How To Quit Your Job and Start Your Business The Smart Way!

business development

10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Quit My Job To Start A Business

"Take the leap and chase your dreams" is the worst possible advice you could ever follow.

It's just not a good idea to walk away from a stable job to start a new business if you don't have any experience running a business.

You'll never hear that kind of advice coming from an experienced entrepreneur.

The people you see posting that nonsense on social media are not running a full-time business. They might have a side hustle of some sort that may or may not be making any money.

But "chase your dreams" advice without any additional context is not something that you'll hear from an experienced small business owner.

In this article, you'll get the substantive advice you need to help you develop your business plan and make your decision about whether or not you should quit your job to start your own business.

Here's the index for the video below where I explain the 10 things I wish I knew before I started my business:

0:00 - Meet some full-time business owners.
1:10 - Block out a business development day.
2:07 - You have to learn marketing.
4:26 - Start listening to business podcasts.
- Side Hustle School
- How I Built This
6:05 - Budget for training.
7:48 - Join a small business community.
8:53 - Get your money together before you quit.
11:10 - Budget for hiring help.
13:54 - Invest in a CRM tool.
16:12 - Get a separate phone number for your business.

When should you quit your day job when starting a business?

There's no definitive answer here, just some guidelines.

The main thing to know is you absolutely do not want to quit your job to start your business until after you've gotten some professional advice and developed a business plan.

By professional advice, I mean either a mentor or a business coach.

A mentor, in this instance, is an experienced, full-time business owner...ideally someone with experience in the industry you plan to be in.

This mentor will be able to cut years off your learning curve and save you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on what kind of business you plan to start.

It can be extremely difficult to find a mentor, though, because the overwhelming majority of people who dream about starting a business are not committed to putting in the work to be successful.

The people who are in a position to mentor you know this and will be very reluctant to invest their time mentoring you because they've been burned before and wasted a bunch of time trying to help people who were as enthusiastic as you are, but never did anything with the advice.

So what do you do if you can't find a mentor?

Get A Business Coach

Getting a business coach is important for anyone looking to start a business, but it's particularly important for Black women thinking about starting a business.

Here are some statistics that Black women looking to start a business should be aware of:

According to the Census Bureau, Black women start more businesses than any other demographic.
Black woman-owned businesses average just $27K in annual revenue compared to $143K in annual revenue for all other woman-owned businesses. American Express estimates that revenue disparity to equal $1 TRILLION per year.
Lack of business skills and mentorship is cited as the primary reason for the revenue disparity, as detailed in this study conducted by the Federal Reserve.

You don't want to quit your job until you talk to somebody who knows how to run a profitable business and can give you a good idea of what it will take for you to be successful.

Don't quit your day job until after your business is generating revenue.

That's the best way to go about it because it's much better to replace your salary (or a portion of it) and then quit, rather than quitting and then having to figure out how to pay your bills.

It may not sound as exciting as TAKE THE LEAP, but if you have a stable job, particularly a salaried job with benefits, you're much better off using our current job to pay your bills and pay for your early stage business expenses.

How do you start generating revenue before quitting?

Getting a mentor or hiring a business coach is the easiest way to go about it because the easiest way to learn how to do anything is to get someone who knows how to do it to teach you.

The NUMBER ONE mistake that aspiring entrepreneurs make is trying to figure everything out by themselves.

Before you reach out to a mentor or a business coach--or even start to develop a business plan--you want to make sure you actually have a good business idea.

[RELATED: How To Work From Home]

How much money do you need to quit your day job and start your own business?

You'll see people advising you to have six months of living expenses saved up before you quit.

That's not nearly enough.

Even two years worth of savings is not enough if you quit your job without a mentor, a business coach, or any prior business experience because no matter what you estimate, it's going to take three times as long and cost fives times more than what you estimated before you start making money...IF you're able to hang on that long.

You don't know what you don't know and that lack of business knowledge is extremely expensive.

This is why getting mentorship or business coaching before you quit your job is critical.

The best time to start your business is while you have a job so that you're able to pay your bills while you're learning how to build a business that will pay your bills.

So "how much money do I need to save before I quit?" is the wrong perspective to take.

A much less risky approach is to ask "how do I get my business to replace my salary before I quit my day job?"

Can I start a business while working full time?

ABSOLUTELY!

That's the best way to do it!

You want your business to start replacing your salary BEFORE you quit your job.

There will be all kinds of expenses associated with your business that you won't become aware of until you get going in earnest.

When you have a job, you have an income that can pay for those business expenses.

If you've quit your job, those business expenses will come out of whatever savings you have and that's not a recipe for success because if you don't know what you're doing, you'll throw away good money on something that's never going to help you generate revenue.

If you have a skill that you can teach in the form of an online course, that is an excellent way to start replacing your salary before you quit. And, even better, an online course is passive income.

As I demonstrate in the video below, all you need to get started is your smartphone.

Again, this is why mentorship or business coaching is so critical. You do not want to learn every lesson the hard way because that is extremely expensive.

Learning too many lessons the hard and expensive way is why so many people ultimately fail at running a business and end up having to go back to work with less savings than they had when they quit.

The most reliable way of becoming a successful entrepreneur is to get trained by a successful entrepreneur.

You can start educating yourself now.

In the video below, you'll get my book recommendations for new and aspiring business owners.

You want to begin your business education while you still have a paycheck coming in and books are an excellent place to start.

Book list:

Am I too old to start a business?

A 50-year-old entrepreneur is almost twice as likely to start a successful business as a 30-year-old.

And a 60-year-old entrepreneur is three times as likely to found a successful startup as a 30-year old.

All your years of experience are a tremendous asset, not a liability.

If you have a business idea, you should pursue it! And you don't have to quit your day job to get started.

Conclusion: Is owning your own business worth it?

Entrepreneurship is absolutely worth it IF you actually build a business that provides you with financial freedom, instead of creating a thankless, underpaying job for yourself as described in The E-Myth.

The right business idea will give you your freedom by bringing you money AND free time in abundance.

With plenty of money and plenty of free time, you are now free to live whatever kind of life you desire.

You can travel the world.

You can start a non-profit and help people.

You can do both and lots more.

The freedom you'll enjoy as a business owner is freedom you'll never enjoy as an employee.

But the thing is, you have to be willing to put in the work to get to the benefits of owning a business and you have to get mentorship or business coaching before quitting your current job.

Otherwise, that dream job you have in mind for yourself can turn into a nightmare that wipes out your savings.

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