Don't quit your day job yet!

[ericaung]

Hello,

I saw a lot of people quitting their jobs after reading Unscripted or TMF . One of my friends quitted his job to start his business. Starting a business is great. But don't be stupid.
Currently, my friend facing a lot of financial difficulties when building his startup. Because he didn't build a financial base before he quit his job. So my money rules for you:

1. Save an emergency fund at least 12 months of your living expenses
2. You don't need to be capitalist in order to launch your startup. Remember Facebook was born on the dorm's room.
3. Invest in yourself with entrepreneurship and business skills by reading books or taking courses.
4. Have a good plan for how to quit your day job (i.e. when u want to quit etc)

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[trafalgar_law]

if he quit, then tell him to go back or have a job in sales.

 

[Vitaly the Winne]

I quit several jobs at different points to start entrepreneurial ventures, when I flopped it was Titanic proportions xD. Definitely have a plan B to sustain plan A, or to be able to transition to plan C if all else fails.

In TMF @MJ DeMarco talked about how during the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey he worked shitty jobs and until he was successful did so, watching his friends take on debt snd boast about their careers and financed cars. He even said, if you're unwilling to take on a menial job to support yourself and your dream, you probably don't have entrepreneurial blood.

 

[Tossek]

I always wondered how people that cannot handle their own budgets expect to handle budgets of a business.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Matt Hunt]

Too late! Except I'm quitting for other reasons, and I'm getting 6 weeks of severance, plus 1 week of PTO left, plus my Q2 bonus. But I will need to get another job before my business is bringing in enough cheddar. Just gonna try to push off my start date to the end of that 7 weeks if I can so I can have that time to work on the business!

 

[Olimac21]

It can also backfire because knowing you have the job does not give you the urgency to act compared to a situation where taking action on your business is the only way to pay the monthly rent once you are out of your job.

I believe a good idea is to always have a second way of making an income, lets say your day job is to be a programmer and then you also teach CS at a Uni some days of the week. Quitting your job gives you the chance to keep doing the Uni thing or even offer yourself to work more there if possible and at the same time you have more time to develop your business.

 

[rynor]

I'm a testament to this exact piece of advice because I'm currently in the midst of my own financial troubles because I quit my job to start out on my entrepreneurial journey.

In retrospect, I wish I had kept working the job while funding my business on the side. But to be completely honest, I don't regret it because I learned a lot about business in a short amount of time because I had a lot more free time to do so. Note: I'm definitely not saying this is the best method of going about things.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Bekit]

In 2016, I got laid off from a job due to a company merger where they shut down my department. I got a nice severance package and cashed out my 401k.

I was like, "YES! This is my chance to start a business." So I paid several months of rent in advance and had a runway of several months to get my business going.

I had a few ideas that I thought could make me money, but none of them panned out.

Looking back, there were many reasons why I failed.

• I didn't have good habits or systems in place. My actions were all over the map.
• I wasn't focused on the actions that would move the needle.
• I indulged in a lot of "fun," like going to the gym every day, meeting friends for coffee, studying a foreign language, and taking digital marketing courses.
• The amount of time I spent actually working on my business was way too small to actually give me results.
• Instead of focusing on one thing, I tried dabbling in a whole bunch of things. "Maybe I should publish a book! No, maybe I should learn to create apps! No, maybe I should sell online courses! No, maybe I should get myself booked on a speaking circuit!" Classic action-faking.
• My mindset was nowhere near what it should be to grow and sustain a profitable business. I wanted to work for free. I thought it was virtuous to be poor.
• I didn't think through a plan of how I was going to actually make money. I just thought if I tried a bunch of things, one of them would (might) work.
• I didn't have clear goals and then reverse-engineer what it was actually going to take to hit those goals.

I had set myself a hard deadline. From February through May, I would work on building a business, but if I didn't make money, then I would have to go back to job hunting.

I didn't make money, so I went back to job hunting and landed a job in July.

I've been working a job ever since while trying to move back into position to run my own business.

In the meantime, I've been working on overcoming the factors listed above that caused me to fail the first time. I'm glad I went through that. Now I'm not tempted to just step away from a job and "hope" that I can figure out how to make it work.

