Am I mad for just wanting to quit my job?
Hi, I've just hit 30 and realised how low my confidence was in my 20s. I never really believed in myself. Now I've worked for some companies I realise just how good I am at building a product. But what annoys me is it isn't really mine. I pour my heart and soul into the stuff I build but then it is taken away from me. I love building stuff and continually improving it. I instinctively know what I don't know and learn it for the purpose of building a product.
What I am asking is, if you are financially secure for about 2 years, can you just quit your job and build what you like? I have no responsibilities and want to just do what I please for a while. Is this mad?
No, not mad. But it is a pretty good recipe for failure. You've worked in a structured environment your whole life — like most people — and most people don't work well "unchained." Having the skill to make things is not the same as having the skills to make a business.
I've seen it over & over: folks quit their jobs and then by the end of their "runway," they have nothing and have to go back to regular employment. Double whammy.
The best thing to do is free yourself yourself incrementally, build up the skills to actually produce and run a product business (and not just a product), and you will do much better and keep a lot more money (and thus freedom) in the bank for the long run.
Hijacking Amy's top comment, which I think I'm allowed to do since I'm her partner and co-teacher in 30x500 & Stacking the Bricks 😇
There's another aspect of why quitting with a runway is harder than people realize: the mental stress of the runway closing makes your brain do silly, silly things.
As just one example, I'm currently working with one of my and Amy's students who:
Followed our guidance (imperfectly) and still pulled off a mid $X0,000 launch week of his product
About 8 months prior to that $X0,000 launch, he was seeing early results with building his audience and emailed us to ask if he should quit his job - he had a solid 2 year runway, like you. I told him we recommend against it, for the same reasons Amy cited above. He decided to quit his job anyway (he was bored, miserable, etc).
About 3 months AFTER that launch, he emailed again. I wouldn't say he was "freaking out" but he was definitely in a panic. A massive driving force: watching his savings shrink. Literally couldn't figure out what to do next. Wasn't moving forward. Basically stopped dead.
It's not a rational thing. He'd built something people wanted, and made more money in a week than he'd ever made before. He had created all of the advantages he needed to do it again, and keep growing the business. But he kept psyching himself out.
The big looming deadline blocked his ability to see the small, incremental work he needed to do every day.
I was able to put him back on track, but before we even tackled the tactical stuff he needed to do to succeed we had a whole conversation about changing his goal from "avoiding running out of money" into "building the systems to consistently earn a minimum amount of money" and then broke the larger goal into smaller ones. E.g. instead of $180k/year, $15k/month. And then instead of $15k/month, ~75 sales a month. Or 2.5 sales a day.
That helped him see exactly how achievable the goal was, so long as he focused on the little stuff right in front of him.
Soooooo if you KNOW from experience that you have the mental fortitude to ignore that shrinking bank balance while you build your monthly revenue up above your burn rate...you might be able to avoid this pitfall.
But if you've been working for other people for your entire career, I'll echo what Amy said in that you almost certainly don't have the PRACTICE sitting down and doing work that's needed, and not just the work you feel like doing.
This is so completely true. I have been working at a project for about 8 months with a looming financial deadline. Yet, I underestimated my wife's income and we have much more runway that I had first anticipated and some of my stress is because I focused too much on it.
After a particularly difficult stress-filled week, she asked to take over the handling of all the bills/budgeting - I haven't checked my bank account in 2 months; something I have never done.
Knowing that I will be alerted by her if things go real poorly but also not getting involved with the day to day number crunching has helped me tremendously. 2 weeks after the decision I got my first client.
Hey, is this your product? http://www.visualbonus.com/
Just wanted to point out your VisualBonus website has grammar errors and scrolling is broken!
Also, redirect non-SSL traffic to https://
The Stripe plugin doesn't work on non-SSL which brakes your signup form.
that's only because he linked to a non-https link.
https://www.visualbonus.com works. Probably should redirect that though incase someone manually removes the s. Thank you.
Thanks for spotting it out, fixed :/
Mind pointing out the grammar errors?
