Just had breakfast with a friend of mine… Fellow entrepreneur with a lot of pressure on his shoulders. Millions of dollars at stake, dozens of people’s careers, and needless to say—lots of opportunity, lots of risk. We were talking about the true cost of certain projects, not just financial, but time, stress, pre-occupying our minds… And how some just aren’t worth it.    There have been times when we’ve called off projects with certain clients that have become too difficult to work with… clients that wanted us to be something we weren’t, clients that thought they could boss us around… and the amount of damage control I had to do with my team, talking them off the ledge day after day, just quickly becomes “not worth it.” It’s not worth the revenue, it’s not worth the portfolio piece, it’s not worth the profit.   The lesson here, very simply is: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.    When you’re starting out, whether it’s a new industry, new business, new relationship… It’s time to be flexible. You need the experience. You need to take any opportunity that comes your way. Be a sponge. Absorb as much as possible. Expose yourself to different personalities, different types of projects… Investigate. Kick the tires. See which kind of engagements feel right and which ones don’t. And begin the long, necessary path of refining. Winnowing away the types of projects that are always headaches; seeing nightmare clients from further and further in advance, and learn to steer clear from historically problematic things.    That’s how humans are designed. To learn from our experiences, and adapt. Our lives should be marked by continually pruning things out that don’t fit right anymore. Bob Goff quits something every Thursday.    I think far too many of us get sucked into simply adding, adding, adding, and never subtracting. If what you’re looking for in life is a bit more breathing room, a bit more bandwidth, a bit more space to stretch and get creative, then the game isn’t about addition… It’s about subtraction. And strategic subtraction can feel sooooo good.    Maybe a client that makes up 5% of your annual revenue takes up 10% of your time. And beyond that, the interactions are strained. It might time to say goodbye to that 5% of revenue, simultaneously freeing up 10% of your time. Now you have margin for a new client, or two or three, that aren’t such high-need.    It boils down to a conversation around what you define as success. If success is simply the dollars in the bank and you don’t care at all about the mental or emotional health of yourself or your team, then go for it. Accumulate as much as you can and steamroll everyone around you. See how long that lasts.    Success for me looks like working when I want, where I want, with the people I want to surround myself with, and preserving a high-earning potential. If any situation begins to threaten that, I work to dismantle that situation. If a client is demanding that we travel too much, or have too much meetings, or is just miserable to be around, we’re going to cut ties with them.    And this is where grace comes in, because we didn’t know it would be a bad situation from the kickoff of things. They didn’t know that either. So there’s typically a lot of open-handed discussions around the best way to end things. Sometimes it means refunding a portion of the project, sometimes it means finishing a few big deliverables and then wrapping things, sometimes it means having a big, uncomfortable conversation about ground-rules and how we need communication to be corrected. Again, if I’m refunding a client X amount of thousands of dollars, it’s worth MORE than that money to get that off our minds and out of our way.    When value dips below cost, it’s time to get rid of it. And yes, those two variables can be defined however you’d like. Maybe the value of having a big client with a national presence is worth the relational cost and taxing the team a bit. Maybe the value of knowing we’re serving an important non-profit will smooth over some frustrations that accumulate over the project. But these things need to be paid attention to. That’s all I’m saying…    Sometimes we get into situations that we feel stuck in, when we’re not actually stuck. The only thing keeping us stuck is a fear of confrontation or uncomfortable conversations. The famous quote from Socrates comes to mind: The unexamined life isn’t worth living.    If we’re not paying attention to our lives; the things that bring us life and the things that sap life from us, we’ll just float numbly through life, feeling as if we’re victims to our circumstances because of a bad decision or something out of our control. One of the most empowering things you can do for yourself is to speak-up about a situation that is slowly sucking the life out of you. It’s for freedom you’ve been set free, now make sure you STAY free. It’s so easy to get tangled up and feel stuck.    Strategic Subtraction. What in your life might need to go? Maybe it’s a project, a client, a relationship that’s long past healthy… You don’t need more, you might need less.    And don’t let a scarcity mentality creep in either… as if saying no to one thing means no new things will come along. The world is a big place, and lots of people would be thrilled to work with you, or be friends with you, or partner with you for the season ahead.    What if we all did fewer things with greater excellence? What if it wasn’t a game to see much we could accumulate and see how much money we can make, but rather to see how healthy and fulfilling and meaningful we could craft our lives to become?    Strategic Subtraction is definitely a part of that process. And I’d encourage you to look at some of the most frustrating areas of your career, work environment, etc. and really weight the cost of those things. Is the true cost (financial, emotional, physical toll) outweighing the value? Maybe it’s time for a hard conversation. There’s a whole episode about that, back in episode 6.    You’re not a victim, you’re not stuck, you don’t need to stay in a bad spot just because you agreed to a few weeks, months, years ago. Some things need to change trajectory mid-project for the health of everyone involved.    I love you guys. Make it a good day.