(Note: This article was originally published to JamieMcSloy.co.uk on January 14th, 2019. I’m going through an old backup of the site, which has hundreds of posts that aren’t currently uploaded. As I’m working hard on updating the site – and releasing The Vault, letting these old posts be the daily posts for a while.)
Should You Quit Your Job To Start A Business?
Disclaimer: I’m a one-man business and I’m speaking to other potential solopreneurs and people who are starting at-or-near zero. If you’ve found your way here because your start up idea is raising millions in capital or you have a rich benefactor who wants to give you a business in exchange for some secretive purpose… then this will still be helpful I suppose but it’s not really designed for you.
Last week, I spoke to a couple of guys about working jobs and business. One of the guys messaged me saying, “I have $x to invest initially, I’m working a good job and I want to be able to replace my income and quit in one to two years.”
The other guy wanted to quit his job immediately and spend 3-4 months working in isolation/hardcore on “his business.”
Now, he didn’t have a business, but he wants to quit, learn copywriting and ads and the like, and hopefully have enough money from his business to replenish his funds and never look back in three to four months.
I wrote about this briefly on Twitter, and some other guys seemed to be interested in my thoughts on going all in vs. working on the side and waiting… so here goes.
Should You Quit Your Job To Start A Business?
Of our two guys above, and knowing little more than that about the two guys mentioned, the first guy has the right idea by a country mile, in my opinion, and I’ll qualify that answer in this section.
We’re all self-employed and our major business is our continued future financial success.
Your personal account, savings accounts and the like are the “You, Inc.” coffers and you only have a limited time of say, 40 years, to maximise your coffers and provide for yourself and future generations.
If you have good money coming in, then you are filling your coffers.
I state this in business terms, because let’s ask ourselves this:
Do you know any successful company that has had a successful income stream, stopped that income stream before finding another one and then started from zero on another income stream with no money coming in?
Because I don’t.
Companies shift all the time. They come up with new offers and income streams– and that’s equivalent to you starting a business.
But they never say, “Hey… we’re making millions doing this; why don’t we stop doing this because there’s a new opportunity?”
They don’t do that because it’s better to have a major source of income that funds the switch, and that’s also a hedge against the new idea utterly failing.
And that’s what possibly awaits you if you quit to go all in.
I Can’t Predict The Future, And Neither Can You…
But I Can Tell You It’s Not All About Willpower, Desire Or A Dream
In this little part of the internet, there are dozens of superhero I-made-it-from-nothing-in-six-month stories.
And whilst some of them are entirely dubious, a lot of them are real.
Nate Schmidt was a pizza boy in January 2018 and now he’s not.
James Holt makes money online while still being in school/doing his mandatory “I’m Swiss” challenge.
And there are a ton of guys who have taken their courses and made money doing it.
But there’s no guarantee you will have the success they do in the time frame that they did. Even with those two, James started multiple years ago now. Nate’s been around for over a year.
And yet there are guys who turn up who want that outlier success in a quarter of the time and think they’re going to make more money?
I’ll get back to the point in a moment, but the Twitter discourse in past months has become beyond moronic in parts.
“If you’re not making 10k a month you’re a loser” was always stupid. It’s now turned into, “If you’re not making $100k a month you’re a loser.”
And you have kids who are still in school talking about how they’re about to make seven figures a year in internet marketing and tweeting shit about people who work 9-5s… it’s honestly stupid to an extent I can’t understand.
The reason I moan is because there’s a real skewed sense of what’s likely, achievable and a smart idea.
90% of the guys that tweet stupid “learn copywriting be a billionaire” stuff are going to disappear in three months and go back to their career. And that’s how it’s always going to be. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, it’s not all dreams and beach-bikini photos.
And that brings me back to you…
You CAN Do It… But Be Realistic
The above… most people aren’t going to be entrepreneurs. Absolutely true. Also though, most people could be entrepreneurs if they had a realistic vision, stuck to a business model that suited them and kept at it (as well as read my blog, which covers most of the stuff you need.)
The above is totally unsexy advice which is why I don’t have 100,000 Twitter followers yet.
To find what works for you, you need to dip your toes in. I recommend doing some freelancing or starting a small product line (like writing books) which are both models where there’s potential for earning and learning yet not a huge commitment financially on your part.
You can do this in your spare time, get a feel for things and then move forward in terms of incorporating it into your future “You, Inc.” plans.
And for the most part… this is sufficient and you won’t gain any further insight from quitting and going full-time straight away anyway; especially with most online business stuff.
You want to build a dropshipping store? That’s a weekend job.
Want to master FB ads? Well, you’re going to be sat in front of a screen waiting for days for the data to come in anyway.
You want to freelance? You’re not going to realistically pitch hundreds of people every hour, every day for weeks anyway.
In most cases, online business full-time means being sat full-time doing not a lot, and again, there’s no sense in limiting your budget going forward by quitting and having to spend your war chest/savings money on living costs while you work out what you’re doing.
And again, there’s no guarantee you can succeed at these things.
Sure, you might be a wonder kid. You might be profitable in three weeks. But you might also be useless, or accidentally hit the wrong setting and blow your ad budget in an hour… you might hate online business because it’s not actually a panacea that means you never have to work again in your life.
This brings me to my final point…
On Motivation
This article might seem a little grim. A little pessimistic. That’s deliberate.
If you think you’re going to start your business on day one, on day two you’re going to have a full time, risk-free income going forward and by day three, you’re going to be with the bikini babes in wherever-the-new-dreamer-hotspot-is, then you’re smoking The Dream™ and you’re not going to succeed.
If you hate your 9-5, then you’re going to hate having to be up at 12am because you’ve got stuff to do.
You’re going to hate when you’re expecting a four-figure check and someone just decides not to pay you.
And there are dozens of things which are the reality of life for an entrepreneur that most online dream-peddlers don’t sell you.
So if this article makes you think, “Man… Jamie McSloy is a big meanie and he’s put me off starting a business” then you weren’t going to succeed anyway.
“I hate my job” is not a trait that will increase your likelihood of success. Basically everyone hates their job and would quit if they had the money to do so.
Simple Diagnostic Test For If You Should Quit Your Job…
Do you have the three following things:
What increases your likelihood of success is having the fundamentals of business down, a viable idea and a system for how you’re going to make that idea and system into something tangible (i.e. can realistically replace your income or at least cover your life) in the near future.
If you don’t know what you’re going to do, you haven’t learned the skills required to make this happen and you’re still in the, “I’m going to succeed at [some random online business] because I hate my job and I want to be free!” stage, then you are not ready to quit your job and there’s a 99% chance (totally made up statistic to emphasise the point,) that it’ll be the wrong course of action.
Coming up soon… when to quit your job for people who actually meet the requirements I laid out.
P.S. Now we’re in 2024, reposting this one because I’ve just written three guides for the Vault today. They all involve how to go about integrating business into your life and wider career, focusing on when you’re unemployed/low-employed, working a career, and when you’re a high-powered mover, shaker and hustler and just want to make maximum money. The Vault will launch soon, and these will help you understand where you’re at and what to do to get to the next stages.