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Every entrepreneur has been told to push through, stay the course, and that grit is everything. But advice like that leaves out that some of the smartest, most successful people in business got there by quitting at exactly the right moment. So how do you know when that moment is? Dr. Anthony Klotz, organizational psychologist and author of Jolted, has spent years studying exactly this question. He joins the show to share his framework for figuring out whether you should stay and fight harder, or finally walk away.
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00:00Just knowing that you have the ability to quit makes you less want to quit. It's always good
00:05to check in and say like, you know, what is my level of stuckness? Do I have alternatives? And
00:10if you have many options, then you have more options for how to deal with these feelings
00:15that you're having. If you don't have many options, then resilience may be the only path forward.
00:21Running a business means solving problems. I tell you how the smartest entrepreneurs do it.
00:26Hi, I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and this is Problem Solvers.
00:36It's a story I hear from entrepreneurs all the time. I was working on something and everyone
00:42was saying no and everything seemed like it was disaster and everything was falling apart,
00:46but I persevered. I persevered. And because I persevered, I won. And we tell versions of
00:54that story a lot. People love that story. It's inspiring. I've always worried a little
00:59bit about sharing stories like that. And the reason is because that story creates this narrative
01:06that the way to succeed is only to persevere, that the people who persevered were the people
01:12who won and everyone else quit and therefore never got to the finish line. And I know that
01:18that's just not true because I know that there are plenty of people who persevered and kept doing
01:22something that was never going to work. And eventually they just ran out of money or energy
01:27or they finally realized that they should have quit a long time ago. And this is the great question
01:33that I always have for people who offer this specific piece of advice. Just keep going,
01:38which is, but how do you know when maybe not to keep going? I have someone. I have a organizational
01:45psychologist who thinks and has written about exactly this. His name is Dr. Anthony Klotz.
01:50He is the author of the book, Jolted, Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters.
01:55Anthony, thank you so much for joining me on Problem Solvers.
01:59Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
02:00Okay. So set me up here a little bit before we dive into this. Give me the background and
02:07how you came to be thinking so much about quitting or when not to.
02:14Yeah. So for me in particular, I was interested in resignations and there's a lot of great research
02:20on this decision of when to quit your job. And my little niche that I became interested in was
02:27what about after you make the decision to quit, then how do you go about leaving? And there's lots
02:33of different options and it's a confusing time. So I started studying it and really through that got
02:39into all of this great literature and research that we have on when do you know it's time to
02:44walk away? What leads people to quit their jobs? And traditionally, we know that there's like two
02:51main reasons. We've studied this for about 100 years. And you could probably come up with these
02:56right now. There's two kind of intuitive reasons why people walk away. And we call these like push
03:02and pull factors. But really what it is is like when the negative parts of your job build up, they
03:08kind of push you away from your job. Of course, out there, there's other attractive opportunities too
03:14that pull you away from your job. Even if you're happy, you might get pulled away by these more
03:18attractive opportunities. Even if there are no opportunities, if it's a really bad situation, you
03:23may be pushed toward the exit door. And so we'll talk a little bit about, we'll talk a bit more
03:28about
03:28that. I think with entrepreneurial ventures, that complicates the push and pull factors a little
03:33bit. But what really intrigued me when I was digging into this research was this notion of
03:38these one-off events that happen. So about 50% of the time, people quitting is not driven by this
03:45sort
03:45of logical push and pull calculation. It's driven by this one event that happened, a jolt or a shock
03:52that made them think, hey, this relationship with work, this relationship with my venture
03:57isn't really what I thought it was. It sort of opened my eyes to something different.
04:01And that leads people to quit sometimes really rapidly, or at least gets that train of thought
04:06going of something needs to change and that thing may be leaving. And so it was really my interest
04:13in resignations that led me to this research on these one-off event, these jolts that really caught
04:19my interest and led me to study it for the past decade and a half or so.
04:23Anthony, you heard my setup here where we're surrounded by these stories of perseverance,
04:30and therefore it is the thing that we often celebrate. And inversely, we think of quitting
04:37as failure, as having given up. And I'd love to hear you unpack this cultural narrative that we have,
04:45and if you feel like people are often getting it wrong or misunderstanding what the noble move is.
