This is one of my all-time favorite tweets:

It immediately resonated with me, because until I went freelance, I turned quitting jobs into an art form.

I was never fired or let go when I was a part of the corporate workforce. I quit every job I ever had.

My first job, when I was a teenager, was at a toy store in the small city where I grew up. It was a good job, but the manager was a real a***hole.

Ideal personality for a toy store, no? 🙄

I quit that job after he berated me about not offering a customer a bag. He was so cruel, he made me cry. And in the basement of that toy shop, I came up with a new rule for myself:

“You cry, you quit.”

Fortunately, I eventually figured out how to know when it was time to quit before I burst into tears.

With each job, I became more vigilant. Each time I was burned by a job, I learned what red flags to watch out for the next time.

In my experience, life doesn’t usually give us crystal-clear, perfect signals that it’s time to quit.

Often, the revelation creeps up on us slowly, until one day we are sitting on the floor sobbing among a pile of teddy bears (so to speak).

Quitting time can sneak up on us because usually, we want to prevent it.

If we’ve already invested time into something, we want it to work out. Even if the red flags have been flying for a long time.

We will find ways to justify not quitting, even if we are feeling miserable and complaining to anyone who will listen.

Take my last crappy boss, the one that came more than a decade after my toy-store boss.

This was at a marketing agency, and my boss was about ten years older than me and a nice guy.

Also, he was terrible at his job.

He hardly did any work, he hired incompetent people, and he was a piss-poor communicator with the higher-ups.

But he’s such a nice guy… I’d tell myself, when the thoughts of quitting crept in. Or:

My colleagues will be screwed if I quit.

What if I can’t find a better job?

Oh god, I’ll have to update my resume and my LinkedIn…

And on and on, until I’d convinced myself to stay another week, another month, another year.

(I did this with more than one relationship too, but we won’t get into that. 💔)

When I struck out as a freelancer, I knew I’d never have to struggle through that awkward quitting period again.

But recently, with everything going on in the SEO industry, the urge to quit snuck up on me once again.

I wrote about this in my last email, but between the sudden arrival of AI and the rollercoaster ride of algorithm updates, I began to question whether I should stay in the SEO industry.

I took to Reddit to voice my concern, to gauge where other SEO professionals were with all this mess.

I found out very quickly that I wasn’t alone. Here are some of the replies I received:

Reading these comments, there’s a very common theme: Ambivalence. All of us, myself included at the time, felt uncertain.

Why?

Because things ARE uncertain. In SEO, in our world in general, things are really weird and confusing.

There is a shift happening, and we can all feel it, and it is damn uncomfortable because we don’t know where it’s taking us. Even the people who caused all this chaos—the folks at Google and OpenAI—don’t know where this is taking us.

And that’s scary. So scary, it makes me want to cry.

And you know my rule. You cry, you quit.

But.

You’ll note that those Reddit comments are two months old. I’ve had lots of time to think and reflect since then.

And I’ve decided that no, I’m not going to quit SEO.

Because I don’t think SEO is over.

In fact, right now, at this very moment, I think there are some primo opportunities in SEO.

But Liam, you might be thinking, how can you say there’s opportunity when you yourself were thinking about quitting two months ago?

For starters, I sat with my fear, and that helped me get over it. I did plenty of meditating and consulting with friends, and gave myself some time to…

Breathe deeply…

Stop worrying….

And take some of the pressure off myself.

And when I really began to think about it, I realized all this stuff wasn’t so scary.

Confusing? Yes. Uncertain? Definitely.

But Google’s sloppy algorithm updates and the impending roll-out of SGE don’t signal the end of search.

It’s a new era of search, one that comes with big question marks and learning curves.

And if it’s scary and confusing for people like us, think about how frightening it is for all the business owners who have invested so much time, energy, and money into SEO.

They don’t want to quit now.

With all the nebulous unknowables, they need help more than ever.

They need people who aren’t afraid to stare into the dark clouds and thick mist and try to untangle things as best they can.

If you want to be one of those freelancers who can bravely face the unknown, I hope you’ll join me at my upcoming Webinar with Serpstat, next Tuesday, February 13th, at 1pm EST.

I'll be running through:

📊 The algorithm changes that actually matter

🤖 My predictions about where AI search is headed

👨‍⚖️ Insights on the major search-related court cases happening this year

🧘How to keep your head in all this chaos, and use it to get more clients

Register for Free Webinar

I hope you’ll join me and bring your 🔥 questions.

See you there.

- Liam