Four Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Quit The 9-to-5
Are you thinking of quitting your job and starting for yourself?
The idea might seem attractive, but there are some important questions you should ask yourself before you take the plunge.
Personally, I wish I asked myself these questions when I started out. I didn't completely think everything through before I gave my resignation. This made my startup a lot harder than it should have been.
If you don't want to make the same mistakes I made, make sure to answer honestly to these:
1. Do You Have a Financial Cushion to Fall Back on?
Fledgling entrepreneurs and small business owners tend to be overly optimistic. Generating a decent income tends to take much longer than you may think. Unless you have investors backing you and a big startup fund, make sure that you have enough money to live off for a couple of months to a year. Your first paychecks may take a while to arrive. It took me almost 2 years before my business started making a profit!
Having enough on the side to live comfortably will give you piece of mind for you and your family.
2. Are You Ready For The Stress and Anxiety?
The life of a fresh new business owner is filled with uncertainty. Lots of things will be changing in your life.
You'll find yourself doing 18- hours shifts instead of the cushy 8-hour ones from before.
Balancing your personal life with work might prove more challenging than you first thought.
The first year of your business is guaranteed to be an emotional rollercoaster.
You'll be dancing one week, and practically in tears and ready to give up the other week.
3. Have You Adopted The Right Mindset?
If you've been working your whole life in a typical 9-to-5, you have become accustomed to a certain mindset.
Starting your own business requires determination, motivation, and discipline.
But that won't lead to success. There's a certain amount of madness and narcissism involved in the entrepreneur mindset. You have to have that unwavering self-confidence, that everything you are doing will work out just as you envision it.
Have the passion and the drive to stand by your idea. Believe that you will succeed, or you're doomed to fail. But the road to success isn't a straight path. And it's paved with failures.
Just pick up the pieces and keep going. Remember, the only wait to fail is to quit!
4. Do You Have a Valid Business Idea?
No matter how fresh and fabulous your business idea might be, three boxes have to be ticked.
- What's your audience?
- What problem are you solving for your audience?
- How are you solving the problem for your audience?
If you have a clear answer to the above three questions, you're well under way to get a successful business going.
To be completely thorough, start validating your business idea before you undertake any big investments.
I've written a few guides to help you get a winning business idea going, the links are at the bottom of this post.
Switching from a typical 9-to-5 to being your own boss is serious business. It can be the best or worst decision of your life. Making sure you know what you're doing and know you've thought things through, can save you a lot worry down the way!
Do you have a good story about quitting your job or starting on your own, let me know in the comments!
Here are a few of my older guides on getting a great business idea going:
How to get a winning business idea PART1
How to get a winning business idea PART2
How to get a winning business idea PART3
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I always tell my people that until they are earning twice as much from a part time business as they do their full time job, don't even think of quitting your job.
That's decent advise! It's a great idea to make sure your venture is already profitable before giving up the security of a day job.
great article, especially the goal part reality and what people think, thats so true!! thank you! Alla x
I was as naive as most people when I started out. I thought it was gonna take a me a year to be a huge success. Took me almost 3 years to be moderately successful!
yeah exactly like my story!!! :) i guess we learned the lesson!
Making newbie mistakes is definitely one of the phases all entrepreneurs go through. It's how you handle them to separates success from failure.