Why Most Business Owners Quit Right Before Their Breakthrough

What if the moment you most want to quit is the moment you're actually closest to a breakthrough?

In this solo episode, Emma Mills delivers one of her most personal messages, a direct, honest conversation for any business owner who's wondering if they should keep going.

Drawing on her own near-quit moment in 2019 (revenue stuck at £390,000, burnout setting in), and stories from James Dyson, Colonel Sanders, Mr. Beast, Airbnb, and podcaster Sammy Ard King, Emma unpacks why success so rarely looks like what we expect and why the business owners who make it are simply the ones who didn't stop.

The hockey stick growth curve is real. The underground bamboo phase is real. And if you're in it right now, this episode is for you.

💡 What you'll take away:
• Why consistent effort almost always precedes breakthrough and how to spot which phase you're in
• The "encouragement folder" technique for staying motivated through the hardest stretches
• Real numbers that put your timeline in perspective (5,126 prototypes, 1,065 rejections, 5 years of near-zero views)
• Emma's own story: from £390K stagnation to seven figures in 18 months

🎧 Hit play if you need a reminder to keep going because the breakthrough might be closer than you think.

Transcript

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This podcast episode is the message you're gonna need to hear today if you are for even a moment thinking about stopping the thing that you are doing, whether you've been in it for a week, a month, a year, three years, five years, if you are consistently in a thing, whether it's your business, social media, um, getting better at a skill or a hobby, whatever it might be, and you are even for a moment thinking, oh my god, when am I gonna get any better at this? When are the results gonna show up? When am I gonna go viral on TikTok? When am I going to have a podcast that's in the top 15 entrepreneurship? Might be talking about a friend, might be talking about myself on that one. Um if you are thinking for even a moment, but when does it happen? Today's episode is for you. It's a quickie. Um, it comes straight from my own heart and brain because it is something that I definitely have to really um coach myself on. Um, I'm very aware that as business owners, we love the journey, but also set a lot of made-up and false deadlines and goals and comparisons with other people's journeys on ourselves. And it was most reflective for me this whole concept of how long does it actually take to get somewhere? How long is considered the right amount of time to get to seven figures, to go viral, to create the business you want? Do we ever get to that point when we go, oh, we've created the business we want? And in 2019 at my PA, um, it was a challenging year for me. It was not my favourite year in business. Looking back now, I can see all the reasons why we had people in wrong seats. My energy, I was probably quite burnt out, so I just wasn't doing the right things. And we stayed at around about 390,000 profit. Uh sorry, I wish. We stayed at around about 390,000 revenue that year. Um, we very stagnant. It was a lot of work and effort for hardly any reward. Um I didn't get, I didn't have the rhythmic acquisition of clients on the go. Um, I specifically remember at the beginning of that year losing a client and one of our teams saying, Okay, well, I've got space now to take somebody else on, and me saying, Well, I don't have anybody queued up to come on. So, and so just like the whole year was very like scarcity mindset for me. Why am I doing this? And at this point, I had been in business for 11 years. So for me, that year, I mean, I a bit burnt out, but also just a bit like, oh my god, like, is it gonna be like this for the rest of like is this where I get to? Is this where my journey ends at 400k? And 400k is amazing, also. I totally know that it's not it's I'd set up my own boundaries in my head of I wanted to really do seven figures, and it honestly now looking back, it was more a Emma needs to prove to herself that she can do it than anything else, to be honest. Um, but that year I wasn't even particularly enjoying it, you know. And 18 months later, so at the end of that year, I remember just like it was ready for Christmas, ready for the break, definitely thinking, and I particularly think around that Christmas time I'd said to myself, right, I'm gonna give it another six months and see what happens. Well, lo and behold, in the next six months, COVID raised its head. I actually had an offer to buy my business, even though everything I've just said, I had an offer to buy my business just after Christmas because this particular business wanted me to go and work in their business to grow a virtual PA business inside it because it didn't exist and they wanted to do that. Um, but so that happened. Uh didn't do that because I was like, I still had stuff to prove, and COVID came along, and then COVID kind of decimated part of my customer base for about three or four months, and then it came back stronger than ever, quicker than ever. That rhythmic acquisition of clients had solved itself because I then had the time in COVID to do more marketing, show up, do more video. I was doing webinars. Why don't I do webinars anymore? Anyway, um, I actually mental notes myself, think about webinars. Um, but literally 18 months from the end of 2019, my PA was on its way to seven figures, and by the end of the