04:52Yeah, well, I think perseverance and resilience are a lot of the time necessary to be successful in
05:01any profession, definitely when it comes to leading a new venture. And so it's not necessarily
05:07wrong-headed advice, but it doesn't hold up a lot of the time. If you talk to almost any
05:12successful entrepreneur or in any walk of life, they'll be able to tell you the moments where they
05:19walked away earlier in their career, when they quit, when they were going down a path they
05:25shouldn't have. And often this stems in the wake of failure. There is a narrative right now that
05:32failure is actually a good thing because it opens our eyes to these learning opportunities. I don't know
05:37that it's necessarily a good thing. Failure is still pretty painful, but it is, I think, opening up our
05:43eyes to talking about, you know, when we fail or when something bad happens, it is a learning
05:49opportunity. But sometimes that learning opportunity is we're going down the completely wrong path. Like
05:54the path that we're on has served us enough. And in psychology, we call this escalation of commitment.
06:00You invest so much in an entrepreneurial venture. And so when things, you know, maybe start to go a
06:08little bit poorly, it's easier to double down and follow the resilience path than take a hard look
06:15and say, is this the path that I should stay on? And so I think this cultural narrative around
06:20resilience, around perseverance, is not wrong. A lot of research would back up that individuals,
06:26to the extent that they can persevere, to the extent that they're resilient, they will succeed more in
06:30life. But that comes up against, again, talking to almost any successful person, they'll tell you
06:35probably a secret to their success, was quitting at the right moments, but also staying at the right
06:41moments too. So I do think that there's some truth to both sides of it. Yeah, it's a really great
06:46point
06:47that I hadn't thought of, that the narrative of perseverance is also, there's the quitting of
06:52something that was built in, which of course is seen in retrospect as the bold move as well.
06:58I walked away from this career and I did this other thing. I walked away from this bad relationship and
07:03I did this other thing. And people say, yeah, that's great. But then when you're in the moment
07:07and you are considering walking away, the walking away often doesn't feel like success. It can feel
07:14like giving up on something. So take me into the moment of decision for people. Like what should
07:21people be considering as they assess whether or not they're in a place that they should stay or a place
07:27that they should go? Yeah. So in general, when people experience these jolts, they take a step
07:37back and sort of weigh up their relationship with work. And I think at a high level, we think of
07:42this
07:43as like, is this job or is this role that I'm in leading me down the path that I want
07:49to go in life?
07:50And for each of us, that's different. But psychologists have studied this for a while and said,
07:54there's probably some big commonalities to how each of us define the good life. And so I do think
07:59it's useful when we're in these moments of deciding to say, is this job taking me down the path to
08:06what
08:06I define as the good life? And psychologists say, essentially, there's there's two sort of big
08:12buckets that the good life falls into. One of them is happiness and contentment. So on a day to day
08:19basis, you feel happy or the things that you're doing making you happy. The other one is
08:23meaning and purpose. And we all define that differently. But do we feel like we're living a
08:28life of meaning and purpose? Now, because most of us spend a lot, if not the majority of our waking
08:34hours at work, work plays a big role in our good life calculus. And so so the question is, is
08:42work a
08:43source of happiness for me on a daily basis? And is it a source of meaning and purpose over the
08:47long
08:47term? I think it's useful to take happiness and break that down a little bit into the two biggest
08:55buckets where happiness comes from at work. Now, at work, happiness can come from many places,
09:00good pay, of course, like good career development opportunities and so forth. But but in general,
09:07your overall happiness, your overall satisfaction at work is determined by, you know, how you spend the
09:12majority of your time every day. And that's with other people. And that's doing the main tasks of
09:18your job. And so I think it's useful for people when when they're in these moments to say, OK, my
09:23my job
09:24tasks what I do day in and day out. Do I still enjoy those? Did I ever enjoy those? And
09:31sort of keep
09:31that in mind. And then then there's the people. There is some truth, not the whole truth to the saying
09:37that people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. That bosses do play a large role in our happiness,
09:43but so do our coworkers and our customers and our subordinates and everybody we come in contact with
09:48on a daily basis. Of course, bosses have more control than most. And so you can weigh up on a
09:54day to day basis. The people who I'm interacting with, are they a source of positive energy for me
09:59or are they taking energy away and not giving it back? So so on the one hand, I think it
10:04is useful to
10:05say on a day to day basis. Is this job doing it for me from a happiness standpoint? Then the
10:10other
10:10part is is meaning and purpose. And this often comes to us a little bit later in our careers
10:15where this really takes priority, sometimes early in our careers as well, but but often later
10:21where we would ask ourselves the work that I'm doing over the long term. Does it make the impact
10:27that I want to make on the world, on my community or just me? Like, is it putting enough money
10:33in my
10:34bank account? Because that's what I that's my purpose right now or whatever it may be.