In the meantime, now I am aware that I need discipline. I need good habits. I need systems. I need to hustle more and take more effective, focused action.

I need to be a different person than I was in 2016 if I am going to succeed next time I quit cold turkey to go start a business.

 

[Vitaly the Winne]

In 2016, I got laid off from a job due to a company merger where they shut down my department. I got a nice severance package and cashed out my 401k.

I was like, "YES! This is my chance to start a business." So I paid several months of rent in advance and had a runway of several months to get my business going.

I had a few ideas that I thought could make me money, but none of them panned out.

Looking back, there were many reasons why I failed.

• I didn't have good habits or systems in place. My actions were all over the map.
• I wasn't focused on the actions that would move the needle.
• I indulged in a lot of "fun," like going to the gym every day, meeting friends for coffee, studying a foreign language, and taking digital marketing courses.
• The amount of time I spent actually working on my business was way too small to actually give me results.
• Instead of focusing on one thing, I tried dabbling in a whole bunch of things. "Maybe I should publish a book! No, maybe I should learn to create apps! No, maybe I should sell online courses! No, maybe I should get myself booked on a speaking circuit!" Classic action-faking.
• My mindset was nowhere near what it should be to grow and sustain a profitable business. I wanted to work for free. I thought it was virtuous to be poor.
• I didn't think through a plan of how I was going to actually make money. I just thought if I tried a bunch of things, one of them would (might) work.
• I didn't have clear goals and then reverse-engineer what it was actually going to take to hit those goals.

I had set myself a hard deadline. From February through May, I would work on building a business, but if I didn't make money, then I would have to go back to job hunting.

I didn't make money, so I went back to job hunting and landed a job in July.

I've been working a job ever since while trying to move back into position to run my own business.

In the meantime, I've been working on overcoming the factors listed above that caused me to fail the first time. I'm glad I went through that. Now I'm not tempted to just step away from a job and "hope" that I can figure out how to make it work.

In the meantime, now I am aware that I need discipline. I need good habits. I need systems. I need to hustle more and take more effective, focused action.

I need to be a different person than I was in 2016 if I am going to succeed next time I quit cold turkey to go start a business.

This, almost to the tee was my experience. Through several months of entrepreneurship, earning some money from my own sales business, and then crashing miserably I learned it's important to have discipline and a concrete plan, otherwise you end up in a worse position than before.

 

[Matt Hunt]

In 2016, I got laid off from a job due to a company merger where they shut down my department. I got a nice severance package and cashed out my 401k.

I was like, "YES! This is my chance to start a business." So I paid several months of rent in advance and had a runway of several months to get my business going.

I had a few ideas that I thought could make me money, but none of them panned out.

Looking back, there were many reasons why I failed.

• I didn't have good habits or systems in place. My actions were all over the map.
• I wasn't focused on the actions that would move the needle.
• I indulged in a lot of "fun," like going to the gym every day, meeting friends for coffee, studying a foreign language, and taking digital marketing courses.
• The amount of time I spent actually working on my business was way too small to actually give me results.
• Instead of focusing on one thing, I tried dabbling in a whole bunch of things. "Maybe I should publish a book! No, maybe I should learn to create apps! No, maybe I should sell online courses! No, maybe I should get myself booked on a speaking circuit!" Classic action-faking.
• My mindset was nowhere near what it should be to grow and sustain a profitable business. I wanted to work for free. I thought it was virtuous to be poor.
• I didn't think through a plan of how I was going to actually make money. I just thought if I tried a bunch of things, one of them would (might) work.
• I didn't have clear goals and then reverse-engineer what it was actually going to take to hit those goals.

I had set myself a hard deadline. From February through May, I would work on building a business, but if I didn't make money, then I would have to go back to job hunting.

I didn't make money, so I went back to job hunting and landed a job in July.

I've been working a job ever since while trying to move back into position to run my own business.

In the meantime, I've been working on overcoming the factors listed above that caused me to fail the first time. I'm glad I went through that. Now I'm not tempted to just step away from a job and "hope" that I can figure out how to make it work.

In the meantime, now I am aware that I need discipline. I need good habits. I need systems. I need to hustle more and take more effective, focused action.

