Is it necessary to quit your job to start a business?

Quit Job

Is it necessary to quit your job to start a business? This question I have asked myself many times before starting, and surely many more people have asked the same thing. Is it really worth it? In fact, it is a very difficult decision to make, since on the one hand you want to put all the punch possible to ensure quick results, and, on the other hand, you fear that it will not pay off quickly and you will not be able to assume your day-to-day expenses to live solely from your business.

I think this decision will depend on many factors, but mainly on how well you know yourself, your abilities, your habits, and your finances. There are also certain things that simply completely rule out the option of quitting your job, for example, if you are full of debts, if you have many expenses, responsibilities, among others, that you must take into account.

Personally, I will always advise that you focus 100% on your entrepreneurship, and if you can quit your job to start, even better. This is due to various reasons such as focus, motivation, learning, energy, creativity, speed, among many other things. I think of all the things that I did when we started our startup and it is impossible for me to think that I could do all that with a job at the same time. However, the option of doing it at the same time is also valid and used by many, you will have to try a little more, but it is still an option that can lead you to success. The question is what is the best option for you? In this article, we are going to analyze all the things you should know about yourself to make this decision, and based on that, see which option would be the best for you.

Personal finance

Start by looking at your personal finances. Check how much you have in savings or passive income (income that does not depend on your presence). There are 3 economic situations: you have a lot of savings and income, you have little savings and income, you have no savings or income. In the first option, with savings and income, you can afford to resign and enter your business full time. In some cases, you could even do it without risking your lifestyle. You only have to set aside money to survive one or two years, or make sure that you can live with the passive income you already have and make sure you put the full-throttle on your business in that period of time, so that you can achieve results and obtain income. as soon as possible.

In the second case, with little savings and income, see how long you can survive with that amount. The most advisable thing is that it be an amount that can last between one to two years. If you see that you do not have enough for that time, you always have the option of reducing your expenses. The good life you had by receiving an income every month is something that you will have to risk for a while, in exchange for possible long-term freedom. See if you can move to a cheaper place, get rooms, or rent rooms in your house or apartment through platforms such as airbnb. Cut your lunches in luxurious restaurants, and change them for cooking at home or eating cheap menus. Replace expensive leisure activities like trips or expensive gyms with free sports or sponsored trips, staying with friends or family and using miles for free tickets. In truth, for us Latin Americans we have it very easy in terms of cutting expenses, at least in Lima where I live, you find menu lunches of $ 3 dollars, room rentals of $ 200 a month and super cheap clothes in places like Gamarra.

If you do not have savings or you have debts, you are definitely going to have to do your business at the same time, if not, how do you live? Here you will need an impeccable organization. You must manage the things of your daily work at a specific time and set aside a few hours a day for your undertaking, and comply with them as a golden rule. The most common mistake there is the lack of seriousness that people give to their entrepreneurship, placing their employment above, as it is a fixed income, while entrepreneurship is placed in the background by not giving immediate income. You must do both and do them well, and thus have a good financial back to live on while you build your business together.

Multitasking capability

How many things can you do at the same time well done? This is something important to know if you decide to work alongside your business or not. If you are a good person at multitasking, you will be able to do your work alongside your entrepreneurship without many problems, since you will not stress as much as others when doing it and you will stay productive in both. In the end, it is a matter of organizing and separating a specific time for your job and another for your business and respecting it. At the same time, you must ensure that you do not mix one thing with the other, as it is essential so that you do not blur one of them and be successful in both. If you have this multitasking ability, you don’t have to quit your job to start a business.

If you are a lousy person at multitasking and it stresses you out a lot, who prefers to do one thing at a time, but knowing that you are going to do it well and not half, then it is definitely better that you dedicate yourself 100% to your endeavor. There are many people in this category, without a doubt I consider myself one of them. I believe that the level of progress when you focus 100% on one activity is a thousand times better than if you have another activity that consumes the mental energy and creativity of the day. For me the human mind is like the body, if you exercise it all day, it wears out. Demanding my mind to work after 9 hours squeezing it in an office is simply not the same as having a fresh and motivated mind in the morning.

Both options are valid, but knowing this part of yourself will help you a lot to make a better decision about starting with your job or not. You will be able to save yourself many hours of stress and you will be able to avoid doing things by halves, and best of all, you will not deceive yourself and you will enjoy the process much more.

Level of concentration and focus

he human being definitely has a limit in terms of the level of concentration that he can have per day, it varies according to each person, but by sheer logic, if you do an activity for 5 hours in a row, it is obvious that what you capture the first hour will not be the same as in the fifth. The level of concentration, creativity and energy has a maximum time in the day, and you have to know how to get the most out of it at the right time. If you get distracted, it is surely because those rush hours have already expired and now you simply have too many, you have to know how to balance this to be focused on the moments that are worth it.

If you are easily distracted during the day, it is best not to quit your current job. The good thing about a job is that you can get away with it despite being distracted. Let’s face it, have you really analyzed how much work you put into a workday? If you calculate how much time you spend on a coffee break, a cigarette break, conversations with colleagues, trips to the bathroom, lunch, desserts, calls or meetings that sometimes are too much, clean your inbox, support that you do to others areas by which they do not necessarily measure you, WhatsApp, Instagram, news, among others, it is very likely that in a working day you really only work productively for a maximum of 3 hours. In a job, the vast majority of people are easily out of focus by these distractions, but despite this, they will still get paid at the end of the month.