On the pricing page
excitement*
signing*
months*
I would word it as: VisualBonus is an easy-to-use sales management suite designed for Insurance Agencies to help save time and increase team efficiency
This is so odd. I just read both of those sentences and did not pick up the mistakes. I even read them slowly. Thank you!
Great general advice. However deep down I'm actually ok with having nothing in the sense of say no customers or revenue. I just want to do my own thing. I think it would be cool if I could do this sort of thing. You say a structured environment and I get you but I'm known for not working well in structured environments. I join companies and people give me work that I struggle to do because I spend time doing it in a way that takes longer but eventually saves time. I want to take complete control and be fully responsible for any income I receive. I feel like being employed makes me lazy.
I think that what Amy meant is that you may end up burning your savings quicker than expected and end up after 1 year or so forced to go back to your previous job.
I second her advice, see if you can go from 5 days a week at work to 4 days a week, then 3, etc. The idea is to get paid to kick start your new life.
Here as well I think it's a bit more broad. Running your own business means having to do Marketing, Sales, Accounting, Copywriting, Support, etc yourself. So it quickly goes beyond just building the product and you'll have to get organized for it.
I quit my job a bit more than a year ago and I'm bootstrapping my own project - the reasons might not be the same but I'm in the exact situation that you're describing. And I can guarantee you that building a great product is just one part of the job. I can also guarantee you that cash burns fast when there's zero income. If anything it gave me a lot of empathy for what my colleagues have been doing for me in my previous job 😂.
So TL;DR it's a great adventure but it's best to ease into it gradually.
+1 this
Would be good to listen to Amy and Sten.
There is a HUGE difference between building a product, building a business.
When you say "do what I like" it sounds more like you need to change jobs and be appreciated more in the next job - but that is me just guessing.
If you want to replace your job with something "of your own" it would be prudent to listen to Amy and Sten - take it incrementally and try building a business in a few hours a day while keeping your day job.
Agreed. For the love of god please listen to them. FT job + side hustle equals infinite runway. You just have to be persistent.
FT job + Toddlers + Side Hustle = snails pace on development. That's why I decided to leave. I've been persistent for last 3.5 years and anticipate it might take 10 to 20 years but I took a week off to try out what going full time would mean to the project. The difference was stunning.
@alexhillman story on the mental and emotional control needed to handle trundling down the runway was a very interesting datapoint. I've already accepted 100 percent of the downside risk and reframe it as the cost of education. I will watch my emotions on this closely soon as the journey starts for real in 3 weeks.
I can vouch for that.
But it doesn't have to be all or nothing, I try to keep my day job to 4 days / week and also take a week off sporadically for sprints, which is amazingly productive. I am taking 2 of those breaks before my launch in May. There's nothing like a publicly-declared deadline to motivate you. I am perhaps not the poster-child of productivity but balance is a sane thing to strive for.
Yeah I took a week off to work to do a Sprint as well. Then after one day back at work I was like fuck this I need more of that.
If you just want to do your own thing do it. I think the other people posting here are way overstating the difficulty of the business side at this early stage. Sales is a pain but it's mostly just uncomfortable at the beginning not especially complex but that is really your only concern with a small company. Finances are super easy, you won't be managing staff so again easy, you won't have to deal with basically any of the complexities of business that come with success.
Staying on your current role means splitting your focus between something you hate and something you really want to do. That will only make you hate the former more. You have no responsibilities for supporting other people and a lot of runway just go for it.
This is very well explaind what really happend, and this is common to most of the people ragardless from what country they are from. I know people with 4 different country did exactly this.
They moved from very structure env to very volatile one and faild, some of them didn't faild completally but still.
This.
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I'm going to answer this as the grouchy curmudgeon who reflects back. Now that I'm in my early fifties with a ton of responsibility I had an opportunity to drop everything at 30. I was newly divorced, no responsibilities and at a career crossroads. I had enough cash for a year or so, and wanted to get into acting school. I was doing it on the side and getting good reviews etc.
Fear stopped me. I was young enough to be able to pick up the pieces and get back in my career path if things didn't work out. I know that now, couldn't see it at the time.
