Zombie

What are you talking about?! Run! It's already dead! Photo by Daniel Hollister via Flickr

I’m never an advocate for quitting a project. Unless it’s already dead. Believe it or not, there are many zombie projects/businesses out there. Entrepreneurs are a tenacious lot, after all. They rarely know when to call a project dead. Often, they pour more and more money and time into a project even after they have exhausted every avenue possible to make it a success. There comes a time when you just have to let a project go.

Knowing when is a difficult thing, though. I can’t say exactly when the right time is. If you asked me, I would have to respond with some wise words from one of my management professors from Santa Clara University. When we tried to get a specific way to handle a hypothetical situation from Professor Moberg, he would all too often answer with, “It depends.”

And it does depend. I’ve learned that over the years. It depends on so many factors, such as:

  1. What is the potential payoff?
  2. How passionate are you about the project?
  3. Can you afford to go on?
  4. Do you have anything new that you can try that might help you to succeed?
  5. Are you just planning to keep on keeping on and hope against hope that something happens even though you have no reason to believe it will?

You have to contemplate these questions (among others) and decide on the best course of action. Thoughts which you have to put out of your head because they are counter productive are:

  1. But I’ve put so much money into the project.
  2. But I’ve spent so much time on the project.
  3. But what will people think about me if I quit?

None of these thoughts are helpful because as another of my professors, David Friedman, said (and it really stuck with me): “Sunk costs are sunk costs.” Continuing a failed project will not get back the time or money you put into it. If the project looks to you like it is highly unlikely to succeed, you might be better served ending the project and starting another instead. Caring about what others think…well, didn’t you ever listen to your parents? It doesn’t matter what other people think. And to be honest, people will probably think higher of you if you cut your losses and move onto another project that succeeds, anyway.

Besides, even if you do quit your project, it will not be a complete loss. At least not if you were paying attention during the experience and learned something. At the very least, you should have learned a few things that don’t work. Take note of those things that worked and those that didn’t work, learn from them and use that information in your next endeavor. Most successful entrepreneurs had failures along their paths to success. They learned from those failures and moved on. And so should you, if it comes to that.

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