Should you quit your job??

Should you quit your job? Such a good question. Such a tough question. And I figured there was no place to better answer this question and walk you through it than the very last place that I was an employee, which was over a decade ago, and it feels like a lifetime ago.

This building right here, which actually isn’t even the same business because that business no longer exists, but I remember being here vividly. I remember parking in this area. I remember coming to work every day. I was doing in-house social media management at this point, and I remember knowing that I was ready to start my own business but being absolutely lost and terrified on how to do it.

So not only have I watched people transition from employee to entrepreneur, I’ve done it myself. And I want to share my story and how I would recommend doing it because I have had so much firsthand experience guiding people through this. And it is a really personal call, so I’m hoping this will help you.

And listen, there are different circumstances. When I left this job, I was in my early 20s. I had no responsibility. The only thing I really had was a tiny little apartment and a little bit of rent to pay. I knew that I could, at that point, take that leap without a lot of extra added stress. If you have a mortgage, you have kids, you have people who depend on you. It’s very different. So I kind of want to walk you through, if you’re in the most challenging situation to quit your job, what I would do and what I’ve seen other people do successfully.

So without further ado, I’m actually going to take you to the place where I had the conversation with my parents about quitting my job and the advice they gave me and the steps that I took. Let’s head there right now.

Deciding to leave my last job was not a decision that I took lightly at all. It can feel like you’re floundering, like you don’t know what you’re doing, and like you’re entering the complete unknown. As much as I am a risk taker, I still like to have a certain element of certainty and I’m still a planner. So I remember this conversation I had with my parents was the real turning point of lighting a fire to allow myself to make the leap into becoming a full-time entrepreneur.

This is the very place that I had the conversation with my parents about quitting my job. I’m at the Starbucks in English Bay right now, and this is where it all went down. Keep in mind when I had this conversation with my parents, I had already thrown them for one loop because I was actually supposed to go to university. And the week before I was supposed to start, I told them that I knew it wasn’t the right path for me and I wanted to get real world job experience before I went to university.

So this was like the second sort of surprise that I had given them in the span of a few years. And I remember sitting down with them, and they said to me … And I’m really grateful to have parents like this who believe that following what you really feel is aligned with you is the right way to go, and I know that’s not necessarily the norm. But they said to me, “If you’re going to do this, you’ve got to go after it like your life depends on it, and this has to be your sole focus.”

And then they also said to me … And this is something I try to remind myself of often, and I actually talked about it in this video. I have this hero list that reminds me of all the hard things that I’ve done and all the things that I’ve overcome and all of the challenges that I’ve faced that I ultimately came out on the other side of. And they said, “Whenever you’ve put your mind to anything, since you were a little kid, you’ve done it. So the only way that you are going to not make this happen for yourself and not make it work is if you lose focus or if you quit.” Quit the idea, not the job.

The final thing they said to me was, “What’s the worst that could happen?” That is the best way for me to look at it. I like to play worst case scenario so that I can think about the absolute bottom of the bottom that could happen. For me at that time in my life, I didn’t have a ton of responsibilities. So the worst case scenario was, you know what? If it doesn’t work, I will go back and get a job.

From there, for myself, and having helped a lot of people do this as well, there are a couple things that I think are vital if you are going to quit your job and you’re going to become an entrepreneur. Number one, I talked about this in this video and this video, and it’s something that I will harp on for the rest of time. Runway. Entrepreneurship is scary anyways. And depending on your risk tolerance, this may be less important or more important for you. For me, I’m pretty risky, but at the same time, like I said, I like certainty. And so I wanted to make sure that I had X amount of months saved up that could cover my bare minimum costs. That would allow me to build my business from a place of not feeling panicked or additional stress on top of trying to start a business. So having runway in place, which simply means that you know what your costs are, and you’re basically able to cover them for a certain amount of months because you’ve saved up and been really aware of your financial situation. I really do think that’s important to do this in a way that isn’t going to make you feel like you want to curl up in a fetal position. That’s number one, so runway and budget.

And then the next thing is really to plan, to plan for this and build out a business idea and model and plan that you want to follow. And I think that’s absolutely doable while you’re still working for a company. They’re unrelated. But if you can pull things from your job that you can use in your business, do that. It’s super helpful and beneficial and helps you get ahead. So that’s another piece of this. And also when it comes to that, if you know somebody has the kind of business you want, be a stalker. Listen to everything they say. Study every single aspect aspect of their business. There’s so much information out there. You can learn from the people that you look up to. I think that’s vital so that you’re not just quitting your job with no idea of the kind of business you want to start, because if you don’t know the good, bad and ugly of what that business is going to entail, you’re going to be in for some rude awakenings because there is no business on the planet, it doesn’t matter what you want to do, that is easy.

On that note, I did create a workbook, if you want to check it out below this video, that helps you turn your experience, whatever that may be, into a six-figure online course. If that’s the kind of business you want to create, the link is below this video.

So planning out. In addition to that, setting a deadline. I actually, weirdly enough … And maybe you’ve been through this. When I decided to leave my job, things were a little bit challenging for a while. And I remember I got two big job offers back to back within the same week, and I ended up going on interviews for them because I wasn’t sure if I was cut out for this entrepreneurship thing. I ended up being in the top candidates for both, and I ended up giving myself an ultimatum and saying, you know what? I know this is not what I want to do. And oftentimes the universe will test you, and it will throw things your way that seem like the easy way out. But I always go back to what will the 80 year old version of myself be proud of me for? And I knew in that moment that the highest version of myself and the person that I wanted to become was not working in those jobs. And I knew if I took them, I’d be so comfortable and safe that I would never really do the entrepreneurship thing.

So I decided to basically give myself a deadline and say, okay, I’m not going to take these. I emailed both companies, and I said, “Thank you so much, but I’m not interested. You can remove me from the candidate pool.” I gave myself 12 months. And I said, “If this isn’t working, if I’m not hitting X amount of revenue per month in 12 months, which I think at the time was $3,000 a month, then I’m going to go get a job,” because I knew that I could. I had skill sets that were desirable. I knew I could get a job. So I gave myself that deadline, and that was the year that everything blew up because there is no better motivation than that kind of fire under your ass and a deadline. So that’s the other big thing for me.

And then the final thing is really having faith in the process and surrendering to the process because you will gain confidence through experience and action. And I wanted to share this story with you because I think it’s so incredible. One of my clients who was in the Authority Accelerator, she worked for BET, and she was the senior vice president of original programming. That’s a big job. And she was there for years and she could have stayed there forever, but she had this intuition, this calling that she wanted to start a business, a faith-based fitness business, so totally different. She couldn’t kick it. And so she decided to leave the job and start this business, and this is what she had to say about it.

I didn’t have a choice because this has to work. This is the choice that I’ve made, and so there is no going back. And I made that decision. I proclaimed that I’m not going back. And that’s one of the things. You have to put your own feet to the fire, kind of on that.

I know how scary of a decision this can be. I was in a very fortunate situation where I did have people around me that supported me. And I think it’s really important to include your close people that you really trust with everything in this process, because you need that support and you need that accountability. I know it’s not always this simple or this easy, especially depending on where you’re at in your life and what your responsibilities are. But what I will say is there is always a way. And at the end of the day, if you decide to go for it, you have to have enough faith in yourself and belief in yourself before anybody else does. And you will start to prove to yourself that you’re capable of it through every little micro win along the way. Are you going to make six figures overnight or seven figures overnight? No. Nobody does. You have to trust the gradual process and adjust your lifestyle to be more simplistic as you’re building things up.