When and how did you make the call to quit your day job and go full-time on your project?

I made the call a couple months ago when revenue from Doka and my Envato products hit around USD 7000. This was enough to support my family and save some money for months when income dips. November is when subscriptions to Doka start expiring so if enough customers stick around all will be extra fine :-)

I waited and made extra income from side projects (consulting) as long as it took to make a fulltime income from my products. I think I could’ve made the call earlier but a couple months ago it felt like I had to do it to put all my focus on Doka and use the momentum to make it successful.

I made a gradual transition over 9 years, from a “nights and weekends” project to the business becoming my full time job. I’ve provided some more detail about the stages of the transition below.

For the first few years it was just a project I’d hack away at in the evenings and on weekends. As it started to pick up traction (page views rather than revenue), I worked harder, meaning most free evenings and weekends evaporated. I was motivated mostly by the level of engagement we were getting and wasn’t particularity focused on monetising things at this point.

My first attempt at full time focus on the project came from saving up enough money from my day job to take 6 weeks off and focus exclusively on the business (this was about 5 years ago). I made a lot of progress in that 6 week stretch, but there was only a trickle of revenue, so I had to go back to my regular job. I remember laying awake at night once I’d returned to work, wondering if I’d just blown all of my savings for no good reason.

Then 2 years ago, I managed to get my employer to allow me to work 60% part-time (basically 3 days a week plus semi-regular evenings and nights on call in the hospital). This meant I had 2 mid-week days and 1 day on the weekend to focus exclusively on the business. This allowed me to make steady progress, much faster than just nights and weekends. The business was generating more revenue at this point, but if I had paid myself, I wouldn’t have had anything left to pay for freelance developers, content etc. As a result, I cut back my expenses so I could survive on my part time salary from my day job, whilst re-investing the business’s revenue.

Finally, this August, revenue reached a point where I could be full time on the business and pay myself a salary, whilst also having enough left over to still pay for development etc. I’m only a few months in and it’s certainly not been the easiest of transitions, but it was definitely the right move. It still feels surreal that I get to decide what I do each week and I love the flexibility. On the other hand, there’s definitely a lot more pressure now I’m relying on the business to pay my rent, so that can feel scary at times. Overall however, I feel like it’s totally worth it.

Hopefully that provides some insight into how messy the journey to full time can be (obviously many others manage to do this much more effectively than I have).

Best of luck with the business and the eventual transition to full time. 🙂

My personal standard is: generate 80%+ of my current salary and work a maximum of 4 hours / weekday. A guy can dream, right?

This has been so awesome to read all your comments! I'll keep you posted on my decision

Learning a lot from this thread! I'm graduating from college this year and don't want a typical office job at all. Because of that I was completely independent for the first time in my life this summer as a full time marketing freelancer over the summer and still continue to do that while working on the growth of thegoodstartup.com, which is my brain child I want to focus most my energy on. Definitely going to be taking some of this thread's advice to heart to figure out my life after graduation!

I recently left my full-time job 4 months ago and went all-in on my side project.

In the past year, I found that I wasn't happy with any job I'd end up working. When you spend 8 hours a day somewhere that doesn't make you happy, it's hard to maintain the motivation to work on your own project after hours.

After saving a few years runway, I decided to leave my full-time job and go all-in on my side project. I've never been happier or more motivated to work on something in years.

As a digital marketer, I'm also able to work freelance, but have even found that this can take away from the time I'd ideally like to spend on my project each day.

Good luck making the transition! Looking forward to following the project.

My experience is: don't leave your daily job, I started my first company when I was 22 and it was a slow transition from freelancing, and it was a great idea.

Getting a good amount of recurring revenue always delays more than expected, and there are a lot of things you still have to learn, regarding taxes for example.

Normally from your first payment to getting close to a good amount of revenue, if you have a SaaS product, delays at least one year, this is my experience and the experience I've seen from other founders.

Thanks for sharing, really interesting stuff. Finding myself in a bit of a unique position. I run a somewhat successful agency by day, and it consumes all my time. In some ways wish it was a struggling company as it’d make taking the leap to a side hustle that much easier. Good to know everyone has to go through weekend and evening thing to get through, really reassuring, so thanks! Any advice with my situation is super appreciated!

I didn’t make it yet. I’m waiting for MRR to reach my salary at least. Anyhow, looking forward all the answers!

I did this 13 years ago for my first project (ODIN Software). I was creating an application in the TravelTech space and did not quit my full time job until I was sure that I could support my small family working at my own company. Thankfulluy, the customer I was working for at the time did make some guarantees so that I was able to do that. It would have been very difficult to make that jump otherwize.

But that decision took me on a 13 year journey which ended at the beginning of this year when I resigned from my own company and started working for a large-ish (large on an Icelandic scale) company trying to fit in my own little side projects on the side.