The question I ask you to ask yourself, is if you (I) look back when you have kids/mortgage/dogs etc. in twenty years time, will you say "I wished".
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2 years is a decent runway, but I'd recommend shipping a couple of tiny side-projects just to get a feel for all the other aspects outside of building a product.
Prioritising, marketing, sales, dealing with EU VAT crap, etc. Even if your side projects don't end up growing into profitable businesses, what you learn will help you make the most of your 2 years when you do quit.
To give you some encouragement and to disagree with @amyhoy here is my perspective.
I was in your shoes in 2014 and just rage quit cause I just couldn't bear the job I was doing. I wasn't technical but in general, I took some time off to reflect and figure out what to do next. I couldn't make any income for 6 months, bought some courses which were a bit useless in the end but gave me some confidence boost. In the end in a year time, I made more money than I did in 3 years of my job. I was bit lucky but was also putting myself out there, reaching out and speaking to people. Nonetheless, I was by myself and doing a nomading thing and felt miserable anyways just constantly working in weird locations without proper internet and it felt even worse than a job. In the end, my bank closed my accounts cause they didn't want to deal with clients I was working with and I went back to a start-up seed stage route which was an amazing 2 years ride.
Some things I learned:
It is good to pause and reflect and try to understand what is important to you
You have to put some work and yourself out there to get some traction
You may realize that running your own business/freelancing / doing stuff on your own is not for you. Which is completely fine.
You will understand and gain more confidence that you actually put yourself out there like 99% of the people never will
Easy choices - hard life, Hard choices - easy life
There is a good chance you will fail but you will also learn a lot
Sometimes you will feel paralyzed about what to do next. Best thing is just to do something, start small and not just sit around.
In the end you can always find a job and go back
And the most important thing, don't romanticize your decision as @levelsio wrote recently in his tweets, you are entering a world of pain so be prepared for it.
The main problem I have with a side business approach and not 100% full-time leap of faith is the amount of time you can invest. I worked in a startup from 9 to 9 and sometimes midnight having time only to go to a gym... trust me, the last thing you would want to do is to code or build something after you are completely mentally exhausted. If you have a comfortable corporate job though => much more feasible.
An easier alternative is to get a different, better job where you work normal hours, or consult where you can ratchet up the price and set your own hours, and keep an income stream while building your business. I agree, nobody can build a biz when they already work 9-9… but nobody should ever have to work 9-9 to start with.
I've done startups and projects for years, I took the leap and while I'm just getting by most of the time, I've never looked back. If you've got the gusto and you hate your life as an employee, then do what you gotta do. If you think you can get a job again like that, then the only worry is if you'll dread getting a job again by the end of it.
I do consulting to pay the bills, but it's a means to an end so I can work on new business ideas until one takes off. The last thing I want is a job. Once you've founded a company or worked for yourself it can be hard to go back.
You can make yourself time based checkpoints to know if you should change directions to help yourself not run out of money too soon. Find other people doing what you want to do, have really good talks with a lot of them, then decide. Keep talking to them as you go so you can get more advice and not feel alone or like you are the only one facing the problems you face.
Now I do my stuff because I have an entrepreneurial passion to build businesses and to not work for someone else. I've run funded companies, gone through accelerators, hired, fired and now mostly do bootstrapped solo ventures.
If you just want to fuck around and see if anything comes from it, then you are not gonna have a great time probably. If you've got a business idea you want to charge into, you can, but you can also do it on the side for awhile before you jump. I used to get up at 430am, work until 730am then go into work braindead, but they still paid me, so I didn't care. Eventually I had to make the shift to full time.
People here have great comments about how to do it properly and safely, how to ease in, how to manage your time, but nobody knows you like you do. Know why you are doing it and what you are trying to get done. Take a 6 month sabbatical from work if they'll let you. See how you feel at the end of it, what you learned, if it was worth while, if you were spinning your tires, if your ideas went nowhere. Do it while you have the money and the lack of responsibilities that will stop you from doing it in the future.
