content, etc.

Thinking outside the proverbial box is something EVERYONE can do, it’s just not something everyone DOES do. We believe putting your own unique spin and difference on everything you create/sell can help you stand out from the sea of sameness and get attention.

QUESTION FOR YOU: What will you do differently for the next 30 days in your life or in your business? (Feel free to comment with your answer on YouTube).

 

 

Want to support us and our show?

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We recently created a 100% free, no strings attached Test Drive of our Wandering Aimfully Membership. You can kick the tires and see all the goodies we have to offer, along with a hands-on preview of our newest program Build Without Burnout Academy (a 6-month guided program to help client-based business owners transition to digital products).

You’ll also be able to see inside our “Vault,” which contains 30+ courses and workshops to help you grow your business or make big changes in your life. Give the WAIM Test Drive a shot and don’t hesitate to reach out and set up a quick 1-on-1 call with us!

Joining Wandering Aimfully is the best way to help support us on our journey AND help yourself grow your business (or start a business) with intention and on your own terms.

Simple Ways To Improve Your Time Management Skills

Don’t Need Video? Listen Now

Episode Summary

Does it feel like time is always slipping through your fingers? Are you working long hours and not seeing the monetary rewards for your efforts?

This week’s WAIM Show is all about time management and specifically how you can be more efficient with your time. We share a couple of simple time management tips you can try:

Using time blocking to stay focused and accomplish more work in a shorter period of time
Giving yourself permission not to work a standard 9-5 schedule
How to be realistic about the work you’re currently doing and if you should pivot to something else

Listen for the part of the episode where Caroline went from making $1,000 per month to 3-4x that amount just by managing her time better

When Do You Shut It Down and When Do You Keep Going?

Is there a project or idea you’re working on right now that you feel you’re at a crossroads with?

A few years ago I loved the idea of creating small software products. In fact, I remember when I started thinking about leaving the 9-5 world in 2005 and dreamed of being a “software startup founder.” The stories of successful venture-funded startups and crazy monthly revenue seemed otherworldly to me.

Fast forward to 2013 and I started working on my first web application (I am going to interchangeably call them web applications, software products, web apps, whatever… it’s all the same to me!) Then in 2015, I had a second web app. In 2016 a third. In 2017 a fourth and a fifth.

Uh oh, you can probably see where this might be headed?

Truthfully, I don’t have any regrets about starting too many software products. I was able to partner with great, talented co-founders, and I enjoyed working on each project.

But here’s the real-talk for you…

Starting anything from scratch, no matter how much experience you have in another area (or in that same field) is always going to be its own unique uphill climb.

Take ofCourseBooks, for example. It was (and still is) a very simple embeddable workbook product.

The idea was to mesh Typeform and note-taking together and to help online course owners give their students a more effective way to consume their teachings.

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My co-founder Paul Jarvis and I had a combined audience of over 100,000 people between our email lists and social media followings. We also had a popular podcast (3,000 downloads per episode) where we publicly built the app and found our technical co-founder (hi, Zack!) Paul and I have had solid success selling online courses and other products over the years.

Yet, the best we could do was get ofCourseBooks to around $2,000 monthly recurring revenue (MRR). And we pushed it pretty hard for a few months.

While we were happy to have a side project that didn’t take a ton of continuous effort on our parts, we had certainly hoped it would generate more revenue. We didn’t even have wildly ambitious financial goals, we simply hoped we’d get to $10,000 MRR.

This is a similar story for me with almost every software product I’ve built. They are able to generate some monthly revenue but it’s never enough for one of them to earn the majority of my focus. And there’s another problem…

I’m not sure I’m cut-out to only work on ONE product for an extended period of time. I’m tired of beating myself up about that.

I understand the blueprint of how to make a software product successful. The issue is that I know it’s not the type of work I want to be doing all the time:

Hosting live demos of the product
Having 1-on-1 calls to make the sale
Doing customer service
Creating ongoing content around the problem the software solves
Building and sharing case studies from customers
Having some sort of referral program and managing that
Constantly fighting the battle of churn
Knowing what features are most important to spend time building
Etc etc

There are probably 20 more bullet points I could list out and that’s precisely why I don’t think I’ll ever run a software company as my sole gig.

 

What Happens When Your Identity Is Tied To Your Work?

It gets even more challenging to shut down a project or keep going when your identity is tied to it in some way.

If you’re reading this article then your work is probably tied to your identity in some way. Your name is associated with your product or you ARE the product (hello designers, artists, developers, any freelancers).

It’s especially tough to make a decision about moving forward or shutting down an idea when you feel a strong connection to it.

