I Quit My Job. Here’s How I Planned the Start as an Entrepreneur
July 2019 I said to my colleagues “In 5 year time, I’ll have my own company with some employees”. At that time I was working at a consultancy firm in The Netherlands and just started my full-time career.
As the months passed by, I started to recognize my thoughts. Do I really like what I’m currently doing? The answer quickly became clear to me, “No”. As I had agreed upon with my employer, I was able to travel for 6 months at the beginning of 2020. I was on my travels for 2 months until COVID-19 hit the world and I decided to go home.
My employer was happy to welcome me back since I was only on unpaid leave. So I started working for them one week after I arrived back in The Netherlands. After several weeks I started to recognize the same thoughts again. Do I like working here? Again the answer was “No”. I started to become more active on IndieHackers and it motivated me to build things in my own time.
Fast forward to July 2020. I decided to quit my job. Not completely without preparation but it was pretty spontaneously. I had listened to the advice of Michael Pilarczyk. He advises people to have at least 6 months of cash to pay for all the costs that you normally have. So if you have 6 months without any income you shouldn’t have to worry about paying your bills. Since my travels stopped way earlier I had the budget to overcome this.
Average cost of living per month x 6 = required savings
What’s the worst thing that can happen?
Once I told my boss I’m going to quit, some anxiety struck me. What if I can’t get any work as a freelancer? What if I end up lonely in the 23m2 student room I live in? What if I get bored to death and end up depressed? My irrational mind was taking over. All of a sudden I wasn’t so sure of my choice anymore. In my perspective, this was due to loss aversion. Things we lose are more painful than the things we gain.
But from the personal development books I’ve read in the last year, I learnt a big thing. If you have these questions and you don’t know the answer, you’re asking the wrong questions. Of course, you need to have some sort of security but the only question that really mattered in my case was
What’s the worst thing that can happen?
The worst thing that can happen is that I don’t earn any money in the next 6 months and I’ll have to find a job again. Well, since I’m a medior full stack developer I don’t worry about finding a job. So the anxiety is based on the lies my mind is telling me. It’s preventing me from getting harmed. It’s preventing me to step outside of my comfort zone. So screw my thoughts.
Daily journaling
Since two months I started to journal on a daily base. This is to get a clearer vision in my mind where I’m standing right now and where I’m heading to. It always seemed like such a huge thing to do. Write on a daily basis… But I made the rule with myself that I only have to write 2 sentences a day. However, my thoughts never fit into 2 sentences so I always end up with more. I skip a day from time to time but the key is to pick it up again the next day.
When you get to learn yourself you know your strengths and weaknesses. And successful people seem like they’re a pro at everything. While I was listening to a podcast between Tony Robbins and Tim Ferris, they made me clear that successful people aren’t a pro in everything.
Successful people are good at just a couple of skills and they focus the most on those skills.
Only action leads to results
But this is a trap as well. Entrepreneurs are resourceful people. They see opportunities in everything. That is the beauty of entrepreneurship but also a pitfall. The key here is focus. You can’t become an expert in every field. Become good at one thing and you’ll succeed. So pick an industry and service and start delivering. It sounds so simple, right? This first step already was so difficult for me. I’m telling myself “I like so many things!”. As Michael Pilarczyk would say. Write them all down and see how many things you can come up with. So that’s it, I wrote them down and eventually came up with a list of 9 items. Not so much anymore eh?
- Email marketing service
- Marketing freelancer
- Marketing service
- Copywriter
- Freelance developer
- Start an e-commerce store
- Affiliate marketing
- Start a SaaS
- Start a podcast
One thing I learnt from my previous manager is to plot things in a matrix. So the axes I saw while journaling about these ideas were return on investment (ROI) and experience. The x-axis exists of Low Experience to High Experience. The y-axis exists of Low ROI to High ROI within 1 year.
So here you can see that the most profitable option would be freelancing as a developer (5). While I love developing, I quit my job because I didn’t want to work for corporates. So actually there was a third axis involved. Happiness. I gave each item an indicator of happiness on a scale from 1 to 5. The top 3 items with the most happiness were:
- Start an e-commerce store
- Start a podcast
- Marketing service
With this in mind, I created a grading system with three factors. Happiness, experience and ROI. Sum them and put them in a chart line and you’ll get the following result:
Marketing service and freelance developer are the best options. I noticed I was more attracted by the marketing service. So the following months I will focus on doing marketing for a couple of clients to learn the ins and outs. This I will use to start my own e-commerce store eventually. The idea of starting a podcast also attracted me a lot.
Listing all options and giving them a grade clarified what I should do in the upcoming months. Action without clarity is worthless because you’ll remain in the dark.
If you want to follow my entrepreneurial journey make sure to follow me on Medium🤠