If you have the ease of concentration and focus if you can focus 100% on your entrepreneurship and quit your job. When you start a business you usually do it from home, and believe me there are many distractions there too. Among things like Netflix, YouTube, news, social networks, WhatsApp, friends or family who visit, rooms or family with whom you live, among many other things. If you get easily distracted by these things, and you are not 100% productive with your time, you will not grow and the income will never come, and it is very likely that you will end up returning to your job. If you can concentrate well and you like what you do, you will see that the level of attention and dedication working alone in your business is much higher than that of a job in an office surrounded by people, And the level of productivity can be something really amazing. Personally, I feel that I am much more productive working alone in a startup than in an office job, it really is a huge difference.

Power Level

Imagine the following scenario. After your job, you grab an hour of traffic, and you finally get home. You left 7:30 am to avoid morning traffic and you arrive around 7:30 pm, twelve hours later, tired, like the vast majority of workers. Once at home you have other responsibilities, you must prepare something to eat, you must attend to your family and apart, your exercise for the day, or a course or diploma that you got into. If you want to rest well, you decide to sleep about 8 hours, which means that you will be in bed at 10pm, since the next day you get up at 6am to go to work. In other words, you have 2 and a half hours to do all those activities before the day is over, and apart from that, do you want to add a few more hours a day to your endeavor? Now imagine the weekend Due to having been working all week, obviously, it makes you want to do other things more related to leisure because your body needs it to maintain mental health and endure all next week. It is very likely that you want to sleep as much as you can, you want to do the exercise that you did not do in the week, and of course, go out to eat and have a few drinks at night, because you feel that you deserve it for having worked so hard all week in your office. Sounds familiar? Well, you feel that you deserve it for having worked so hard all week in your office. Sounds familiar? Well, you feel that you deserve it for having worked so hard all week in your office. Sounds familiar?

The level of energy and motivation you have to do things is essential to know about yourself. In my personal case, saying that I am going to do something along with my work is a total deception, and I recognize this very well. I have tried and failed in the attempt, you can call it weakness, lack of motivation, or whatever you like, I call it, knowing myself. Because of this, I prefer the option of saving enough to be able to dedicate myself 100% to my entrepreneurship, and if it doesn’t go well, I simply go back to work and start saving again, and then quit and try again, over and over again, until things work out. The level of demand that I have in the jobs that I have had are highly demanding, and this level of demand has only grown over time, as there are more and more responsibilities. I have always been very responsible with the jobs I had, therefore, I always gave them 100% and without distractions. The energy to do two things at the same time for me is increasingly distant as you progress in your job, it works very well for me to do one thing or another. In fact, I can’t imagine achieving all the things we did in our startup with a job at par.

This is my particular case, but there are many cases of people who do manage to do it. This may be because they have a lot of energy, they have impressive motivation, they have a job that does not demand so much of them, or they are so good at their jobs that they suddenly don’t have much trouble doing it, and they can calmly undertake at the same time. This is also valid and something to applaud, but it is definitely not for everyone. It is extremely important to know this aspect of yourself, to know if you are going to have enough strength to undertake on a par with your job or not.

  • Level of responsibility and discipline

The level of responsibility you have and the discipline to do things is something that definitely influences a lot. If you are only responsible as long as you have a person present demanding you work, like a boss, then you do need a job in order to survive. And if you are not very disciplined in your free time, nor do you set goals or objectives to do other activities outside of your job (sports, art, etc.), it will be very risky for you to leave your job to undertake, it is safer that you do it at the par if you have this profile. You can find out this by asking simple questions like Do you need a coach present demanding you to do exercises or can you go on your own? Do you have a sport or activity that you do frequently in a disciplined way? If you already have these habits present fine,

On the other hand, if you already have a high level of responsibility and discipline, it is very likely that you will really invest good working hours in your venture if you decide to quit, despite all the distractions that may be at home or where you go to work. The amount of work that can be achieved if you have these two things is amazing and comparing, you may even realize that in your office you spent a lot of time being non-productive. Respecting working hours for your business is the most important thing of all, even if they are a few hours, you must keep them and not change them for anything in the world, this defines how responsible you are. Give that time the importance and respect it deserves, and you will see results that you had not imagined possible.

Conclusion

Both options are valid and admirable, both the option of starting alongside your entrepreneurship or quitting your job to dedicate yourself 100% to entrepreneurship. If you choose one option or another it does not make you a better or a worse person, in fact, with any option you choose it already makes you better than someone who does nothing at all. The only thing that matters is the results you get from your venture, and how quickly you can achieve them, without neglecting your day-to-day responsibilities and your personal finances. I have seen people progress much faster than others in their endeavors doing it part-time, than others full-time, and vice versa. I think that knowing all these things about yourself is the main thing to be able to choose between one option and the other. Ask yourself these questions and answer them as honestly as possible: Do I have enough savings or income to leave my job for one or two years? Can I do two things at the same time? How distracted am I? How much energy can I give out of work? How responsible am I based on my life history? Make a good decision after analyzing these questions and start doing your thing. Finally, do not be guided by how well a person did in their endeavor because they did it along with their job or because they resigned, in reality, each one has their own path and style, it is a matter of finding the right yours and get started asap.

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