year, had done seven figures. And so it when I allow myself to sit down and properly think about my journey, reflect on things, that lesson is one of the biggest lessons I've ever had in that everything is always changeable, it's always possible to improve it, and when it feels at the darkest, it's I think almost always closest to the success, to the winning, to whatever that is to you. And I and I I mean, in my mindset, a lot of why I was unhappy in 29 was self-inflicted in a way in that I didn't think I was where I should have been, whatever that is, but it was all stuff I'd completely made up in my head because I'm comparing myself to others, because I've got this chip on my shoulder at this point to go, every should be able to generate a million-pound business. I don't that I do know from speaking to lots of other people that run masterminds and coaches that Seven Fingers is is like um it's like a magnet to business owners. Like that's the thing they want to be able to do that. I guess because not a lot of business owners actually get to that point, but anyway, that's another topic. But yeah, so this um this this journey that I was on of out I want to quit, I want to quit, but then actually completely flipping my business around is one of the biggest learnings I've had. And and it's just a massive contradiction because as business owners, we love the journey, we love the chase, we love the new lead coming in, we love the client, you know, the new client happening, the the the meeting on Friday that's a potential big opportunity and what's gonna come from it. I think we love the journey and we get addicted to it, but I think a lot of us also have a real contradiction with the journey that we put pressure on ourselves to go, but it needs to be quicker than this, but when am I gonna hit that? Or when am I gonna do this? Or when am I gonna get the results? And so we set these timelines in our heads, and then if we're not doing it, we consider ourselves failing and that the thing isn't happening fast enough when there is no manual on how fast anything is meant to happen. Like that is the complete irony that I tell myself all the time, like all of this, Emma, this kind of this isn't good enough, this isn't happening fast enough, fast enough, is completely made up in my head. And I find the pattern is everywhere. I'm not just talking about revenue figures here, whether it's like for us, we spending a lot of time and attention on creation, um, on being a creator, on content, on putting stuff out into the world. Um, Crispin joined us in January, amazing edition. We're now showing up, he's our full-time video and content creator, we're showing up daily online, we are putting at le a minimum at the moment of a post out per day. And of course, Emma's head goes too, but but how quickly is it until we get to this number of followers or this number of likes, or what does this mean, or when are we going to get more engagement, or you put all the effort into this really perfectly crafted reel and it does nothing, and then I'll kind of film something on the way home off the cuff, and it's like got all the engagement. Um, yesterday I interviewed an amazing podcast guest who is going to be on in about four weeks' time, Sam Sammy Ellard King, and he is a financial content creator, he helps the UK manage their money better. Um, and he had the most amazing analogy. He's been growing a podcast for the past five years, and he said to me that about a hundred times he must have thought, do you know what? I'm really gonna have to stop this now because it's a lot of time, it's a lot of energy, doesn't feel like anything's happening with it. You know, my my follow-up my audience has stagnated, nothing's really happening. And then last year, so he's been doing it for five years now. Last year in the fifth year, he accumulated over one year half a million downloads. Now, I if you know about podcasting or you don't, that is considered very good in the podcasting world. But it was the previous four years of consistently putting out a thing that didn't feel that good, or just doing it anyway, or getting better, and just consistently showing up, and the marginal gains of one by one got him to then having amazing podcast sponsors to to growing his audience, to growing his reach, and he had the most brilliant saying, which was that for him, like growing the podcast, growing his audience, he's got around about 250,000 followers on Insta. It's felt like chipping away at a boulder, like a massive boulder with a toothpick. And I totally get it because you don't when you're constantly like chipping away at that, you don't see anything particularly change until you do it consistently and long enough. And then the next minute you've got half a million downloads on your podcast, or you've got one of the biggest banks sponsoring your podcast, like these things kind of take a long time consistently and then change overnight. Only three weeks ago have I had the same experience, so this is now a much concentrate, much more concentrated period of time. Um I had a I had a mentoring session with my mentor, Nigel Bottrell, and he was like, Emma, you really need to get rhythmic meta ads happening in your business. I know it can work, I know it's gonna be fantastic for you. It's gonna bring in a lead flow you don't have at the moment. And he's like, I really think you should get informed and teach it yourself so you understand it. You should get someone else at some point to do