I burnt my good year of consulting savings just working on a startup for a year that didn't work out and then went back to consulting. I've wasted more money than most people probably save, but I don't care because I'm doing what I want to do. It's your money, your life, and your adventure. You can be smart about it, but you don't have to be cautious. If you are a decent dev, you know you can just get another job if you had to.
No. Quit your job. Travel the world. Build your own product with passion. Give yourself six months to travel and invest in yourself!
You're very similar to me: we both pour our hearts into building products. We love to make them, and to continuously improve them.
Good for us: that's half of what it takes to build a startup.
Where it gets tough is that the other half is customer support, taxes, bank accounts, hiring, firing, insurance, dealing with angry customers, selling, legal work, marketing, paying bills, and so on.
Here's an idea: why not create a timeline to launch a product or two while you're still at your current job? Make it strict: set dates, deadlines, goals, metrics. Make a personal agreement that you'll allow yourself to leave your job after your incoming cash flow overtakes 60% of your professional income.
On paper, this sounds less exciting than "quit your job", but throw some automation into the mix and you'll have the potential to double/triple your current salary + have the freedom of when you leave your job.
This, in case you missed it. A leisurely pace will get you nowhere.
Great advice from Amy, wish I had followed this earlier. I quit a great job deciding I'd figure it out, staying up until early morn most nights, but spinning in circles not having a clue what I was doing - accounting, invoices, client acquisition - wearing all hats, none of which I was prepared for at first. That being said, quitting was the best thing I ever did. It taught me resiliency in the sometimes excruciating sometimes rewarding roller coaster ride. I have failed over and over again, but I have also succeeded. I have side businesses and I've gone back to corporate jobs which I consider "corporate investors" to help learn or develop skills to help you invest in yourself or your side hustle. Don't close your eyes and leap (what I did) but don't hold yourself back in fear either. I like Amy's approach and I'd agree - incrementally free yourself, building your skills while making your exit strategy. You will fall. You will get back up. You will learn. And most importantly you'll grow.
90% of the developers would LOVE to be building something for themselves, but trading away the security of that paycheck is really hard to do, so instead they maintain lists of 100s of app and business ideas.
A friend of mine quit his cozy corporate job recently, with no job lined up, purely for this reason: he couldn't imagine working on someone else's product anymore.
It's kind of madness when you think about it, you put your blood and sweat and tears into building someone else's net worth? No. If you're employed, you're renting your brain out.
You should own what you build.
I'd agree with Amy's top comment. You aren't mad, but maybe a little impulsive. I've been building software for two decades. I know I have all of the skills to build an entire product just like you mention. But running a product/service/app/business/offering requires a lot more than just building. I've started my own LLC and S-Corp in the past. They were consultancies. So I wasn't building and marketing. I was taking requests and fulfilling them. I feel like that was a good intermediate step between working for someone else and offering my own product. If you haven't already, consider some freelancing and consulting as a way to build up more than just engineering skills.
If you're not happy with your job, and don't have anyone depending on you, you should quit. Life is too short.
I quit my job and while I don't know how that helped with my product – I'll find out when I launch in a few weeks – it has absolutely helped with my mental health.
That said, I'm single, no kids, had savings and I've picked up freelance work. Everyone's situation is different and maybe the solution is a different job or different kind of job. But don't stay where you're unhappy.
If FT job is too time consuming, then you might have to quit.
Everyone is in their own situation.
I was a head of engineering and working 16 hours a day. So yes, I quit.
So I transitioned since I was able to find consulting that is much less emotionally draining.
My calculus is consulting with minimal emotional involvement but $$$ and side hustle has high emotional investment and no immediate $$$.
I will continue to ride this while trying to find something that sticks.
Have I thought about going back to work? Yes and each time it makes me panic and I double down and keep at what I am doing.
Nothing changes the fact that you should proceed with urgency and have discipline (even if you have a FT job that pays the bills...it will make you lazy) not to burn out.
I can say from experience that you can easily feel lost after some time without structure, without peers, without routine etc.
That said, I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to this.
How easy would it be for you to get regular employment if it didn't work out? Can you leverage location arbitrage to extend your runway? Are you good at working for long periods on your own without real-world interaction? Have you ever done something similar before? Can you compromise and freelance/contract to pay your expenses?