10:38And the same thing has to go when you look around you, you say, do the individuals I'm working with
10:43sort of share the same value? Are we all moving in the right direction together? And so that would
10:49be a good and you could break those questions down as much as you want. But I think thinking about
10:53is this job getting me where I need to go? Is this career getting me where I need to go
10:58in terms of how I
10:59define happiness at this stage in my life, in terms of how I define purpose at this stage in
11:04my life? We change over the course of our life. So so those are the two big buckets. And I
11:09will add
11:10one other thing. It's fairly recent, like in the last 10 or 15 years, psychologists have said there is
11:16a certain percentage of the population, let's say 10 or 15 percent, that defines the good life
11:20different than happiness and meaning. They define the good life as as a life of excitement and adventure.
11:27And and that's really what drives them. And so if you find yourself someone who's
11:32tempted to quit a lot of the time, you have this like wanderlust in you. It may just be part
11:38of like
11:38the life for you is the life of every two to five or 10 years. I'm going to switch careers.
11:43I'm going
11:43to take on a new venture. I'm going to do something different. There's more coming in that conversation.
11:48But first, it's time to play a game. It is tax trivia brought to you by TurboTax. I'm going to
11:55ask
11:56you a tax related question and then you'll get the answer later in the episode. Ready? Let's see if
12:01you know the answer. Can you deduct a home office if you occasionally work from your couch? Pretty
12:07relevant for anyone who works from home. Tune in later in the episode for the answer and learn more
12:12about filing your taxes with Intuit TurboTax. You can visit turbotax.intuit.com.
12:19You know, that last part that you just said there really resonates with me. And I want to tell you
12:26my very quick version of my career and see what you make of it. So I had noticed that I
12:33had about a
12:33two to maximum three year clock on any job. I would show up, I'd be enthusiastic. By a year and
12:42a half in,
12:43I was starting to get really itchy. By two to two and a half years, I was starting to get
12:47resentful.
12:48And then I got out of there. And I just kept doing that over and over and over again.
12:53And then I got to Entrepreneur, where I have now been for, this number will shock you because it
13:00shocked me, 10 years. I cannot believe I've been anywhere for 10 years. And so the question is,
13:04well, how? Now, part of the answer is that I have a cool title, Editor-in-Chief, and I have
13:09a lot of
13:10autonomy. And so it is a different kind of job. But I'll be honest, I think the real reason is
13:17because in many ways, I have quote unquote quit and reinvented. I've quit the previous version of
13:26myself and reinvented myself a number of times. So over these 10 years, I went from first, just the
13:34guy who was focused on Entrepreneur. And then the guy who was focused on Entrepreneur and started to
13:39build some other things for myself outside of it. It's an entrepreneur, lives up to its name. It's
13:43encouraging of entrepreneurship. And over this time, I've started to start my own companies.
13:48I've started to travel around and give these keynote talks. I've reinvented myself from a media
13:53person to a person who sits on advisory boards. I just keep kind of changing who I am. But because
13:59I'm able to do that on the outside, I've been able to keep this base of this role for as
14:06long as I
14:06have. So I wonder what you make of that. I feel like in a way, I'm kind of trying to
14:10do both things.
