Leaving a well paying job and taking the plunge

[susty]

Hello folks, quick introduction: I'm a 26 year old from Singapore.


My circumstances seem to be different from most people here; my decision to make the jump was driven more by the pull of my dreams than the push of a 'F*ck this event'. I had a well paying job, a great boss and interesting work as a management consultant. But I also have very, very big dreams. As I progressed with my career, it became clear that my dreams were too big for my day job.


For the past few months, while working my day job, I spent my evenings and weekends validating an idea and building the back-end of my business from scratch (supply chain, logistics, website etc.). I'm manufacturing my own brand of products and selling them through online and offline channels. Operations will be ready in the next 3-4 weeks and I already have a small group of customers who'd like to buy.


I've now burned the boats, I put in my notice a couple of months ago and will be transiting out of my job in the coming month. As I sit here typing this at 2am in the morning, the self-doubt is almost overwhelming. But my dreams are bigger than my fears. Sometimes, we forget that we all have at most a good 50-60 years ahead of us - it's far too short to just live comfortably or please everyone.

I'll be posting updates here every 2 weeks - any advice or feedback is greatly appreciated!

 

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[NewYorkCity]

Don't blame you. Taking the plunge myself here soon.

Good luck!

 

[ravenspear]

I'm taking a similar path but I'm not quitting the job until I get some market validation of the products so I can verify it will be a self sustaining thing.

 

[Aaron T]

Hello folks, quick introduction: I'm a 26 year old from Singapore.


My circumstances seem to be different from most people here; my decision to make the jump was driven more by the pull of my dreams than the push of a 'F*ck this event'. I had a well paying job, a great boss and interesting work as a management consultant. But I also have very, very big dreams. As I progressed with my career, it became clear that my dreams were too big for my day job.


For the past few months, while working my day job, I spent my evenings and weekends validating an idea and building the back-end of my business from scratch (supply chain, logistics, website etc.). I'm manufacturing my own brand of products and selling them through online and offline channels. Operations will be ready in the next 3-4 weeks and I already have a small group of customers who'd like to buy.


I've now burned the boats, I put in my notice a couple of months ago and will be transiting out of my job in the coming month. As I sit here typing this at 2am in the morning, the self-doubt is almost overwhelming. But my dreams are bigger than my fears. Sometimes, we forget that we all have at most a good 50-60 years ahead of us - it's far too short to just live comfortably or please everyone.

I'll be posting updates here every 2 weeks - any advice or feedback is greatly appreciated!

Dreams in some people can be every bit as motivating or more than a FTE for sure. Elon Musk for example.

I wish you well on your journey. Putting in your notice and taking the plunge is a hell of a brave thing to do. In a sense you created your FTE and a huge sense of urgency. Self-doubt is a normal thing that happens. Shake it off and go for it!

Hoping for all the best!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Are you waiting to get confirmed sales before quitting the job?

 

[Merging Left]

Are you manufacturing your products yourself or are you having them made for you? How have you validated the idea?

 

[susty]

Don't blame you. Taking the plunge myself here soon.

Good luck!

Thanks buddy!

I'm taking a similar path but I'm not quitting the job until I get some market validation of the products so I can verify it will be a self sustaining thing.

That's similar to what I did. I spent 3-4 months validating the market and collecting pre-orders. All the best!

Dreams in some people can be every bit as motivating or more than a FTE for sure. Elon Musk for example.

I wish you well on your journey. Putting in your notice and taking the plunge is a hell of a brave thing to do. In a sense you created your FTE and a huge sense of urgency. Self-doubt is a normal thing that happens. Shake it off and go for it!

Hoping for all the best!

Thanks man. I've been checking in on your thread (1 month to impossible success). Everyone's rooting for your inevitable success!

Are you waiting to get confirmed sales before quitting the job?

Hey MJ, I've already gotten about 20 pre orders. I'm also working out a distribution model on consignment terms with a few parties

Are you manufacturing your products yourself or are you having them made for you? How have you validated the idea?

I'm manufacturing them myself. I went around collecting pre orders from friends and cold contacts. This helped to validate demand for the product and also add/remove product features to better fit the market. I've already pivoted quite a bit from the initial idea thanks to consumer feedback.

 

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[susty]

Short update: Facing some supplier issues. A shipment that was supposed to arrive from the US a month ago has yet to ship from the warehouse.

I've been continuing to sell pre-orders and other auxiliary work like SEO while waiting on the supplies. I will post a full update once I manufacture the first batch start sales proper.

 

[susty]

Spent the entire weekend packing the first batch after the supplies arrived. Will be shipping out 5-10 orders to friends this week. More friends and acquaintances are expressing interest after seeing product updates on our social media.

