How To Quit Your 9-5

You’re getting to the point where you’re strongly considering quitting that 9-5 grind and going all-in on your passion. Congrats. This is an exciting time but also can be really scary. This is how I did it.

In July 2020 I came to a point where I was I was on the verge of burnout. I was putting in a lot of work outside of my 9-5. It was brutal. I knew that if I could have those extra 40 hours a week devoted to my own business, I would thrive.

The hours I spent at that 9-5 were really draining. Not because I didn’t like the work, but because I knew that every minute I didn’t spend working on my own business, meant that I was falling behind.

I had a dream. And I wanted to work towards that dream. I was teetering between getting drained by my job and feeling fulfilled by my passion, and I felt this scale tipping in the wrong direction. I had to correct that course before it was too late.

I created a system to get a steady stream of clients but it wasn’t working just yet. I knew that it was a numbers game, I just had to hit those numbers. I was doing cold outreach, hoping on discovery calls, sending proposals, and trying to close deals. I’ve been doing this since April or May and by the time July came around, I’ve had sent 100s of emails, hoped on dozens of calls, and sent dozens of proposals.

Finally, someone signed a proposal and I landed my first client with the system. It worked. The system worked.

As soon as I knew my system worked, I put in my two weeks. This was a bit risky since I only had one client who paid me 500 bucks, but I had results that my method was going to work.

I also had about 6 months of living expenses saved up before I quit. I was going to give myself 6 months to make this work full time or go back to a corporate job. I’m still here 2 years later so you can guess what happened.

In summary, save up some money, follow a system and get results from it, and quit before you burn out completely. Your mileage may vary.