14:12I'm being mindful of what future opportunities get to be created here. And that's one version of the
14:18good life. But also, I get to be adventurous and to experiment, which is definitely something that
14:25speaks to me. Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty sweet spot that you're hitting right there. Because it's
14:30between like, the security of like, you've been with them for 10 years, you sort of know this
14:35organization well, they know you. And there's just a certain sort of like predictability that
14:39comes along with that, being in a long term relationship with another person, or a company.
14:44But then having the autonomy to satisfy that, you know, employment or organizational wanderlust that
14:51you have, or just this desire to reinvent yourself every few years, is pretty critical. And I think part
14:58of that comes with naturally getting higher in the organizational chart. But also, that's also has to do
15:03with the organizational culture. Are you a company that gives employees the autonomy to reinvent
15:08themselves to dabble inside hustles to do other sorts of things to explore different versions of
15:13their self. And in the research, you know, there's been a lot of research on side hustles over the past
15:19five or 10 years. And it shows that, of course, if we go out and have positive experiences, or we
15:25stretch ourselves in some new way, could be associated with work, or it could be something totally
15:30different. When we come back to work, we bring that positivity and those new skills with us. And that
15:35more creative thinking, it fuels better ideas. And so there's a win-win here for organizations that allow
15:41it. And so I do think, and this is something... Actually, sorry, can I just interrupt you there?
15:46Because what you just said there is really critical. And I want to speak to all leaders of organizations
15:51right now. Because I hear so often the same story, which is an entrepreneur tells me that they had
15:58started a side hustle while they were at a job. And then the boss made them choose. Stay here and
16:05get rid of that side hustle, which is taking away your energy, or leave and you can go do whatever
16:09you want. And in each case, they say, you know what? Well, then I'm out of here. And they go
16:13build
16:13something amazing. And I think, what a stupid company. Because you just chased away your most
16:19enthusiastic, creative, entrepreneurial talent. And you could have kept them and had them do amazing
16:24things for your organization while still building their own thing. They could have had the capacity
16:29for both. And in fact, their side hustles would have drawn more ideas and connections and energy
16:36into your organization. And you chased them away. And that is foolish. And I hear it all the time.
16:42Yeah. It's the strange bit of, I don't know if it's territoriality or insecurity or just,
16:48you know, old school thinking. But yeah, I mean, it's clear that, and this doesn't just go for side
16:54hustles. It has to do with like any positive activities for the most part that you have
16:58outside of work. But when it comes to side hustles, these are other, you know, business-related
17:03endeavors that you're engaging in. And of course, it's going to come back. And, you know, the buzzword
17:08right now is re-skilling. Organizations want people to re-skill for AI and for all sorts of other
17:13reasons. Well, that's often what you're doing with a side hustle. You're developing this
17:17other muscle in your toolkit. And so, of course, it's going to benefit you, especially from a
17:23creativity standpoint when you're back in the organization. All right. Quick break, because
17:28earlier in the episode, we played Tax Trivia brought to you by TurboTax. The question was,
17:35can you deduct a home office if you occasionally work from your couch? Now, here is the answer.
17:42The answer is no. Sorry. For a home office deduction, the space must be used regularly
17:49and exclusively for business. Learn more about filing your taxes with Intuit TurboTax. You can
17:57visit turbotax.intuit.com. How would you port any of this over to entrepreneurs? So, you know,
18:06we're talking about when to quit and we're talking about that in the framework of a job,
18:11but there are plenty of moments in the life of an entrepreneur in which they've been building
18:18something. They've invested a lot of their own money. They've invested other people's money.
18:23There are maybe employees whose livelihoods depend upon the success of this organization,
18:28but they see the future and they are unsure whether or not this is a thing that's really going
18:33to work long-term or whether there's going to be an exit or whether there's, this is something that
18:37they want to keep doing and they feel really stuck and they don't know what to do. And they keep
18:41hearing
18:42these stories of resilience, resilience, resilience. And so I wonder what you could take from even maybe
18:48the world of thinking about quitting jobs or just the research into quitting and these jolts
18:52that you could help entrepreneurs orient themselves around that moment.