There’s a certain amount of fear that comes along with shutting down a project that isn’t serving us. Kristen Yates, a member of our Wandering Aimfully community talked about it like this:

When I tap into this fear of letting go of a project there’s often something around an identity I’ve attached myself with around it in addition to the time/resources/energy sunk in. It makes me curious to explore what that fear is about? What it means to let go of something that we may have attached with beyond it simply being an income source or even a passion project? What about when it becomes a part of who we are?

Kristen is totally right and brings up some really valid questions. This has been a struggle for me with many of my projects over the years.

What happens when a project becomes part of who we are?

If you quit something that’s fundamentally tied to who you position yourself as to the outside world you can feel trapped. If you say you’re a designer, but stop being a designer, will everything think you’re a fraud? Will they question what you “pivot” to next because it’s unfamiliar and different?

There’s no easy answer when it comes to dealing with the fear and the identity crisis that can come with pouring ourselves so deeply into our work.

I’m not willing to stay trapped working on one thing or one idea for the fear of what other people might think of me. I don’t think you should stay trapped either.

If people don’t respect change and don’t see it as necessary, they’re not people I want to surround myself with. And sure, we can’t control what people say or think about us, but we shouldn’t be focusing on that anyway. You have to focus on what you can control and if that’s making a big change in your life or business, then that’s a perfectly acceptable decision.

 

Do You Always Feel Like You’re On The Edge Of Success Or Failure?

No matter what type of product or idea you’re building, it can feel like you’re always on the edge of success or failure.

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Does this edge feel like success or failure to you right now?

We, as business owners, have this thing when it comes to our creations. They always feel like they might be on the cusp of taking off and therefore it’s so much harder to let go of them.

And then there’s the other side. Things could crumble at any moment. Yet, we’ll hang on for too long due to sunk cost bias. You know, spending countless hours, days, weeks, months, and even years on an idea and not wanting to throw all of that away for fear of “failing.”

We need to quit projects that aren’t serving us any longer to create space for new things.

Or, you know, just create space and NOT IMMEDIATELY FILL IT. (That’s as much a note to you, dear reader, as it is to future Jason).

For me, and maybe for you, it’s important to sit down and really weigh the options with whatever you’re currently working on that isn’t bringing you the value you’d hoped.

Value = Revenue + Enjoyment

During the past year, I’ve decided that I’m not going to keep dragging projects along if they aren’t bringing me value. The revenue isn’t the most important indicator, in fact, it’s probably a dead-tie with enjoyment.

And let’s be honest, we all probably have a project or two that sucks our time and attention away, while not returning much value back.

Where do you REALLY want to be spending your (work) time?

That’s the question I keep coming back to. I love the thrill of creating a new software product. I love working with talented people and bringing an idea to life. I enjoy a little bit, the challenge of getting people to make the initial purchase. But things start to fall short for me when I feel I’m constantly chasing after growth, even a small amount of it.

I’m in my “zone of genius” when I’m doing weird things. When I’m creating projects that make people tilt their heads and sharing ideas that feel completely unique to me. The problem is, not all of those weird projects can pay the bills on a consistent basis.

So how do you find the balance? What’s the answer?

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it feels like there is no ONE answer (to rule them all). It feels more like we all need to understand working for ourselves is an ongoing and ever-changing process.

You might be reading this and have found your ONE thing and you’re kicking major ass with it. Awesome! If working on your idea brings you value and you don’t feel trapped by it, you should absolutely keep going. You should acknowledge the path to success will be a winding one and you may never reach an actual finish line. Enjoy the bumps along the way, they’re only going to provide invaluable lessons and moments where you can improve and get better.

However, for a lot of us, the answer may not be to keep going, it may be time to shut a project down.

Give yourself permission to gracefully exit a project (whether that means making some money or $0.00).

A special thank you to Reed and J.P. who are the owners of two web apps I co-founded.

Slowly but surely I’ve realized that I can’t manage and run five different software companies.

It’s actually not even the marketing and time investment that’s the issue, it’s the mental toll it takes to keep track of all of them (shocker, I know).

I’ve started giving myself permission to sell-off or shut down projects that aren’t bringing me value.

I had two successful “exits,” as they say in this business. Those exit amounts won’t impress you, and truthfully, that’s not really the point of this article. I do want to acknowledge that I’m grateful to have a community around me that believes in the products I’ve built and are willing to invest their money and continue working on those ideas.

Removing projects from my virtual plate is not only creating more time for new ideas (or existing neglected ideas) but shutting down projects is also helping to create mental space I didn’t even know I was missing.

There’s an underlying layer of stress when we continue to carry projects along and not make a decision to move on from them.

My hope is that this article helps you move on from an idea you may feel stuck with. Some app or thing that you feel you can’t stop working on because it was so close to finally being worth all the time and energy.

So, what will it be for you? Are you shutting down or pushing forward?