this, but right now I think you should properly understand it so you can create better content, the ads, the creative, like once you understand it, you'll get into it. Well, starting a brand new thing from scratch, I think. I mean, it's not like I went into Facebook ads going, I really want to be an expert, but I'm like, no, I'm down for this. Nigel said it's the right thing, I'm gonna try it. And Nigel has got a really brilliant online course to teach Facebook ads. Well, I spent Saturday, um, my nights sat there watching all of these videos about pixels and audiences, and at the time when I'm watching all these videos, I'm like, I don't feel like I'm gonna be able to do this, I don't know what I'm doing. Um, this feels like I'm gonna waste money and time, and it's all gonna be very frustrating forever. So I spent a lot of time watching about the theory behind it, how to create, craft, post, publish, test, split, everything about ads. So I did this over the course of seven days, completely consumed it all, um crammed, as the word is when you're revising, crammed it all in in a week, set my first ad live a week later. Five days in, again, Emma's like, okay, five days in, I haven't had a click, I haven't had a call, I haven't, and I'm just aware that we as business owners very easily set these deadlines to go, but but when is it happening? When is it happening? And lo and behold, Nigel was totally right because on day seven of my Facebook ad live experience, a discovery call was booked in, and now I'm like, we're off to the races. Now I start to feel more confident. And I think it's that the part of the journey is that when you consistently do the things, one little thing is gonna pop up, whether it's a comment from someone that the video you put out was really helpful, whether it's a discovery call being booked in, whether it's just a member of the family going, oh, fair place, I didn't know you were doing that. Like, or whether it's over the 18 years of growing and running a business that you I think we owe it to ourselves to pull and record all of the little signals and things that pop up to go keep going. I I think I've mentioned this before on my podcast, but in my um photo folder on my phone, I have a folder called encouragement. And if ever I get a reply to an email, a comment online, good ones this is, I do get some bad ones too, but you know, whether it's a good comment, a reply to an email, something from a team member, just anything that's like, oh, do you know what? I should be more grateful. Like, that's come across my desk that somebody said that, and I screenshot it and save it so that in those moments where you're like, oh my god, have I got the patience to do this? Do I know what I'm doing? I will just have a little look and go, Yeah, come on and like get a grip. You know, you never know who's watching, you never know what's gonna pop up next. That's the amazing thing about growing and running a business. The inquiry that pops in through the website or the email that comes in that's like the next opportunity, the next exciting thing, the next thing you weren't expecting. I think we all need those little encouragement folders just to go and like, yeah, I'm on the right path. There is good stuff happening. If we don't document it, it's really, really easy to forget. So rather than having to potentially journal or diarise or write all these things down, I think just having a really good encouragement foam folder is one of the best things you can do just for those moments of like, yep, yeah, just bringing myself back to reality that there's loads of good shit happening in my business. And like just to pull it out a little bit wider out of the my PA SME business world, there are so many examples of this happening that people will have felt. I talked about my 2019 experience, people will have had way worse experiences. Like, did you know that James Dyson had 5,126 failed Hoover prototypes before 5127 clicked and Dyson was born? Like, that's how many iterations he'd been through. KFC Colonel Sanders, he had 1,065 rejections before he got the yes and to put the charity on the cake. The guy was 65. Now I know you might be listening to this, going, yeah, but Emma, I don't want to wait till 65 till I get my yes or I get my payout or I get my thing or I get whatever I consider success to me. But the thing is, we don't ever know when that hockey stick growth or is gonna fly. We just need to keep consistent. As in Colonel Sanders turned up 1065 times, still put forward his idea, his recipe, his secret, is it secret sauce, secret spice mix? And then it was like, yeah, this is happening, and his consistency paid off. And if you're like Emma, give me an example of somebody that is not 65 years old. Mr. Beast, Mr. Beast was posting videos for five years until the hockey stick happened. And when you if you're thinking, what the hell is she talking about? There is a hockey stick growth curve, which is it's so muted the graph, like it consistently stays stagnant until all of the marginal gains have compounded and growth just shoots off like a hockey stick. Like Mr. Beast was posting videos for five years with barely any views. He is now the biggest creator on YouTube. Never mind his YouTube, Netflix, products. Like five years, he consistently now. Don't get me wrong, he was five years consistently showing up a lot, but it didn't happen overnight for him. Airbnb, whether you love them or not, the founders were selling cereal boxes to