Never give up.
It’s a cool thing to say. But out on the playing field, in that phase where you have to hold on to what is barely more than an idea for so long, giving up looks good.
When you have the upper hand or you’re winning, it’s easy to say the words ‘don’t bend your morals for anything’, or ‘hang in there, champ’ . It’s different when it’s you in the ring, summoning the last of your energy to throw a faint punch at your enemy (he dodged. punk).
How long can you hold out?
The time between losing and winning is what I call the waiting period. While losing sucks, the waiting period can also be grueling, testing.
The waiting period is the time spent putting in the work, day after day, showing up, completing your tasks, and improving yourself. And yet when you look back at the effort and its reward, it is massive to nothing. A lot of effort for a non-existent reward.
A reward they say will come. A reward you believe will come. But it’s been 3, 6, 9 months of you doing everything you were asked to do, and that reward is barely an idea, a string of hope you tug on before you go to sleep.
That’s when fatigue sets in. Because we’re humans. We need proof of concept to ensure we’re on the right path. We need a reason to keep going. and when we can’t see that, it’s easy to get tired.
Real quote that.
I’ve been experiencing the same. No, I’m not depressed. I’m not going through something devastating, I’m quite fine. I’m just… a little bit tired.
I HAVE thought about giving up. Multiple times. Every day, even. But last week I experienced this weird mindset shift that gave me the motivation to keep going.
I’ll tell you now - it’s stupid - but also simple enough to give you an aha moment.
How to combat the fatigue - and survive the wait
Give yourself permission to fail.
That’s what I did. Yes. I told myself it would be completely okay to fail. Give up, throw the towel in. And not in the ‘you can be a failure, it’s okay’ bs I see sometimes. Not sure if that’s supposed to motivate or depress.
No, I did it differently.
How? I set conditions for my failure. I set parameters that I had to hit - and would make me classify that venture as a failure.
For example, I’m in the baby phases of founding a B2B lead generation agency. I can only give up after:
I’ve sent out 30,000 emails pitching my service.
I’ve gotten on at least 100 discovery calls.
I’ve gotten on at least 50 sales calls.
I’ve signed 10 clients and failed spectacularly at producing results.
Then and only then, can I confirm that I am truly a failure. Because, now I have failed, not because I felt like a failure, but because I’ve proven it.
With this mindset, I still think I can fail, but I’m betting on two ingredients to be a decent success: Time and repetition.
How long will it take me to rack up to 100 discovery calls? A year? 6 months? 6 months is quite some time, and in that time I would have improved so much I may just have become a killer at taking discovery calls. What are the odds that after taking 100 discovery calls and improving after every one of them, just by sheer repetition I don’t become massively better at taking sales calls and turning a cold prospect into a very interested client?
Very high, my friend, very high.
You see, now I’ve just turned the waiting period into a numbers game. Now I have permitted myself to fail, but failure has parameters, the same way success does. I can’t just decide one day I’m done. I must have proved to myself I am a failure.
Now, if I quit something, I know it’s really not for me. I know I tried.
The question now is: How can you prove to yourself you’re a failure?
I am a failure at football. Alright, how many hours did you put in on the training pitch? How many games did you play after that? DID YOU RUN THE NUMBERS?
I am a failure at writing/designing. How many times did you put something out and it was deemed terrible by your peers? Did you write and publish up to 30 times in a year? No? So you can’t prove to me you’re a failure.
How many times did you do the thing?
You have to prove - not only to yourself but to your friends, the people betting on you, those who believe in you, that you tried. You have to prove to me, a person you’ve probably never seen, that you actually tried and failed.
Run the numbers. Do the thing so many times you can only be a failure after that.
And when you’ve done that, it’s okay. Now you can be a failure, but with a badge of honor. It’s special. They hand them out in this lovely small pawn shop in Gbagada.
Until you can do that, it’s just fear talking, and it sounds like you.
Till next time.
Victor Kalu.