Why You Shouldn't Quit Your 9-5 (Even When You're Not Happy)
In today’s blog post, I want to share 5 reasons to not quit your 9-5. Say whatttt?? Yes. You heard that right. Today, I am giving you 5 very specific reasons to NOT quit the job that you don't necessarily love, that is draining your energy and a boss you don't like.
But first, hear me out.
Too often I see people who desperately want to leave their 9-5, make irrational and emotional decisions. Today's podcast is to help you do a quick check before you do something that you can't go back from. And I'll share why. It may also lend some insight as to why you may want to stay longer.
Part of it is discipline. Trust me, I know the feeling of wanting to make your ultimate leap but I care about you too much to not tell you why should stay, just a little bit longer.
Reason #1 - You Can Validate Your Idea Without Financial Stress.
Having the income from your corporate job to support you through the early stages of validating, testing your business is the perfect position to be in. Now if you're saying, "Amanda, my full-time job is working me to the bones, I don't have much time outside of it and my family to work on my business." If you haven't listened to my previous episode on "What's a Bridge-Job and why you might need one before making your ultimate leap" I highly recommend going back and listening to that one. Leaving your corporate job isn't always a "clean break", oftentimes, it is a build of micro-actions and decisions that have taken place over some time. It just looks like someone woke up one day and said, "I'm quitting." and miraculously found a job.
The flip side is, if you quit your job, with no income coming and haven't validated your business is that you'll find yourself in a space of split energy, other distractions will creep in and you could potentially find yourself in a vulnerable state, mentally.
Reason #2 - You Become A Time Ninja
Keeping your Corporate Job while building your business, not only allows you space to test without the pressure of income, it also, in turn, makes you a time ninja. Majority of people aren't born with innate abilities to know how to be efficient, productive and focused on the right activities at the right time. It is typically a skill that is built over time with practice. That being said, when you have a full-time job and are working on your own business, you learn to be as efficient and productive as possible. You focus on what you're producing, not doing.
Your full-time job works as a constraint in your schedule. You can't just show up to your job so with that, you start thinking differently about the time you have outside of it. And because you have limited time outside of your full-time job, you start to look at it and spend it differently. Every minute and every hour matters. Because the more time you spend producing the right work, at the right time with the time you have outside of your full-time job, the closer you get to making your ultimate leap.
You start making better decisions when it comes to your time. Maybe you stop going out for a happy hour on Wednesdays evenings because instead, you're focused on your business. You also recognize that you aren't just giving up Wednesday evenings, you're also (sometimes) giving up Thursday evenings too. Let's say you have a little too much wine at HH, you wake up Thursday, tired and lethargic and the morning was the only time you had that day to spend working on your business...you just missed out on it. But maybe you were planning to work Thursday evening, only after you get home from work, you're so tired from the night before, you push off working on your business.
You start to batch your work and do similar tasks with similar tasks because you know that when you batch tasks, you can become more efficient with your time and ENERGY.
You start to realize how important the time is that you have and how you spend it. You can't get it back. You learn that there are trade-offs and consequences to the decisions you make with the time that you have.
If you don't learn that and quit your job, you're then going to have new-found freedom of an extra 40 hours on your hands and if you're not prepared with how to use it, you could find yourself wasting it. So take advantage of having your Corporate job and leveraging the constraint for the better.
#3 - Reinvest
In addition to not being stressed and giving space to validate your business, you can use the money your business makes or your corporate salary to invest/ reinvest into your business to help you lay the proper foundation from paying for things like incorporating your business, necessary contracts, website hosting, email platform, scheduling tools.
#4 - Simulate The Experience Of Being On Your Own
In a previous episode with Erin Lowery, founder of Broke Millenial, she gave great advice that the one benefit of having a full-time job while working on your side business is that as your business begins to generate revenue, test living only off of that money for a period of time. See what it is like to be solely living off the money your business makes.
Doing that will allow you to better understand:
how much money it costs you to live off of each month
Areas that you might be able to scale back on. In a previous episode with Julie Ciardi, who was a VP at a tech company shared how she and her family downgraded their house and living to be able to afford to quit her job and work on her business full-time.
How to think better. Different situations put you in a different head space. If you know that you need to make money and grow your business, you're going to start asking yourself different questions on how you can grow your business
BONUS! You'll have all the money from your corporate job saved.
#5 - You Learn That Your Circumstances Are Neutral And You Have The Power To Chose What You Make Them Mean.
Trust me when I say I know what it is like to...
dislike a job you're doing and can't wait to get out.
not love your boss and can't wait for the day to quit
feel soo drained after a day's work and like you can't go on
Can't wait for the day to leave
But if you're able to discipline yourself and understand that your happiness is never tied to others or things outside of yourself, you are preparing yourself for solo business owner life.
I've never been more encouraged to explore my emotions and how I think, what I make things mean until I was a business owner.
If you can master that skillset of know that your circumstances, which are facts, are neutral, they only mean what you make them mean, then when you are riding solo, the mental and emotional experience is going to be that much more incredible.
I want you to be encouraged by your full-time job and make the most out of your circumstance, not discouraged and in a state of waiting for the day.
Use your full-time job as a tool, use the constraint to make you more focused, productive. use it to help fund your business as you grow it. Use it as a way to simulate what it will be like when you're on your own.
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Until next time, keep doing it your way.
