Your Freedom Blueprints
In many people’s minds, the road to quitting your day job and starting your own business involves taking a huge risk: handing in your two weeks’ notice, investing tens of thousands of dollars, and slaving away trying to make your business work. While I’m not saying that this doesn’t lead to the eventual successes, I personally don’t prefer going this route.
What I worked towards was to gradually build income streams on the side WHILE I was working at my day job that were designed to eventually replace my salary. Doing this allowed me a softer cushion and a bigger wiggle room, as I already had a fall-back option and I wasn’t in a do-or-die situation when I did get laid off. Sure, it was slow and steady, but wouldn’t you rather go slow and steady and have a bigger chance of success instead of suddenly quitting your day job then gambling it all away on something that might or might not work?
Truth be told, you do not need to quit your day job in order to get your sideline income streams started. You could get a lot accomplished with an extra 2-3 hours every day after work, and working on your business on the weekends. With a clear focus and determination to get things done, it is completely possible for you to be able to build a separate income stream within six months that equals (if not surpasses) what you’re currently making at your corporate affair.
Instead of taking a huge risk with a business that might or might not work (a franchise business, for example, which requires a huge investment of capital, not to mention time), I suggest that you invest some time and money building something for yourself on the side first before you take that leap of quitting your day job. Slow and steady truly is the risk-free road to quitting your day job. There are plenty of things that you could do to build an income on the side. Some of them might not be huge successes; but if you do the math, you only need six income baskets consistently making $500 every month to get you a $36,000 revenue annually, a healthy full-time income by any means.
The quest to building a sideline income large enough for you to be able to quit your day job is a long road not taken by many. I salute you for being brave enough to be searching for information, but I have to warn you: you do not have an easy journey ahead of you.
I know that you’re probably ripping and roaring to get started, but before you actually do anything, you need to practice the art of goal-setting and ask yourself one simple question:
WHY do you want to quit your day job?
Grab a piece of paper and freewrite. Jot down any and all reasons you have that’s keeping you motivated to quit your day job RIGHT NOW. Write for as long as you can, until you have every single motivating reason down on paper. It doesn’t matter if your motivation document is as short as a few paragraphs or as long as 20 pages — the important thing is that you actually get it down on paper.
Be as detailed as you can be. Is it the desire of being mobile and making money while travelling across the world? Is it the desire to be in control of your own destiny and not have to rely on feeble things such as job security? Is it the fact that you hate your boss and don’t get along with your coworkers? It doesn’t matter how complicated or shallow it might sound to others — every single one of us have our own reasons why we want to go on this journey of freedom from our full-time job.
Once you’re done with this document, keep it somewhere you see it everyday. Print it out if you typed it on your computer. Nobody else has to know about this document (although having an accountability buddy might help), but what’s important is that you keep it with you at all times.
Why do I insist that you do this? Because somewhere along the way, you’re going to lose motivation. Similar to diets and exercise programs, our motivations end up waning over time and we fall back under the comfort of the mundane everyday things. This document is going to be the fuel that keeps your fire burning. When you wake up in the morning (or you get home from work) and you’re tempted to skip your activities for the day, bring out this piece of paper and read it over, even add on to it if you like. I personally start all my mornings by reading this document. This will keep you motivated to finish your tasks for the day and help you resist the temptation to skip your daily activities.
Unlike many of my peers, my heart and mind was always set on being a small business owner for my “career.” I really had no idea what kind of business I wanted to put up (though I’ve always wanted to put up a record label, but I kept my options open since the music industry was in shambles). I moved to Canada to pursue a career in marketing shortly after I graduated university. In my mind, I was going to save up enough money to use as my startup capital, then quit after I’ve saved enough money so I could focus solely on starting my business.
But things don’t exactly work out the way you plan it. During my short-lived tenure as a marketing coordinator, I discovered that it was possible to make money online — building up my hopes that I’d earn enough money from it to replace my salary and eventually quit my day job. However, my situation took an unexpected turn when our entire department staff got laid off due to the recession, and I was forced to “quit” my day job right on the spot.
Instead of polishing up my resume and looking for another job however, I decided to use my “time off” to ramp up my efforts and income from my existing revenue streams. Luckily, I had some savings in my bank account to tide me over. The dedicated focus allowed me to work on my business day in and day out, which eventually lead to me replacing my day job income within just a year of starting out.
With that said, I think that there’s only a few criteria when you should take the plunge to quit your day job:
Congratulations, you’ve managed to build an income stream from your sideline activities that finally matches your salary from your corporate shindig. But during the process, you found yourself working 10-12 hour days (8 from your day job, and 2-4 extra hours everyday — not to mention the times that you work during the weekend) and surely, you didn’t take on this journey to have no time for anything else but sleep.
Now it’s time to find the guts to do what you’ve been dreaming of this whole time: quit your day job. As crazy as it might seem, this is a difficult journey for most people. Despite the fact that you built yourself revenue streams that is equal to your current pay, many people still won’t be able to take that leap. Why? Because the security of the day job is ADDICTING. No matter how much money you’re making on your own, it still seems so unstable. With your day job, at least you can count on it being there as long as you report to work every weekday… right?
Actually, that isn’t necessarily the case. In these day and times, there really isn’t such a thing such as job security anymore. During the past couple of years, how many jobs have been wiped out because of the recession? Even more serious is the fact that we’ve seen entire INDUSTRIES suffering — even the vehicle industry has taken a huge hit.
Nowadays, you can’t exactly count on the security of your day job because there isn’t much security there, if at all! The only thing that you can really rely on is for the set of skills that you’ve developed for yourself to make you money day in, and day out. No matter what your means of a sideline income is, there is no doubt that you’ve developed a wide range of skills that will help you pay yourself a steady paycheck every month. Whether it’s decision making, the skill of building websites, marketing skills, the ability to research a market — it isn’t easy to build an income for yourself, and you’ve managed to do it.
So now that you’ve done what most people only dream of doing and built a business that will be able to support your current lifestyle, you owe it to yourself to quit your day job and actually give yourself the gift of freedom. Because even if your business takes a hit, you can be confident that you have what it takes to build another one that is just as (if not more) successful. They say that you can take away all of a self-made millionaire’s money, and in a few months he’ll be able to replace that income if not have more. That is the position you find yourself in right now.
That Monday morning you wake up and don’t have to suffer rush hour traffic will be one of the most rewarding days you’ll ever experience.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque sed felis. Aliquam sit amet felis. Mauris semper, velit semper laoreet dictum, quam diam dictum urna, nec placerat elit nisl in quam. Etiam augue pede, molestie eget, rhoncus at, convallis ut, eros. Aliquam pharetra.