Most People Stay in a Role Too Long. This Global GTM Expert Knew When to Walk Away.
How do you walk away while you’re still winning?
Hey 👋 I’m Andrew. Welcome to Delivering Value - the newsletter and podcast where I share stories from SaaS leaders about the toughest moments of their careers, and explore how they turned them into success stories. You get the lessons - without the scars.
How do you know when it’s time to walk away?
That’s what this story is about.
How a high-performing growth leader made one of the hardest decisions in her career - before she had to.
has built an impressive Go-to Marketing Consulting business, worked with 800+ companies, and wrote the bestselling book The Go-To-Market Strategist. She’s a proven operator, a sharp thinker, and someone whose judgment you can trust.And in our conversation, she opened up about a decision that most people don’t talk about publicly: leaving while things still look good on the outside.
Because staying would’ve meant compromising her standards.
Presented by two of my favorite product-led SaaS products!
Navattic: Navattic just made it way easier to launch interactive product demos.
Their AI storyboard tool builds your demo for you, and Demo Centers let you showcase personalized flows that match each prospect’s brand - no designers needed.
Appcues: Want to level-up your product adoption chops, for free?
Their Product Adoption Academy is full of courses, templates, and examples to help step-up your game. My Value First Onboarding Playbook (which is in the Academy) outlines the 6-step playbook my team used to activate & engage hundreds of thousands of new accounts.
Most people wait too long.
They feel something shift, but convince themselves everything fine.
Sometimes that moment is sharp. Other times, it’s more gradual over time.
In Maya’s case, the company had just gone through a huge transition.
They raised a big round.
Shifted its ideal customer profile.
Changed their go-to-market motion.
On the surface, these aren’t terrible things.
And nothing was inherently broken. But she realized she didn’t believe in the new direction. And that mattered more than the title or the paycheck.
Most people ignore that early signal. But when you override your instincts, you slowly drift out of your zone of genius. Maya didn’t let that happen.
She listened to the signal, and acted.
From the very beginning, she was clear about what she wanted.
Smart teammates solving real problems.
A sense of purpose she could stand behind.
Work that made her obsessed with the mission.
That kind of intention creates a filter for every future choice. And when something no longer matches, you feel it deeply.
That filter that told her: “I’m not excited anymore. And more importantly: I can’t do my best work like this.”
Fear stops most people from leaving sooner
Fear of regret, fear of being wrong, fear of not being able to explain it to others.
(Not to mention fear of missing out on upside if you have equity.)
Maja felt all of that.
“My biggest fear is giving up too soon,” she said. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome, but I also don’t want to quit prematurely.”
She wasn’t second-guessing the facts, she was questioning herself. And that’s the hardest part, because it sounds like: What if I’m the problem?
This is the invisible weight that keeps people stuck.
They’re not waiting for more data, they’re waiting for certainty. But that certainty never comes.
Maya didn’t wait. She knew she needed to make a change.
“If I stay in something I don’t believe in, I become the worst version of myself,” Maja said.
The cost wasn’t just poor performance or frustration, it was erosion. Erosion of confidence, clarity, and self-respect. Staying too long makes it harder to believe you deserve better. That’s what was at stake.
But she didn’t want to quiet quit.
“I had a very real conversation with the founder,” Maja said. “We agreed I was a great fit for the old mission, but not the new one.”
That’s hard. Most people wait for the relationship to sour before they say what they really feel. She did the opposite. She spoke up while things were still good, because that’s when the conversation has the most impact.
It’s a great reminder that you don’t need a crisis to create a turning point.
Sometimes, all it takes is honesty and timing.
Most people think quitting a job that doesn’t serve you is courageous.
To an extent that’s true.
But real courage is about quitting early.
Before resentment builds. Before your self-esteem takes a hit. Before you're forced out. The real move is to act when everything still looks fine on the outside. That’s what Maja did, and it changed everything.
She left with confidence, not shame. She moved on without baggage.
And she created space for the next chapter to find her. The next chapter only shows up when you're willing to close the last one. That’s the takeaway here. Trust the signal.
You just need to be brave enough to trust your gut, early.
Catch Maja full story on YouTube 📺
Or, listen on Spotify 🎧
Need help navigating your own career?
Here are two ways I can help:
→ Free 5-Day Email Series: Get 5 short lessons to help you gain influence, lead with clarity, and grow your impact - without burning out.
→ 1:1 Coaching for Growth Leaders: I work with ambitious operators to turn chaos into clarity, build operating systems that scale, and grow into cross-functional leaders their exec teams rely on.