What To Do BEFORE Quitting Your Job

Sharon Tseung 0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives. Hey guys, is Sharon Tseung and today we’re gonna talk about what to do before quitting your job. So my husband recently quit his job, and I’ve left the nine to five world as well, well, technically, I got laid off and decided to retire from the nine to five. But in my head, I knew that was gonna be my last job. And that it’s either I quit or wait until the startup was running out of money and needed to do some layoffs. And also in 2016, I had quit my job and traveled the world for two years while building passive income stream. So anyway, the point is, I know what it’s like to leave the nine to five world and I know how scary that decision can be. Now we were able to retire because we spent the last decade working on our finances, building our net worth, and creating passive income streams to which we’ve been able to achieve financial freedom. I know that we’re in a position where we can leave our jobs without worry. But we’ve gotten multiple questions about when is the right time to quit your job? What do you need to prepare, and so forth. And that’s why I made this video for the entrepreneurs out there who may or may not have that financial freedom and are wondering about this, the answers are going to be different for everyone. But I’m going to provide my recommendations from my personal experience and research. In this episode, we’re going to go over when to quit and what to prepare. And this is specifically going to be for the case of becoming self employed and going off and doing your own thing. So now let’s talk about when to quit your job. So we all have different reasons why we quit. And you need to be smart with the decisions you make. Because sometimes leaving your job isn’t always the right move. So let’s go over some example reasons you may quit. First off, you could be constantly stressed, my husband was always stressed with work. And sometimes he took it out on me without thinking about it, he recognized that it wasn’t very healthy, he would take client calls where some of these people would yell at him for things that were out of his control. And I don’t think it was good for his mental health, the energy seeps into the rest of your days and your life. So if you’re finding yourself this way, it may be time to think about what else is out there. Number two, you don’t have time for your own stuff. What I mean by own stuff is maybe your other side hustles even time with family members and things like that. So if you find yourself at a job where you’re working most of your life, and you’re like I don’t have time for anything else, this could be a bad sign. So for me with my most recent position, before I got laid off, I actually stayed at my job until getting laid off because I had a lot of time to work on my own stuff. And to be honest, my job was super flexible and chill that I felt like I could just stay there as long as I could until they didn’t need me anymore. And that’s why I didn’t pull the trigger myself. However, my husband literally took calls during our wedding and our honeymoon and there was no nine to five really for him because he was essentially on call throughout the entire day, every single day, even on weekends. And that made it hard for him to work on other side hustles and things like that. So if my job were demanding like that I would have quit a long time ago because we have our side hustles and online businesses that we are growing right now. And not only that, it’s important to have good work life balance. Now that I’m retired, I spend most of my days enjoying life. And work is optional. So again, gauge, if you are spending most of your days at work, and you have no time for anything else in your life. Number three, maybe

you’ve been in the same spot for years and you’re uninspired and you’re not growing. Albert Einstein once said, When you stop learning, you start dying when you go into work, but you’re waiting for it to end waiting for weekends. You know, you’re uninspired. If you’re not growing and you’re not enjoying your time, you might end up saying things like, Oh, I’m grateful for this job, though, things could be worse. And it’s great to be grateful for what you have. But using this as an excuse to stay at your job is not the healthiest. It’s saying you don’t deserve more and that you shouldn’t follow your own path. If you do this, you might find yourself stuck with no growth and no self development. I say you got to live life to your fullest potential. And that’s honestly why I teach what I teach. So if you feel yourself being complacent, it can be time to reflect and maybe look for something else in your life. Number four, maybe you feel like crying because of your work environment. So I’ve been in these situations in which I’ve had toxic supervisors and bosses who made me cry at work, they wouldn’t train me and then they would make me feel bad if I asked questions like they had no time to talk to me. So the work environment the boss you have, the coworkers you have can really affect your life office politics and make you hate work. If you’re feeling drained and exhausted. It also means that you’re not enjoying what you do. And you have to really gauge your mental health. If work is harming you and making you dislike your