I think you may want to move in phases... not just drop everything and pursue your passion.
launch a few projects on the side to get your feet wet
work with some smaller companies on the side (freelance) to get familiar with decisions made at that phase of the company
start to build an audience for your passion project before you build it
if people are interested, work on it during nights and weekends
launch the product and gauge if you can live off the income
This is a very high-level perspective, overall reduce the amout of risk before taking the jump.
Hey man, I'm in a similar spot with a few minor differences. One year runway, been doing side projects for years and building up software capital as I go. Just handed in my notice.
One big thing I would suggest is find someone local who has business, sales/marketing background and work with them to build and sell products. Likelihood of success will be higher than just on your own.
Or if you're intent on going 100 percent solo which I don't recommend then pick up a lot of resources on the business/marketing aspects and be willing to learn it deeply.
You're in a good position to quit and it could be stronger though it's certainly good enough. If you wanna talk more about stuff let me know.
If you're merely "annoyed", as opposed to feeling compelled to nuke the place from orbit, then you're doing okay for an employee. If it's an abusive environment then get the hell out but if you're happy with the workplace and still getting growth from it then there's no reason to raze it, use it as a launch pad.
I'm 50 and I did drop everything for a year or so in my early 30's when I had no responsibilities. It saved my sanity but broke my bank.
I had no concept of launching a startup in those days (2001) but I did garner the confidence to never take another full-time job again. Fast-forward to now and I am working freelance & building a couple of side-projects launching in a couple of months.
Building stuff is arguably the easiest part of this startup thing, it's definitely the funnest. Marketing is hard - I have a degree in advertising and marketing and I still need to learn a lot more to get it together. Managing yourself and your business are distinctly different skills and are more important than skills than building stuff. Building is fun and distracting, managing is boring and easy to ignore. Don't ignore them. Those side projects I am launching in a couple of months - I started both of them more than 10 years ago. Ten. Bloody. Years.
Exhibit A: CAD replace - now, 10 years ago.. Even that blog post is from 2011. That's what happens when you "do as you please" - nothing. Bloody nothing.
Do a side-project. There is no "best time" to wait for, no "when it gets a bit quieter" - my freelancing just keeps getting busier, despite my best efforts to price myself out of the market. Life gets in the way, much more so if you can't get your shit together. Wait until you're 50 with small kids and then start. Actually, don't.
J.F.D.I. If you can't do a project on the side and get it out there when you have stuff-all holding you back then don't quit your day job. Even then, don't quit your day job until you need to. I still have my day jobs, mostly because I have responsibilities now.
Hi @flux88 I think going freelance is a great experience, even if you end up broke and get back to work corporate you will still have amazing experience and time which will give you more edge over your peers.
One thing you must keep in mind - going freelance = failing a lot. If this is something you are not familiar, comfortable with then I suggest you really read about failure and just try to turn failure into a positive thing.
I will give you an example from my line of work - one of my projects were getting earned media for my clients (PR) which mean - I have to pitch journalists so they will cover a certain company/startup.
The success rate of covering those companies are usually below %1. At the beginning I had a lot of rejections and people wouldn't even bother to get back to me.
I was very mad and sad about this and it affected my performance and the judgment I had about me.
But then I decided that negativity is only going to slow me down so I wrote down these bullets:
I have a goal to get 100 "No thank you" from journalists
For every no I will do a follow up asking for an advice to get better (feedback)
I will analyze my results and see if I can draw any conclusions from them to optimize the process
After getting 100 "No thank you" I was kinda happy because even though the entire process was a failure I still completed a milestone (getting 100 no's) so I was able to turn this into a positive experience.
Fast forward months later in my rule - I got better at pitching, I was able to get coverage for my clients and the best thing Is I got better response rate later from that day on.
So from now on - a "no thank you" is a challenge for me and I no longer take it personally or treat it as a bad experience.
TLDR:
Prepare to fail but know that in the long run it will make you a better person/worker.
I have this fantasy as well, but I'm not going to do it until I build something that actually gets traction. Keep saving my friend.
