5 Months After 'Quitting' My Company: Any Regrets?

A follow up to The Joy of Hitting Pause and Scaling Down.

Nearly five months ago, the morning of April 26th, 2023 I sat in my bathtub on a Wednesday morning when I should have been at my computer working out how to pivot on a launch that didn’t go as we planned.

Instead, I had the thought I could not put back in it’s box. It was this, “I can’t keep pretending to be who I was ten years ago. I don't want to keep doing this”.

That day and the five that followed were the hardest. ?And then it got easier. Profoundly and rapidly easier.

The entrepreneur brain is not one that is trained to shut off.

For five days I weighed various options—ways to keep my business going that could also work for me, and most of all, for my team. I had dozens of deep conversations with friends and peers.

I felt trapped and that is the exact opposite of why I worked as hard as I had for the previous fifteen years to build this.

The challenge was that I wasn’t interested in following the path that seems to be the thing to do these days – I was done operating my business but I had no interest in hiring a CEO, I didn’t want to sell all or any part of what I’d built. I just wanted to stop. To quit. No brokers, no accountants, no lawyers, no buy outs, no cashing in.

The only thing that felt absolutely certain was that it was time to reduce the weight resting on my shoulders and go deeper into levelling up my quality of life factors.

My goal from the outset of my business, one that was started after healing from a health crisis, was freedom. I wanted to build a business that was joyful, impactful, creative, and that afforded me a quality of life that would support my health and happiness, and also allow me enough financial rewards that I could retire early.

As I wrote the above this, I have to wonder what on earth I had been thinking with such a tall order. The truth is that I did it. All of it. It was never easy, no. It did remain joyful, I was able to be exactly who I am with my team and publicly as a ‘brand’.

And then I quit.

The company was still profitable, we had a great previous year. That was part of the challenge. I had actually first intended to quit a year prior but for all the reasons we don’t quit early, I kept going. Who would I be without this? I could still do more, I was leaving too much on the table. The business is still incredibly successful. There is more money that can be made. There are more people who could benefit...

Here I find myself, five months later nearing the other side of what has been one of the biggest and despite my intention to retire early, one of the most surprising pivots of my life. I would go so far as to liken the near immediate mindset shift as on par with bringing a human into the world, but the opposite. Where with a child you suddenly have something you think about night and day, quitting suddenly freed me from something I also thought about night and day.

Over the last few months there have been loads of decisions that needed to be made. I tested the waters with a few launches—trying out all the scaled back sales strategies that had been advised or requested over the years (ie. Instead of one large cohort of my primary online certification offer smaller cohorts, offer it evergreen, discount it, downsell after. ?For those interested, none worked particularly well at all). All of these efforts only confirmed my decision.

I also took stock of what I would happily love to continue doing and what I absolutely don’t want to do at all. I had boundaries around my time and energy before, now they’re 10x greater and it’s amazing.

I am finding new and relief-inducing ways to further simplify the operation I have for myself and my one gem of a team member. ?I have learned what is actually important to my community and what likely only really mattered to me. ?

I am working through what to call myself now—how to answer when someone asks, What do you do for work?

I give a different answer anytime I am asked, What’s next? Or even the assumption that I’m lost at sea right now with, Don’t worry, you’ll find that next thing quickly.

I simply laugh as I keep dabbling in work as I’m presented with others confusion, I thought you retired?.

I am not confused at all. I am not worried and I don’t remotely have my ego wrapped up in what was or what comes next.

I have been surprised by the response my decision has had on others. I didn't think anyone would care that much. Throughout the summer I have been having calls with people (while I walk in the park, never on zoom), about their desire to quit, or recent the decision (their own or a product of circumstance) and feelings of grief, regret or lost identity as the world shifts and how we all work is changing so much and for some, no longer fits.

Too many view this as failure for themselves. It is not.

And though in my period of grief I worried that I was letting people down, I too have shifted my view. I know that I ran a business that was successful beyond my wildest dreams on every metric that mattered to me. I accept this as a fact, because it is. ?Over the last 15 years, I learned how to run a company and lead a team in a way that is truly inclusive, engaged and connected.

I am not shy about bragging that from six person cooking classes around my kitchen table in Toronto I wrote two #1 bestselling books with a major publisher, was a regular expert on a national TV show, have been hosted on more than a hundred podcasts, had features in major media outlets and all those traditional metrics of success we load into our bios. ?

I take great joy in highlighting and celebrating the success in life and business of the more than 3,000 people who honoured me with their time, dedication and investment to become Culinary Nutrition Experts. Even more wild is the 500 plus who joined as Certified Instructors who are now teaching variations of my original classes now being shared in more than 40 countries around the world.

The reality is that though I am no longer actively working the way I was, scaling down now is in no way a measure of failure but quite the opposite.

Five months out, it feels profoundly empowered. I might even dare to say, it’s the thing I am most proud of because of what this business decision has done for my health, my presence with my family, my freedom to have more time to connect with friends, more time for my beloved hobbies and space and time to think and begin creating anew.

Do I have any lingering regrets about my decision to scale down fives months ago, effectively quitting the trajectory I was on? I do.

My one regret was not doing it eight months prior when I first felt the nudge that it was time.

What is next for me? I have loads of ideas but my commitment is to keep it small, meaningful and joyful, and do one thing at a time. Begin, dive deep, deliver, wrap up. Keep it simple.

MeghanTelpner.com and the Academy of Culinary Nutrition continue to operate and courses remain available. The current action step is amalgamating all offerings into one learning management platform, and amalgamating email lists from both sides of the business into one, and having one e-commerce process for all transactions. The next step will be bringing 14 years worth of content onto one domain. The scaling down and quitting experiment continues!