At this point, I don't know how much of this interest is just them being supportive and how much is from the product solving a real problem for them. I'll make it a point to do more offline sales to strangers and start selling on amazon - it's probably the best way to test the product-market fit.

 

[ravenspear]

I would completely discount any orders from family/friends. That's not real market feedback. They could be buying to support you and not care about the product at all.

 

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[NewManRising]

Thanks for sharing this. I am getting to this point too. I am starting to reflect a lot about life. I am starting to think of my dreams and how bad I want them. But thhere is a lot of fear. Hard to walk away. But, knowing the slowlane it makes you want to leave because THAT is really depressing. I am just in a tricky situation right now. The more I think about my dreams and ideas the more courage I will get. Good luck.

 

[sparechange]

Gl!!

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I would completely discount any orders from family/friends. That's not real market feedback

Will be shipping out 5-10 orders to friends this week. More friends and acquaintances are expressing interest after seeing product updates on our social media.

At this point, I don't know how much of this interest is just them being supportive and how much is from the product solving a real problem for them.

Orders from your mother, friends, acquaintances, church buddies are not orders. They're not market validation.

The only true market validation is an order from a complete stranger who is buying blind from a complete stranger based on your messaging.

Anything else and people might be buying simply because they value YOU, not your product.

 

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[Castillo]

Spent the entire weekend packing the first batch after the supplies arrived. Will be shipping out 5-10 orders to friends this week. More friends and acquaintances are expressing interest after seeing product updates on our social media.

At this point, I don't know how much of this interest is just them being supportive and how much is from the product solving a real problem for them. I'll make it a point to do more offline sales to strangers and start selling on amazon - it's probably the best way to test the product-market fit.

How's the progress?

 

[JAJT]

Before quitting, I think so many people on this forum (or anywhere for that matter) need to ask themselves the following questions:

1. Do I need the profits of this venture to pay my bills?
2. If yes, what's left over to reinvest?
3. How long will it take to grow this business to where I want it to be, taking #1 and #2 into account?

I'm a classic example of making the mistake of not asking these questions.

I left a well paying job to focus my attention on an Amazon business full time. It was making good profits so the choice seemed so obvious to me.

The result was that I was living on the profits with almost nothing left to reinvest. The result was a stagnant business that didn't have the gas required to get to where I wanted to go.

Did I learn a lot? Yup.
Did it achieve me goals? Not at all.

If your product costs $2,000 to stock, and you make $4,000 revenue off of it - that's great. $2,000 profit is amazing. Now if you take that $2,000 and pay your mortgage and groceries with it, how much is left for introducing a new product line? Advertising? Larger inventory orders? Growth of any kind?

$ ZERO

Now consider this - you make $3,000 at your job, make $2,000 profit from that same inventory, and pay your bills with $2,000. What are you left with to reinvest into growth?

$3,000

How does quitting look now?

This is a very, very, very basic example. Your numbers can and will look different. But it's important you plug your numbers into this based on fact, not speculation. Saying you'll make $10k profit, live on $2k, and reinvest $8k per month sounds great but if you don't have 1 sale yet, then that's fantasy, not fact.

And if you are plugging your numbers into this before your first sale - consider that a 50% gross margin (revenue minus inventory cost) usually looks like something like a 20% net margin (revenue minus inventory minus every other expense your business incurs like ads, hosting, services, accounts, shipping, duties, taxes, etc...).

This is the shit I wish I knew before taking the plunge. The shit I SHOULD have known, too. 100% my fault. Maybe I can save someone else the trouble of learning the hard way.

 

[ZF Lee]

Before quitting, I think so many people on this forum (or anywhere for that matter) need to ask themselves the following questions:

1. Do I need the profits of this venture to pay my bills?
2. If yes, what's left over to reinvest?
3. How long will it take to grow this business to where I want it to be, taking #1 and #2 into account?

I'm a classic example of making the mistake of not asking these questions.

I left a well paying job to focus my attention on an Amazon business full time. It was making good profits so the choice seemed so obvious to me.

The result was that I was living on the profits with almost nothing left to reinvest. The result was a stagnant business that didn't have the gas required to get to where I wanted to go.

Did I learn a lot? Yup.
Did it achieve me goals? Not at all.

If your product costs $2,000 to stock, and you make $4,000 revenue off of it - that's great. $2,000 profit is amazing. Now if you take that $2,000 and pay your mortgage and groceries with it, how much is left for introducing a new product line? Advertising? Larger inventory orders? Growth of any kind?

$ ZERO

Now consider this - you make $3,000 at your job, make $2,000 profit from that same inventory, and pay your bills with $2,000. What are you left with to reinvest into growth?

$3,000

How does quitting look now?

