Winners Always Quit — Lloyd Banks

“In so many of my stories, quitting led to my success,” said motivational speaker Lloyd Banks of Denton. “98% of everything you hear about quitting is negative, and I wanted to flip that on its head.”

“Quitting is not a failure. It’s not,” he repeated. “It’s a stepping stone to something better.”

Lloyd was a hospitality guy, spending two decades building, managing, and selling wildly successful restaurants, nightclubs, and bars in the Denton area after graduating from UNT with a recreation and leisure studies degree. 

But there was one huge problem. He wasn’t happy.

So he quit.

“I had spent so many years gone working late nights. Now I’m enjoying spending time being home with my family [wife Toby and two daughters, 27 & 10] and spending more time with friends.” 

He’s also spending a lot of time as a “soccer dad,” watching the Women’s National Soccer Team, and says he’s about to take up pickleball (he had a short-lived tennis career at UNT).

Lloyd laughed while explaining that getting into speaking was accidental. “One of the guys in my entrepreneur group had just done Heroic Public Speaking and told me he thought I should do it.

 “We were firmly in Covid, and I’d recently returned from my last HSCT treatment for MS,” Lloyd said. “I was bald because of the chemo, and we couldn’t leave the house.” Heroic was offering a free two-day thing online, and Lloyd decided to give it a try. 

“I fell in love with the people at Heroic,” he said. He now gives his 45-minute keynote speech to whoever will have him — entrepreneur groups, Rotary clubs, and business conventions. 

Everyone knows what they need to quit, Lloyd said. Whether it be financial, spending money you don’t have, or toxic relationships, drinking, or drugs. He hopes his audience will walk away with actionable steps. 

“I want people to leave with self-awareness. I need to get people to take what I say and actually turn it into a process and action, and those actionable steps into goals. 

Lloyd’s goal is to be a seven-figure speaker, but probably not for the reasons you think. “I want to do it because I can reach a lot of people’s lives,” he said. “I always want to speak in service to my audience.”

And he added, “If I can make seven figures a year, I can help a lot more people than I can today. I could live on so little it’s scary — but it would let me do a lot of good and help a lot of people.”

One of the surprising things Lloyd’s learned is how much he enjoys creating content for social media. “I try not to make it too heavy. Keep it simple. I don’t take myself too seriously.” He recently made a video in a grocery store parking lot with the message “Quit leaving your carts out!” (Make sure to find and follow Lloyd Banks on social media for a laugh and for inspiration.) 

“Quit waiting. So many people say ‘when x happens, then I’ll do that… when my daughter graduates or when I retire.’ A friend told me ‘the time to make joy is today.’ If something is not going to make your life better, quit.”

Lloyd hopes you find joy and find happiness. “I hope you find it sooner than later. But there’s no timeline. If you’re 50, or 60, or 70, there’s something you can quit today to be happier tomorrow.”

His final bit of advice: “Be nice to yourself. I try not to make it easy because quitting is hard. Turn it into baby steps and celebrate your successes. If you have a bad day, wake up tomorrow and do better.”