I'm giving up. Maybe you should too.

Auto-generated from the video, lightly formatted. Expect a few typos.

I'm giving up. I'm done. And I want to be honest with you about why, because I've never really said this stuff on camera before. I'm honestly tired. I'm tired of pouring hours into something, watching it go nowhere.

I'm tired of doing everything right and still just getting punished for it anyways. And I'm tired of the people closest to me in my business just turning around and taking advantage of it. I'm tired of platforms that I don't control deciding on whether my business lives or dies on any given Tuesday. And honestly, the worst part isn't even the losses. The worst part is that literally nobody sees them.

Everybody sees the wins, but nobody sees the nights where I'm staring at the ceiling doing math in my head, wondering if I'm just delusional, wondering if the people who told me to go get a normal job were right the whole time. Cuz maybe they were, honestly. Maybe I've been forcing something that was never meant to work in the first place. And I'm I'm thinking that the smart move is just for me to just stop, just quit. Maybe coast, just take the easy road, enjoy some monthly recurring revenue, and just let the business slowly fade away to nothing.

And nobody would blame me, you probably wouldn't blame me. I could just quietly wind down, and most people wouldn't even notice. And you know what? It's honestly a relief just saying that out loud. Now, those are the thoughts that most successful entrepreneurs go through dozens of times in their career.

Dozens. And if it's not obvious already, I'm not personally giving up on my business. I love you guys way too much. But these are thoughts that I've personally struggled with as an entrepreneur, just like you might be right now. The successful entrepreneurs aren't the ones who never think about this stuff.

They're the ones who think it, feel it fully, and then push it to the side and get back to the mission anyway. That's the whole separation. And if those thoughts hit a little bit too close right now, and you're thinking of giving up, or you've hit a wall in your business, or you're new to the game and just sick of trying things over and over again with no positive results in sight, then this video is for you. This is for the version of you that's sitting there right now wondering if it is time to quit. And I want to talk to that person for a bit.

Just give me a few minutes. My name is Mitch, and from the outside, I've made it seem like my business has been all sunshine and rainbows over the past year and a half. I've grown my business from $0 to almost a million dollar annual run rate in just over a year. And there were four distinct times that I've come so close to quitting. But what I want to talk to you about is how each of those moments actually became catalysts that brought me to a new level.

And I don't mean that metaphorically, but I mean I was literally on a new level after these moments. These four moments that I thought about quitting. The moments where you most want to quit are almost never random. It's like the universe like runs some test with entrepreneurs. It gets hard, then it gets harder, and it's basically asking you one question.

Are you worthy of reaching the next level? And most people answer no to that. Not with their words, but with their actions. They quit right at the doorstep as soon as their mind tells them to. Let me tell you what I mean, because I'm not saying this from some mountain top.

I'm saying it from the middle of it. I'm experiencing it right now, and I'll talk about that in a sec. But a while back, somebody inside of my own community started reaching out to my members one by one trying to convince them to leave and join their community instead. My community, my business, it's everything that I've poured into, all the people I've poured into, and I was pissed. Like genuinely pissed.

So pissed that I just wanted to give up. And I remember thinking, what's even the point of building something if this is what people are going to do with it? But here's the thing. I had a choice in that moment. I could act like a victim, or I could make my community so valuable that nobody would ever want to leave.

So that's what I did. I pushed harder, and I leveraged that anger to build something beautiful. That exact moment led to me building a platform called Our Local Spotlight, which has served hundreds of our members now. I built an entire platform that every one of my members got access to. This led to more social proof for my members and more sales for them.

This was so much more value than that other community could have ever dreamt of offering. And needless to say, as a side effect, my income went up dramatically as a result. That was the test. Was I worthy of that next level? Luckily that time, I passed.

I wanted to quit, but instead I pushed even harder than I should have, even harder than most people would have, and therefore I reached that next level. But the tests literally never stop. They never stop. Because about half a year later, it happened again. And this time it cut so much deeper.

And some of you guys might remember this one. Somebody in our group, somebody I had deep trust in, somebody I actually given access to my code base at one point for some work, they took advantage of that trust. They built a copy and paste version of Our Local Spotlight. Pretty much a clone just with a little bit of a different makeup on. And then they started reaching out to every single partner on my platform asking them to leave my platform and join theirs.

And on the surface, their model looked better. It was a free tool that offered pretty much the same thing that mine did. The only thing was different was that they charged higher transaction fees. So, imagine that. Betrayed by someone you trusted, cloned and undercut all at the same time.

I wanted to sit in the corner and forget that the whole thing existed. For a bit, I honestly didn't know what to do, genuinely. It made me want to quit this business entirely. And honestly, I could have chosen the easy route and just undercut myself to match their price, their free price. And maybe that would have saved my business and I could have figured it out.

But then that same question showed up again, and this time I was able to identify it because I had felt it before. Is this a test? Am I worthy of reaching the next level? So, instead of conceding, I went and built the single proudest product I think I've ever created, a virtual postcards update on Our Local Spotlight, the same exact platform that I built after the first test. Something that traitor could never replace.