This is a very, very, very basic example. Your numbers can and will look different. But it's important you plug your numbers into this based on fact, not speculation. Saying you'll make $10k profit, live on $2k, and reinvest $8k per month sounds great but if you don't have 1 sale yet, then that's fantasy, not fact.

And if you are plugging your numbers into this before your first sale - consider that a 50% gross margin (revenue minus inventory cost) usually looks like something like a 20% net margin (revenue minus inventory minus every other expense your business incurs like ads, hosting, services, accounts, shipping, duties, taxes, etc...).

This is the shit I wish I knew before taking the plunge. The shit I SHOULD have known, too. 100% my fault. Maybe I can save someone else the trouble of learning the hard way.

This post could be a thread on its own.
Repped and bookmarked immediately.

 

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[the6ixace]

Before quitting, I think so many people on this forum (or anywhere for that matter) need to ask themselves the following questions:

1. Do I need the profits of this venture to pay my bills?
2. If yes, what's left over to reinvest?
3. How long will it take to grow this business to where I want it to be, taking #1 and #2 into account?

I'm a classic example of making the mistake of not asking these questions.

I left a well paying job to focus my attention on an Amazon business full time. It was making good profits so the choice seemed so obvious to me.

The result was that I was living on the profits with almost nothing left to reinvest. The result was a stagnant business that didn't have the gas required to get to where I wanted to go.

Did I learn a lot? Yup.
Did it achieve me goals? Not at all.

If your product costs $2,000 to stock, and you make $4,000 revenue off of it - that's great. $2,000 profit is amazing. Now if you take that $2,000 and pay your mortgage and groceries with it, how much is left for introducing a new product line? Advertising? Larger inventory orders? Growth of any kind?

$ ZERO

Now consider this - you make $3,000 at your job, make $2,000 profit from that same inventory, and pay your bills with $2,000. What are you left with to reinvest into growth?

$3,000

How does quitting look now?

This is a very, very, very basic example. Your numbers can and will look different. But it's important you plug your numbers into this based on fact, not speculation. Saying you'll make $10k profit, live on $2k, and reinvest $8k per month sounds great but if you don't have 1 sale yet, then that's fantasy, not fact.

And if you are plugging your numbers into this before your first sale - consider that a 50% gross margin (revenue minus inventory cost) usually looks like something like a 20% net margin (revenue minus inventory minus every other expense your business incurs like ads, hosting, services, accounts, shipping, duties, taxes, etc...).

This is the shit I wish I knew before taking the plunge. The shit I SHOULD have known, too. 100% my fault. Maybe I can save someone else the trouble of learning the hard way.

I second what this man is saying. I also had a well paying job and left too early and even had a promotion lined up and pretty much set my own schedule.

If I could go back, i could have easily worked full time and did the rest pulling all nighters.

The part about reinvesting your profits is very key instead of paying your bills.





Sent from my SM-J320W8 using Tapatalk

 

[sparechange]

Before quitting, I think so many people on this forum (or anywhere for that matter) need to ask themselves the following questions:

1. Do I need the profits of this venture to pay my bills?
2. If yes, what's left over to reinvest?
3. How long will it take to grow this business to where I want it to be, taking #1 and #2 into account?

I'm a classic example of making the mistake of not asking these questions.

I left a well paying job to focus my attention on an Amazon business full time. It was making good profits so the choice seemed so obvious to me.

The result was that I was living on the profits with almost nothing left to reinvest. The result was a stagnant business that didn't have the gas required to get to where I wanted to go.

Did I learn a lot? Yup.
Did it achieve me goals? Not at all.

If your product costs $2,000 to stock, and you make $4,000 revenue off of it - that's great. $2,000 profit is amazing. Now if you take that $2,000 and pay your mortgage and groceries with it, how much is left for introducing a new product line? Advertising? Larger inventory orders? Growth of any kind?

$ ZERO

Now consider this - you make $3,000 at your job, make $2,000 profit from that same inventory, and pay your bills with $2,000. What are you left with to reinvest into growth?

$3,000

How does quitting look now?

This is a very, very, very basic example. Your numbers can and will look different. But it's important you plug your numbers into this based on fact, not speculation. Saying you'll make $10k profit, live on $2k, and reinvest $8k per month sounds great but if you don't have 1 sale yet, then that's fantasy, not fact.

And if you are plugging your numbers into this before your first sale - consider that a 50% gross margin (revenue minus inventory cost) usually looks like something like a 20% net margin (revenue minus inventory minus every other expense your business incurs like ads, hosting, services, accounts, shipping, duties, taxes, etc...).

This is the shit I wish I knew before taking the plunge. The shit I SHOULD have known, too. 100% my fault. Maybe I can save someone else the trouble of learning the hard way.

post of the year 2017 nomination. I just got a paycheque today and was thinking about quitting vs not quitting ugh, fml