18:57Yeah, no, I can definitely appreciate that feeling of, of stuckness, especially with the responsibility
19:03that comes with entrepreneurship and the commitments that you're often in, you know, you know, when
19:08you're in an entrepreneurial venture. And so, yeah, there's, there's a couple of things to think
19:13through in terms of like, how stuck are you when you're in that moment? Because sometimes when people
19:20feel like I'd like to quit, but I can't, that can create a lot of anxiety. And actually there's not
19:28a whole lot of research, but there, there are anecdotes that just knowing that you have the
19:33ability to quit makes you less want to quit, right? Just, just knowing I could leave is enough. And so
19:40it's always good to check in and say like, you know, what is my level of stuckness in this role?
19:45And this,
19:46it's pretty straightforward. I mean, the first thing is, do I have alternatives to what I'm doing
19:52right now? And that could be from a financial standpoint, from a career standpoint, what other
19:57alternatives out there? Like a lot of individuals get into entrepreneurship through leaving a more
20:02traditional role. A lot of the time entrepreneurs at one point boomerang back into that role. You know,
20:09they do the entrepreneurial venture and decide it's not for me and go back. And so is that an option
20:14for you? That's just one example. So you're always thinking about alternatives. If there's no
20:19alternatives, then, then you are in a bit more of a stuck position. The next one is like, is switching
20:25costs. So if I was going to go do that alternative thing, if I was going to switch, get out
20:31of
20:31entrepreneurship and do something else, how much time, energy cost would it, would it take out of me?
20:36And then the third thing is one of my favorite, favorite terms. It was one of the first
20:40entrepreneurship papers that I ever came across in management. And it talked about psychic income,
20:46which you were talking about a little bit a second ago, I think, but it's just the happiness
20:51that you get from being your own boss and really being honest with yourself about that. Because for
20:58many people, that happiness is pretty high. And it's what a lot of individuals who are in traditional
21:04jobs dream of. And so you got to be honest with yourself about how much, how much you value that,
21:09because it can be something that you take for granted after a while. And so once you get an
21:15assessment of that stuckness, you can figure out what are my options from here. And if you have
21:21many options for alternatives and so forth, then you have more options for how to deal with these
21:29feelings that you're having. If you don't have many options, then resilience may be the only path
21:36forward. And it's best putting this out of mind for now while taking care of your own well-being,
21:41but charging ahead.
21:42Dr. Anthony Klotz, really great advice. The book is called Jolted, Why We Quit, When to Stay,
21:47and Why It Matters. Can you give me a quick breakdown of what the book is and who should
21:52pick it up?
21:53Yeah. So the book is, the book Jolted is about, well, jolts. These moments in our careers where
21:59an event, it could be in our personal life, in our professional life, it could be a big or small
22:03event,
22:03just catches us off guard, makes us stop and rethink our relationship with work and puts us
22:10in this sort of important liminal moment where we decide whether we should go or stay. Lots of the
22:17time people stay when they should have left or left when they should have stayed. And so it's about
22:21navigating this moment. So in the book, I talk readers through the six different types of jolts
22:26that you'll experience in your life, kind of where they're hiding in your life and career so that you can
22:31recognize them and then go through a fairly sensible process to say, what's the right outcome
22:37here? Do I need to do nothing? Should I speak up and try to change my current role? Should I
22:43lean back
22:44for a while and kind of protect my well-being and then re-engage later? Or is it time to
22:50walk away?
22:51And I also get into, if it is time to walk away, what's the right way to do it? How
22:55to resign in a way
22:57that sets you up for future success? And then in the last part, and this is relevant to entrepreneurs
23:03for sure, is the reality is, is we are often audiences to the jolts that are happening in the
23:09lives of those around us. Our family members, our employees for sure. And we can make, we can help
23:17people navigate that jolt process better, especially if we're in a leadership position. So the last part
23:23sort of turns the lens and say, and says, you know, by, by understanding jolts, we can also make
23:28other people's careers and lives, their path to the good life smoother and better.
23:33Sounds so interesting. Well, if you are feeling jolted, now, you know, the book to get for you,
23:38Anthony Klotz, thank you so much for joining us.
23:40My pleasure.
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