It helped our members' businesses compound instead of growing linearly. And once again, the exact same pattern played out. More value for my people, another massive jump in income for me. So, the thing that was supposed to break me became the reason that I leveled up. You starting to see the pattern?

And at this point, I was two for two. But here's the thing, I'm not telling you this so you think I've got it all figured out because I don't. Because test number three showed up not long after. My organic content started failing, and I don't mean it dipped like a little bit, I mean it fell off a cliff. So, like my Instagram, TikTok accounts, all the algorithms felt like they were personally out to get me.

I'd get like 50 views here, 60 views there. You you can't grow a business on 60 views. And it was aggravating in a way that is very hard to explain unless you've lived it personally. I felt completely out of control of my own business. I was pouring hours into content that basically nobody sees, and then that voice showed up again, telling myself to just stop trying to grow.

Just let it be what it is. And there were genuinely days where I considered doing exactly that. But by now I knew the pattern. I was already two for two, remember? So instead of listening to that voice, I went deeper.

I decided to learn Meta Ads completely from scratch. And let me tell you, the learning curve was massive. I spent so much time on it, testing, failing, burning very large sums of money, and then right when I finally started getting my footing, Meta dropped a brand new update that basically broke every single concept I had just learned. They completely changed how their ads worked. So everything I had spent months learning basically got thrown in the trash.

So I had to learn it all over again from scratch. So again, my ads struggled. I was literally burning money with no guarantee that it would ever work. And I wanted to quit so many times during that stretch, but I pushed through it. I dove even deeper, honestly.

And then it happened. Meta Ads just started printing. I finally had real growth, and I was more optimistic about my business than I had been in months. And that, my friends, was another level up. Test number three, passed.

So I was three for three now. And honestly, at that point, I thought I would have just kept hitting level up after level up after level up. Because I mean, if you think about it, once your ads start working really well, shouldn't you just be able to scale them up and therefore scale your business up to infinity? Well, I was very wrong. Because that brings me to test number four, which is not a story I'm telling you from the past.

Test number four is actually the test I'm living right now as I film this video. It's kind of the reason I'm filming this video. Because just one month after my ads started finally working, after many months of learning and burning cash, it finally started paying off, and then my Meta Ads account got banned. Completely banned. And Meta, being the absolute mess of a company that it is currently, couldn't even articulate a reason why.

If you've been anywhere in the ads world, you already know this story. Their AI systems ban accounts left and right. There's essentially no way to reach a real human, and perfectly legitimate businesses get shut off overnight with zero explanation. And that's where I'm standing right now. And I'll be honest with you about what that voice in my head is saying, because it's very loud right now.

It's saying to quit running ads altogether. It's saying maybe this business just isn't meant to scale. Maybe I should just sit on what I've built, enjoy it, and stop trying to force growth that just keeps getting ripped away from me. Maybe I should just coast, let it be a lifestyle business. And coasting sounds genuinely nice right now.

I won't pretend that it doesn't. But at this point in time, I've learned some lessons along the way. So, I've asked myself the question, is this a test? Am I worthy of reaching the next level? And here's what's different this time.

The first test, I didn't know this was a test. The second time I recognized it because I felt it before. And then the third test, I knew what I needed to do. But this time, I'm positive. I'm absolutely positive that this is a test because every single time this feeling has shown up, every single time I wanted to quit this badly, a brand new level was sitting right on the other side of it.

Every single time. I just needed to figure it out. So, no, I'm not quitting ads. I'm not going to coast. I'm going to learn YouTube ads now.

A whole new platform, a whole new learning curve, all over again from scratch. But I'm going to go all in, and I'm not going to quit until I get them figured out. And when I do figure them out, I'm positive it will take me to a whole new level again because the pattern repeats itself. And then there's going to be another roadblock after that because the pattern repeats itself. And I'm not going to quit that either because that is literally the whole game that I've learned.

That's how you keep leveling up, and that's how I've managed to level up so aggressively over the past year. And now let me bring this back to you because this video was never really about me. If you are an entrepreneur right now, any kind of entrepreneur, and you're in one of those seasons where everything feels like it's working against you, I need you to hear this. Those thoughts in your head telling you to quit are not proof that you're failing. They're proof that you are right at the door.

The pain you're feeling right now is the price of admission to the next level. And most people refuse to pay that price. That's literally why the next level isn't as crowded as the level you're currently in. So, the difference between people who make it and the people who don't isn't talent, luck, or connections, is who can feel everything I described at the start of this video and keep moving anyway. You're totally allowed to feel like quitting.

I feel it constantly. You just saw me feel it. I'm feeling it right now still. But, don't you dare obey that feeling if you ever want to make it to the next level. Your breakthrough might be sitting on the other side of that exact wall you're staring at right now.

Leave a comment below and tell me what your business is and what wall you're about to go push through right now. Think of it as like a written promise to yourself that you will not obey those thoughts telling you to quit. I'll read and respond to everyone because I'm dying to see you make it to the next level, whatever level you're currently at. I know what it's like to feel like nobody sees the battles you go through. Just trust me.

Just keep going. The test means you're