Good question!
I was self-employed in my 20s. The business was successful for awhile, it started to trend down, and I closed it out before the losses started to add up.
Now, I'm 30-something and I'm starting a new business while working full time. I cannot stress this enough - doing double duty is WAY better. Just from a financial perspective, I get to scratch the business itch, and I get total financial stability.
If you're really good at building products, this last argument may not apply to you. When I start something new, I spend a lot of time waiting for feedback. Example: I hire a designer. They take a week on the first draft. Then I review it. I send back some notes. Another week goes by. Now assume that it's not just designers, but everything.
Another example: I build the first product and wait weeks to get enough signups to validate the idea. The early phase of building a business requires so much waiting. If I'm already waiting, I want to get paid.
I have the same urge, but I know that my lack of experience in building and running my own business will be my downfall. I do not have the experience to be able to confidently walk away from my 9-5 with any realistic expectation of being successful on my own. But that doesn't mean I have given up. Instead I am working on my side project as much as possible and putting most of my other activities on hold, or drastically cutting back on them. This gives me a more secure position to test my ideas and my ability before committing full force and risking my stability.
If you on the other hand are more confident in your ability to run a business then you may choose to take the plunge. Good luck with what ever decision you make!
I don't think so. You have a lot of runway to mess about in and even if you fail for a year straight and end up deciding it's not a path you want to take after all you will still have a 1 year cushion.
The downside to quitting is basically zero in your current situation with a lot of upside. Do you have an idea for what you want to build first? That's the only thing I'd suggest waiting for if you don't. You want to hit the ground running and not spend time trying to come up with a plan once you quit.
Also once you are working by yourself it can become very easy to become sealed off for the world while you work. I don't really like co-working spaces unless you can get a private office in one but I'd definitely suggest you become active in your local meetup groups.
Some might argue that burning through your savings is a pretty big downside.
If you have 2 years of expenses saved up and the ability to get a job again than being worried about burning through savings is being overly conservative. Honestly I think 99% of the comments in this topic are excessively conservative and have way too much fear in them. As I said he has a year to spend on whatever and even if he makes zero in that time and it takes him 6 months to find another job he is still has more expenses saved up than just about everyone and more than enough to weather most downturns.
I don't think being "conservative" has got much to do with, nor has fear. It's simply a mix of common sense and personal experiences.
Starting something is hard and stressful enough without having to worry about your savings shrinking into non-existence.
Being an entrepreneur / bootstrapper is not about taking unnecessary risks. It's about limiting risk while aiming for the best possible upside. IMO, and shared by many others in this thread, this is achieved by starting out while maintaining part-time employment.
Stair-stepping your way to success beats going all in.
People telling someone with 2 years run rate to be afraid to take a plunge because his savings will drop is pretty much the definition of conservative fear based decision making. There is nothing common sense about sticking in a job you hate for the possibility of reducing your burn rate.
I'm not suggesting he shrink his savings to non-existence.
It also isn't possible to avoid all risks. Making calculated risks is fine. This would be a calculated risk. The worst case scenario is having a decent savings cushion and not going to work for yourself.
I agree and I'm not suggesting he go all in since he has enough of a stack still behind to maintain himself.
Right. Well, let's agree to disagree :)
Agreed I don't think the consensus is awful advice I just think it is too narrow and doesn't accept people having different levels of comfort for risk. It also assumes everyone will have a hard time with the business side which I agree is common but not certain.
Like others said, I probably wouldn't just jump right in. I'm right at the end of building my product (at least the first iteration), and what seemed like smooth sailing a few months ago is TERRIFYING now.
There's problems that I never expected would happen, there's delays, there's bugs, there's third parties that aren't working out the way you expect, there's expenses you aren't considering right now. Hell there's work that I just don't know how to do, and there's work that I don't know that I need to be doing.
Building the product, that part I know. That part I can perfect. But there's going to be things that might not be in your control that will happen, and it's really nice to have that back up income. At the end of the day, if I write some stuff for my day job and it doesn't work, I still get paid. Can't say that if I was completely on my own.
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