This blog post was written by our friend, Pat Miller.
Pat Miller is the founder of the Small Business Owners Community and a strategic coach for solopreneurs who are tired of surviving their business and ready to lead it with clarity and conviction. A former broadcaster turned business builder, Pat helps entrepreneurs break free from burnout by confronting the real issues holding them back, starting with charging too little. His work centers on quitting the noise: the people pleasing, the overdelivering, the fear-driven hustle, and focusing instead on the actions that drive profit, purpose, and personal growth. With a mix of empathy and tough truth, Pat guides business owners to reclaim their time, raise their rates, and rebuild a business that feels aligned, impactful, and worth the effort. His trademarked mantra, Don’t Grow It Alone®, has become a rallying cry for the entrepreneurial misfits who have found their place among the business-obsessed inside the SBOC.
Small business owners often get stuck because we add obligation after obligation to other people and then wake up one day with a calendar full of other people’s priorities.
To grow to the next chapter of your business you need to do something we (generally) are bad at—quit. Oh, we’ll stick with it through thick and thin, but right now we need to quit the things that are holding us back.
I call it "strategic quitting," and it's not a massive overhaul, but it is an intentional step away from time wasters, “nice to haves,” and bad habits that don’t serve the business. This isn’t motivation, it’s a one way train to end productivity theater.
Here’s your step by step guide:
Step one is awareness. You have to critically review and note every moment where you spend your time. Your calendar, your to-do lists, business meetings, late night email jams, all of it. You can’t solve this problem until you know for sure how out of control it’s become.
Step two is to separate activity from impact. This is where a lot of owners get trapped. You stay busy because it feels responsible, and you can always justify it. But busyness is not the goal. The goal is leverage, revenue, and freedom. You are building a business so you get your time back, not a machine that eats your life. If a task disappeared tomorrow, would the business actually suffer, or would you simply feel uncomfortable because you are used to doing it? If not, flag it for step three.
Step three is to quit everything that is wasting your time. This is a place where you need to be selfish and aggressive. Every single place that is distracting you, taking away from your goals, and not building the business has to go. Once you notice them, you'll begin to quit obligations you resent. You'll quit meetings that exist out of habit, not for business-building reasons. And you'll quit over-serving clients that aren't paying you enough to be as involved as you are. This is the hardest step because you will try to justify all of the activities that are on your calendar. Assume it has to go unless it can prove to you that it must stay.
Step four is to defend your newly open space. You may feel guilty because you canceled a long-time meeting or left an organization that was no longer serving you. But you're out for your benefit and your business's growth.
You’ll quickly need to defend all of the new space that you have available and put it to use to build the business. The easiest way to do that is to block out the time that you've opened up. Make a meeting with yourself and mark yourself as busy so no one can get in on that time. This should be several hours each week that have now surfaced for you to do your job.
Strategic quitting is the opposite of giving up. It is how you stop living “productivity theater” and start building something that actually supports your life.
Strategic Quitting is the first step of the Fridays Off Theory that helps entrepreneurs build the freedom of time and money they deserve. Learn more about Fridays Off and our peer group practicing the habits at smallbusinesscommunity.com