survive to make this idea happen. They are now a$75 billion company. And if you're like Emma,$75 billion, Airbnb, I can't connect with it. If we bring it down a level, the average podcast gets fewer than a hundred listeners in total for the first like 18 months to two years. It's only after that consistent point that some sexy growth stuff starts to happen. Like for me, it happens in almost every single thing you can learn, try, grow, create. It's not a one-year thing, a two-year thing, a three-year thing. Like, there is no such thing as an overnight success. These things are consistency. Everybody online now that will, you know, Alex Hormosy, 10 years he's now been in this. It's only been in the past 12. I think he started his social profile about five years ago. It's only in the past 12 months that he has hockey sticks. Gary V. I mean Gary V was at Wine Library since was 2006, 2007. It was only really like 2016, 2017, he started to daily blog, but that was because his consistency was so prolific and so there was so much volume in it, like Alex Holmose's quote, which is make it unreasonable, like do so much work that it's unreasonable that you won't succeed. And I think that's just I just wanted today's episode to be about if you're in the middle of a business, a project, your socials, a podcast, something creative. I have seen so honestly, I have seen about three people in the last week put something on social media that has said, Oh, do you remember this? Then they'll flash up a um old cover of a podcast that they used to have. And it's either in the top 10 or the top 20, or it was doing really well, they had all these sexy guests on it. I've literally seen about three people do this in the last week and go, Oh, remember this? Why did I start stop doing that? Oh, I'm I think I'm gonna restart my podcast. I would be gutted if I was them. Like, so many people stop things just as it's getting good, just as like they've put two or three years and there's like, oh well, nothing's really happening with it. Consistency every single day, like you have to make it unreasonable that you are not going to succeed. Like, there's so much consistency work and effort going into this particular thing. It's just, it's just a it's just a foregone conclusion. At some point, this thing is gonna fly. And one of the best examples I've found when I was researching this, like I was researching what like give me examples of things that consistently need the reps, and then you see the growth, like this hockey stick growth. And Mother Nature has the best example. So bamboo grows underground for five years, like all the stuff's happening under the ground, you can't see anything, you don't even see any little green shoots, you don't see anything popping through for five years. It grows underground, and then within six weeks it shoots up 10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet, however tall bamboo grows. But that happens in like six weeks for most of its life, it's just been doing the reps, putting out the posts, putting out the podcast episodes, sending the emails, consistently doing the thing, and then in six weeks, everything happens for it. And I just think it's the best example for business owners. I'm recording this, and tomorrow is Good Friday, we're gonna have a few days off for Easter, and I just I just want this to be a really just a short, sharp reminder for anyone that's just thinking, oh my god, when is this gonna happen? It's gonna happen. Just keep going. I thought about closing my business a lot in 2019. I am so glad I didn't. Sammy, who I interviewed yesterday, he's gonna be popping up into your ears in about four weeks' time, thought about closing his podcast a hundred times because it didn't feel like it was delivering anything to him. He now has an audience of 250,000 followers, downloads last year of half a million. He's growing a fintech app off the back of the audience on his podcast because they're all raving fans and they are now signing up as customers. I'm sure he's extremely glad that he didn't start the podcast. I'm sure that Colonel Sanders was really glad that he knocked on the 1010th door that said yes. You are so close right now. Don't stop. You none of us know exactly when that thing's gonna fly, but it's gonna happen, just don't stop. But the only way to find out when it is gonna happen is just to keep going. So I hope today's episode just makes you have a think about what is one thing that you're thinking about or have nearly quit that you're gonna give that you're gonna be like, nope, need to get back on it, stop complaining about it, do the reps, do the thing, it's gonna happen. So I would love for you to just think about what is one thing that you constantly think about, oh my god, should I still give this the energy? What's one thing you might have quit recently that you're like, nope, I need to keep doing the reps? What is that one thing you're gonna breathe back into life? You're just gonna consistently enjoy the process, do the thing because you know it's gonna, you know, you know it is going to turn out exactly how you want it to be. I hope this episode landed for you today. If it did, share it with somebody that you think would also benefit from it. And if you get a moment, liking and subscribing means the world to podcasts, and it does all the good stuff to get it further along the journey. Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you next week in an interview. See you then. Bye.