life, chances are it’s not worth it to stick out you only have one life to live. So you got to make sure you’re living a life you enjoy that aligns with your values. Now if you’re in a situation in which you don’t want to be an entrepreneur and you’re not ready to retire, you may want to start interviewing for other jobs while you’re at your current one. If you notice these different things like you’re stressed, you’re unhappy, you’re crying, you don’t have time for anything. Maybe the solution is to look for other jobs. So if you want tips around this, let me know in the comments below and maybe I’ll create a video on that, because I’ve honestly switched jobs so many times, and jumping jobs is honestly a great way to boost your salary as long as you don’t do it too often, and too quickly that employers wonder why you can’t stay put for a longer period of time. But if you’re an entrepreneur deciding whether to quit, let’s get into what to do before you take the lead. So number one, you got to do your research not to be a Debbie Downer. But if you look at this article from Investopedia, it says data from the BLS shows that approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open 45% during the first five years, and 65%, during the first 10 years. That’s why you have to figure out exactly what you’re trying to build before you just take the leap their business ideas that are faster to profitability, and others that take a lot longer, I would gauge the following how much time you have how much capital you have, what you’re passionate about, and what your strengths are, these things are good to figure out which business idea matches you, I tend to recommend the routes that take less time and appeal to your strengths and passions. That way you don’t burn out. And when you see results, it’ll build more momentum and give you motivation to keep going. But regardless, if you decide to leave your job and establish your own brand and business, you have to know that all of this will take time. If you go on my channel, I have a bunch of side hustle ideas that you can start researching and seeing what can make sense for you. Number two, consider starting side hustles while you’re at your job, so in 2015, I actually started side hustles while I was on my job because I wanted to feel safer, I was planning to quit my job and travel the world while building passive income. So it was gonna be a huge leap and nobody else was doing what I was doing. Now I’m more of a risk averse person. So I wanted to have multiple income streams working for me. So I didn’t have to depend on just one thing, I started creating digital products for Etsy, building up my blog. And once I saw some passive income coming in from my side hustles, I felt a lot more confident and taking the leap, it made it a lot easier for me to quit my job and travel the world for two years, because I knew I had money coming in. And I even took multiple part time remote positions during this transition so that I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about money. And then later I could transition to fully working on my own business ideas rather than working other remote jobs. Another thing is when you work a day job, you could use those funds from your day job to find your side hustles or businesses if they require capital. So that’s why I highly recommend to actually implement the ideas you researched, and see if you can make money from them. So all the side hustles you might be seeing on my channel, go ahead and start them. Now you might be like, Well, I don’t have time. Well, there’s a quote saying that your nine to five pays the bills while your six to 10 builds the Empire. If you want it that badly, you’re gonna make time for it. So see if you can use your nights and your weekends to start working on something else. I think that many people advocate just going all in on something and have no backup plan. And yes, many people have become successful doing that. And maybe it’ll work for you. But like mentioned, many businesses do fail, I recognize that the good thing about going all in without a plan is the fear that comes with the decision that’s gonna drive you to make things work no matter what and help you be creative with your approaches. But I would also say that if you have a bit of backup, yes, you give yourself some cushion and you’re testing the waters, but you’re still taking that risk of quitting your job. And I do think that it will still drive you into high gear and make you focus on building that business because that actually is what happened to me when I left my job and travel the world. Even though I had that backup, I was still scared, I was still even more motivated to make things work. So I think you’re still gonna get that motivation, even if you have your job while you’re doing the side hustles initially, all this talk brings me to number three, you gotta make sure you have cash reserves. So experts say you want to save at least three to six months worth of living expenses, you can use tools like Personal Capital, which I’m going to link below. It lets you track your net worth as well as the income and expenses you have from your accounts. That way you can gauge your living expenses to see where your money is going to every month. And then if you multiply that by three to six, you can figure out