I need to be a different person than I was in 2016 if I am going to succeed next time I quit cold turkey to go start a business.

I had a lot of the same issues back when I had a roofing business. Spent time doing things other than selling, when all I really needed to do was sell! My mindset was definitely out of whack, and I definitely spent too much time drinking & partying. I actually did okay my first year, but then fell off. Also should've set my goals higher in order to put money back into the business, rather than just taking all the profit for myself.

Thankfully now I've outgrown all the drinking & partying. As I go into my own severance period starting next week, I plan to spend actual full-time hours in sales mode! I will have to take some time out of that to search for a job, though, because it's highly unlikely I'm gonna make enough to cover living expenses in just 2 months! (mostly due to having student loans)

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Thinh]

Hello,

I saw a lot of people quitting their jobs after reading Unscripted or TMF . One of my friends quitted his job to start his business. Starting a business is great. But don't be stupid.
Currently, my friend facing a lot of financial difficulties when building his startup. Because he didn't build a financial base before he quit his job. So my money rules for you:

1. Save an emergency fund at least 12 months of your living expenses
2. You don't need to be capitalist in order to launch your startup. Remember Facebook was born on the dorm's room.
3. Invest in yourself with entrepreneurship and business skills by reading books or taking courses.
4. Have a good plan for how to quit your day job (i.e. when u want to quit etc)

This. THANK YOU.

To that, I'd add :

5. Constraints foster creativity. Not being able to spend all your entire days on your project is actually a great thing (save certain specific, rare edge cases). No business need a full time dedication at its very beginning. You'll just end up filling your time action faking.

 

[wpexpert]

I built a successful Web Agency keeping my day job for few years, now I really enjoy working for me without financial problem. I didn't regret at all, it was hard, working in the morning and night but it was worth it. Now, I can concentrate to build our "Empire of Two" knowing that the bills will be paid every single month...

 

[Soder]

Maybe you like this:

Todd Henry’s Challenge Stability Matrix – Shawn Blanc

Design, tech, writing, and other creative matters.

shawnblanc.net

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Brian Suh]

Hello,

I saw a lot of people quitting their jobs after reading Unscripted or TMF . One of my friends quitted his job to start his business. Starting a business is great. But don't be stupid.
Currently, my friend facing a lot of financial difficulties when building his startup. Because he didn't build a financial base before he quit his job. So my money rules for you:

1. Save an emergency fund at least 12 months of your living expenses
2. You don't need to be capitalist in order to launch your startup. Remember Facebook was born on the dorm's room.
3. Invest in yourself with entrepreneurship and business skills by reading books or taking courses.
4. Have a good plan for how to quit your day job (i.e. when u want to quit etc)

I had to quit my day job but not for financial reasons. Most jobs (and people) will try to put you on their agenda and scripts. Training you to SLOWLY become a dog. This doesn’t happen immediately or else you’d quit. But once that circuit in your brain of following order gets too deep, it’s almost impossible to be pulled back our. My 2 cents

 

[Brian Suh]

Maybe you like this:

Todd Henry’s Challenge Stability Matrix – Shawn Blanc

Design, tech, writing, and other creative matters.

shawnblanc.net

View attachment 25544

I agree with this chart but if you go high on the challenge side without stability it will be hella uncomfortable for the first two weeks but if you can get over it you will thrive beyond your wildest dreams

 

[Soder]

Theory is that it is better not to leave work until your business has started.

But the practice is different, by leaving work and being without a safety net, you make sure you give 200%, you focus more, you are hungrier and you create something better.

From the artists to the founders of the large technology companies in garages, little did they care to be poor for a while. And it seems complicated to imagine that they had created what they have created by combining the project with a daily regular job.

When Bill Gates was asked what was the defining characteristic of Warren Buffett, he said one word:

FOCUS

I left my job for my project, the first months did not go as planned and I thought "shit, I should have stayed at my work". A year and a half later I am totally focused on my project and with two others very related in development. None of this would have happened from the comfort of a job.

The greatest things come from suffering, which puts you to the test and makes you awake, attentive, focused and productive, ... if I had been at my job, none of this would have been necessary and I would not have created anything important.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.