how much you need to save up. So by doing this, you’re going to have more peace of mind that you have something to use after you quit your job to pursue something else. Going back to when I first left my job in 2016. I actually had at least two years of emergency funds saved up again, I’m definitely more risk averse. I did take multiple part time positions, I saved a lot of money, cut a lot of my expenses, and I booked my travel six months out so I knew that I’d be safe and wouldn’t have to worry about money. Plus, I also did take those multiple part time remote positions and things to fall back on while I was pursuing my side hustle. So don’t quit your job because you’re upset and you’re being impulsive. You have to plan out this large decision number four, you should create an action plan. Now with all this money talk a good thing to do is create an action plan in place. So create a timeline for yourself of when you would potentially leave your job then work backwards and figure out the steps you need to take in order to get to your goals to make you comfortable enough to leave your job. So as an example, I actually bought a one way ticket to Stockholm six months out and it was going to be my deadline of one When I would take this leap, I figured that if I didn’t have everything ready by then I didn’t have to take that flight. But I was hoping that buying that ticket would kick me into high gear, which it actually did. Obviously, I was doing something different where I was leaving to be a digital nomad. So this scenario might not totally apply to you. But I learned that creating this deadline and strategy to get there really helped me prepare myself for the transition. So some example goals you might have are to quit your job in one year. And then if that’s the case, then work backwards and say, I need to say about two months of expenses by month three and four months expenses by month six, or another goal you might have is to start looking for side hustles in for freelance work, then you would create deadlines for yourself of I needed to decide on the business I want to start within one month, then you might say something like, I want to see profitability from the side hustles within four months. So creating these specific goals and timelines for yourself will really help you plan your escape from the nine to five. All right, number five, you gotta use your benefits. And this is an interesting one that isn’t talked about enough, if you quit your job, you’re gonna lose your benefits. So if you have medical, dental and vision insurance through your employer, you may want to visit your dentist and your doctor before you leave. Also, as an example, if you have access to trainings that your company gives for employee growth, go and take advantage of them and learn new skills. And when you’re preparing to leave, you can go on healthcare.gov to get quotes and get insurance. That’s what we did upon leaving our jobs. And it’s honestly not as bad as you might think. Because people think it’s going to cost like a couple grand a month, but we pay about $650 a month for the both of us. And granted we are young and healthy. But yeah, don’t use insurance as an excuse not to leave your job because it can be more affordable than you think. Number six, you got to start building your circle of like minded people, there’s a saying that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I honestly think that’s really true. And also ever since I started side hustles I met a lot of people have similar minds like me, which made me feel a lot less lonely in the space. It can be lonely to go off and do your own thing. So what I did was I went to meetups, and I even started my own meetup for a while to find other like minded people. And when I traveled the world as a digital nomad, I joined a Slack group called Nomad list as well as many Facebook groups to meet other like minded people. Now that I’m a content creator, I’ve also met a lot of creators through conferences. So if I were you, I would do the same thing. So you got to find people who think like you have similar interests as you and are people you admire. If you’re in a mode in which you want to work hard to achieve your dreams, you should find other people who work hard towards their dreams so you can get inspired as well. It’ll influence you and improve the choices you make, and it’ll improve the transition to entrepreneurship make it a lot smoother. Also, being around a community of other entrepreneurial people will allow you to help each other because you might have questions along the way and you can get help and mentorship from those who can relate and have done similar things are my last tip. Don’t cut ties. Instead of being rude and saying bye to your job without a warning. It’s a good idea to keep the door open. You want to stay on good terms with people you’ve worked with, because you never know if you’re going to need to go back to a job again. Now hopefully that’s not the case but you never know maybe they’re gonna have open positions in the future or help you out with reference letters if you need to go to another job. So be courteous give them maybe a 30 plus day notice instead of a two week notice, send thank you letters and give people your personal contact information.

So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai