Signs it's time to call BS on your five year plan!

Hey, new listener, thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on. Don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. In this episode, let's talk about the five signs. It's time to turn your side hustle into a full time business. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast. Squirrel. Your brain is lying to you. It's lying to you about what you think is possible for you. It's lying to you about how much time things are going to take to take off. It's lying to you about what you are capable of. Case in point, over three years ago, I got on the phone with a woman named Lauren Lefkowitz. She'd booked a sales call with me. She wanted to start a coaching business. And in her intake form she had been very specific that she had a five year plan. She worked full time doing HR and a whole bunch of other stuff for a company and she had this passion for coaching. Coaching had recently changed her life, taken her back from the beyond the brink of burnout, and shown her exactly how she could show up better at work and in her life. And through going through this journey, she'd realized that she wanted to become a coach herself. But she didn't believe that she could do it full time yet. So as she was booking the call with me, she listed off her five year plan. She was going to start a side hustle coaching business that she would run for five years until it got to the point that she could take it full time. And I remember this is a very yesterday, getting on the phone with her and hearing her explain to me exactly how this would work out as a five year plan. And I remember smiling because I could see this woman doing things so much faster. She had drive, she had ambition, she had a deep desire to change lives. On top of all of that, she had this beautiful charisma and way of speaking that I could just see her on stages and writing books and putting herself out there in really brave ways. So towards the end of the call where we were deciding if we would work together, I remember kind of agreeing to sure, like this can be a five year plan. Yeah. Okay, fast forward five months, we celebrated her leaving her job. Just like Lauren, your brain is lying to you about how long it's going to take for you to start a side hustle and take that side hustle full time and be able to leave your 9 to 5 job. Now, I've had clients who have started side hustles and grown those side hustles to well over six figures a year and are so happy just keeping it a side hustle in addition to their 9 to 5 job. And of course there's immense benefits to doing that. You have a secure income that you don't have to worry about. You have benefits, you have vacation time. And then of course, anything that you make in your side hustle is just the cherry on top and it allows you to live a much bigger life because you have more money. And when you have more money, you have more freedom and you have more choice. And in addition to that, if you're multi passionate and you're really passionate about what you do in your day job and you're really passionate about what you do in your side hustle, you have your passions covered. There's nothing wrong with building a business that just stays a side hustle. But there is a point where you're gonna see the signs that this side hustle is ready to become your full time gig. And in this episode, I'm gonna be running through what those signs are. So when they happen to you, you're able to identify them and make a choice. Do you want to take this full time or does this business need to stay a side hustle because you love your nine to five? I'm going to be talking about this in two veins, right? Because people have varying degrees of risk tolerance. I personally am very risk tolerant. If you were to look at my sacred money archetypes results, I am a maverick, which the maverick is the archetype that is most comfortable with like gambling and risk and like putting all the chips on the table and just kind of like taking what their winnings are. The way mavericks operate when it comes to business and life and especially money, scares the crap out of an archetype that we like to call the accumulator. Accumulators do not like to risk things. They want to make sure that things are guaranteed they're not going to have to touch their savings. And how the two make decisions, especially when it comes to growing a business, are going to be very different. So I'm going to be going through these two veins because it's going to be different for each one of these archetypes. If you're really risk averse, then we'll talk through what your signs are going to be. And if you're really risk tolerant like me, the signs may be a little different. The number one sign that you're ready to take your side hustle to full time and leave your 9 to 5 job is that you are making anywhere from 50 to 70% of what your full time job salary is. And of course, on the spectrum of risk tolerance and intolerance, we can kind of make a direct correlation. You know, if you're maverick ish and very risk tolerant, you can probably withstand making a little less because you're not going to be crushed by the anxiety of needing to make up the difference really fast. If you really struggle with risk and risk just does not feel good to you and it adds unnecessary pressure that doesn't make you more productive, then you want to be making more per month in your side hustle and that'll make you feel more secure in leaving your 9 to 5. I will also say that leading up to this point, as you're building your side hustle and as you're kind of plotting your escape from corporate life, every single dollar or euro or pound, whatever currency you're working in that you can save, I would save if I were you. It's really tempting as you make more money to be like, cool, I have more money, I'm going to go and spend it. I'm going to go invest in this and I'm going to invest in this and I'm going to invest in this. Sure, there are investments that are going to help you make more money in your business. For instance, investing in a training course that's going to show you how to do it, or working with a coach, or maybe hiring a copywriter. But that's not to say that you need to go and hire all these things. As much money as you can save, I want you to save because that is going to be your nest egg, your Runway for when you go full time. Because let's look at the worst case scenario. Say you are an executive leadership coach and you started a leadership coaching business on the side of your nine to five. And let's say you make $10,000 a month from your nine to five. 70% of that would be 7,000. Let's say that's seven clients. And let's say, you know, you quit your job and two months afterwards, after you've had no salary and you're just making money from your business, two of your clients end, you know, so now you're down to half of your normal salary. That's really scary. Especially if that does not cover your base necessities for your life. And it's that much scarier if you do not have money socked away to backfill it as you need. But I want you to imagine if in your first year of business of running this side hustle, you're able to save $60,000, right? $60,000 is nowhere near your full time salary. However, for those first, like three to five months where you're still ramping up to full time, it's enough to bridge the gap so that you don't feel like you're about to end up in the poor house, which, I mean, what an antiquated term. Do they still have those? I don't know. I feel like in the States, if we actually did have a poor house, it would get attacked by people on the right as socialism. We can't take care of the poor. They need to fend for themselves. They're not strong enough. I feel like here I should bring up that I actually registered as a Republican so that I could go and vote for someone else other than Trump in their primary. And I want to acknowledge there are a ton of hustle bros out there who are like, no, burn your ships, quit everything, go and start your business and put everything into it. That's a very privileged position to come from. That assumes that you have no responsibilities. That assumes that you do not have a spouse who may or may not be able to carry the load financially for your household. That assumes that you don't have dependents, you don't have children or pets that are relying on you to keep them alive. And it goes along with this mentality that we have to make ourselves suffer and work from a place of fear to make our dreams come true. And that is absolutely not true. In fact, when you're in fear mode, you're actually in survival mode. If you're afraid that you're not going to be able to eat, your brain is seeing that as life or death. When you're in a life or death situation, do you have access to your creativity? Are you going to be able to stand firm on your pricing on a sales call? Are you going to be able to say no to the clients who are not going to be a good fit for you and who may actually end up making your life miserable? Probably not. You know, we're not starting businesses to make our lives harder. Yes, starting a business is probably going to be one of the hardest things you ever do. And also, you get to choose your hard. You get to choose how hard it's going to be. I'm a big believer that one of the best ways you can set yourself up for success when starting a business is by keeping your 9 to 5 job for as long as possible. In fact, one of my favorite times to start working with clients is when they're actually starting a new job. Because when you're starting a new job, you are going in fresh. You can set boundaries around your time in a way that that's just kind of the, the expected way to deal with you, with new people, versus if you've always worked a little later or you've always taken on an extra project here or there. If you're starting a side hustle business while working a job you've been in forever, you're going to have to retrain a whole bunch of people as to how they get to deal with you and what they can expect from you. Time wise. It takes balance and it takes being really impeccable with how you manage your time. Which I know for those of us with other each ADHD is really scary. You have to be very intentional about taking time off. What's that Kim Kardashian quote that was going viral about a year ago? It's people don't want to work anymore. Like, you just got to work. I can tell you my clients do not have a problem working hard. They have a problem taking time off. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had this week alone where I have had to walk clients through exactly what they need to do to step away from work and recharge. So as you're starting your side hustle and as you are setting boundaries around your work, you also have to set boundaries with yourself. You cannot expect yourself to work every waking hour that you're not at your 9 to 5. That is a recipe for burnout and exhaustion and ruined relationships, for expanding waistlines and for falling behind on all your Netflix shows, which, I mean, the new Bridgerton scene season's about to come out. Season three, Penelope and Colin are supposed to get it together. It's gonna be rad. You don't wanna miss out on that. So long story short, you need to be making between 50 and 70% of what you're taking home from your 9 to 5 before you take your side hustle business full time. Okay, that's part one. Part two is you have to. What am I gonna say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. The hyperfocus community is the inner Sanctum of the Weeniecast. It's a club that's designed just for you, where you'll learn how to leverage your ADHD to grow your business. In the hyperfocus community, we are realistic about the challenges that face ADHD business owners and we don't believe in one size fits all solutions. We believe in creating strategies that fit you. On day one of signing up, you'll experience that deep sigh of relief that comes from walking into a room full of people like you who you do not need to mask your quirks in front of in order to fit in because they get you in the membership. Every single month you'll get two group calls. One is an ADHD group coaching call and the other is a networking call with fellow ADHD business owners. We will also have coworking sessions designed for the ADHD mind. Monday Get Organized Sprint calls to keep you out of overwhelm. Access to weekly Brave BizLab calls where I will give you practical advice to grow your business. We'll also have the occasional expert training which are absolutely ADHD vetted and of course, community support by folks like you. And those who pay for the year up front get a surprise bonus. Visit weenicast.com hyperfocused and stop procrastinating the things that will grow your business. That's weeniecast.com hyperfocus or click the link in the episode description. Part two is you have to check in with yourself. There's going to be a point in running this business where you either are fully ready to go and do it. This next bit is not something that's going to happen for everyone, right? Because some people really enjoy their 9 to 5. They really enjoy going to work and contributing to a company and their co workers and working with the clients in whatever capacity they do that. There's nothing wrong with keeping your 9 to 5, but at some point for some of you, you're gonna have this moment of I'm done. I can't do this anymore. I cannot go to this job and spend my time there and do this work and deal with these people and everything under the umbrella of what you do there. It's just you. Your spirit will be spent. Another moment in that building, either virtual or real, will be something that you just cannot muster the strength to make yourself do. Right? Because you've seen the other side. And this is kind of what happened with Lauren and a bunch of my other clients when they realized they needed to take their business full time. They just could not keep going with it because they'd seen and experienced the joy that they have doing work they actually love, and they'd seen evidence that they could actually make money from it and be successful at it. Sometimes this point will come before you're making a certain percentage of your income. And here's where we really need to assess what your risk tolerance is. If you're completely risk intolerant, unfortunately, sometimes you're just going to have to force yourself to continue with the 9 to 5 for a few more months until we build your side hustle business up to enough of your full time income so that you feel confident enough and safe enough to successfully take it full time. If you're risk tolerant like I am, you can absolutely at that moment be like, what's worth more to me? The paycheck where I'm trading my soul and all my energy every single day, or doing work that I really love and having some risk here. You know, maybe some months will be a little tight. I want to own that. I jumped from my nine to five way too early. I was nowhere near this. Thankfully, because I'm a maverick, I was able to pull it out. I was able to like hustle and get my income up to what I was making before and then surpass it, you know, times three. That's possible for some of us who aren't crushed by the pressure to make it work. For some people, that pressure to make it work or else you're gonna die is just a little too much. And that's okay. You don't have to, you don't have to prove anything to anyone. You're living life for you, not for anyone else. And there's nothing wrong with living life in a way that you actually get to enjoy the journey. And of course there are gonna be trade offs along the way. Maybe you do need to stay in that soul sucking job for an extra two months until you get another client or two. But I would rather you give that little sacrifice than sacrifice the potential success of your business. Right? Because what happens if you leave your job too early, you don't have that risk tolerance and you completely melt down under the pressure. You're just gonna have to go back to a 9 to 5. If you were already miserable there and wanting to escape, imagine how much worse it's going to to be after you tried going for your dream, failed at it because you couldn't take the pressure and then had to crawl back to something that made you miserable. We don't want that for you. Okay? That's going to make for a really Boring deathbed story. We are after being very interesting on our deathbeds. We don't want our loved ones sitting there and be like, oh my God, not this story again about all their regrets and the things they wish they'd done and God, I can't listen to this anymore. We want people to be like, oh my God, yeah, you did that and you did that and you did that and you were brave and you were funny and you were lit up with life and I'm gonna stick around until your final breath. That's the goal. Anyway, back to the point. Feeling of being done with your 9 to 5, that is another sign that is time to leave the 9 to 5 and take your side hustle full time. Another part, and just a very, you know, straightforward logistical part that will be a sign that you are ready to take your side hustle to full time. Oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Hey, quick question. Did you follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app yet? It takes just a few seconds. I personally love Apple podcasts, but you can find us anywhere, even on YouTube. So, as the kids say, smash that button and make sure you never miss an episode. Another part, and just a very, you know, straightforward logistical part that will be a sign that you are ready to take your side hustle to full time is whether or not you have consistent leads. Do you have consistent new business coming in? If it's still at that stage where it's really unpredictable and you can't count on getting a client every single month, maybe you get a big client every seven months. You know, depending on how much that client's paying, that might be enough. But if it's not, you're taking a huge gamble going full time. If you can reliably say that you're Getting anywhere from four to 10 sales calls a month and you know that your closing percentage is anywhere from 25 to 33%, then I would say that you are ready to take your business full time. Especially if you're selling a high ticket offer. And again, something that's like purely logistical when you're considering if this is ready to be full time is are you running out of time? You know, there comes a point in running a side hustle where you know that you could do more and make more money if you just had another five or ten hours in a week. And if you're at that breaking point where you just don't have the time to put into it because you're spending 40 hours a week at your 9 to 5. That's really a time to consider. Should I be jumping from the 9 to 5? Now, this part you want to check up against the first bit where you're making 50 to 70% of your 9 to 5 income. Because if you're only making 10%, it doesn't really matter if you're running out of time. You know, you could do more if you had more time. Like, that's not enough. The last bit is, do you have the savings for this? One of the inescapable truths about life is that we live in meat suits that require things like food and water and shelter and clothing. I mean, unless you're part of a nudist colony, you live in a really warm climate where there are no mosquitoes, but still you're going to need food and shelter and water. So we need money to make this work. And that money is going to come from one of two places. It's going to come from the business itself, or it's going to come from our savings. I can guarantee you one thing. As a business owner, you will have slow months. You will have months where you're panicking about money. Cash flow will kind of dry up or slow down, and you're going to get spun into a panic. It doesn't really matter if you're a maverick or you're an accumulator or any of the other archetypes. When that happens as a human, you're still going to need to pay your rent or your mortgage and go and buy groceries and go and buy food at restaurants and buy some clothes. And if you can't do that, you're not going to be able to move forward with the business. You're going to be backed into a corner. And we're not designing businesses where you just barely survive. That's not the point. That's one of the reasons why, when I get on the phone with potential clients and I ask them how much money they want to make, I actually throw out their first answer. Because the first answer everyone always gives to that question is, oh, well, here's the base amount that I would need to survive. If I wanted to eat ramen every day and barely make my electrical bill and mooch wi fi off of my neighbors and pay rent for a really shitty apartment that I would have to downsize a whole bunch, maybe get rid of my cat to get into, I would be willing to make this much, and that would be fine. That's not the answer I want I want the answer of how much money you want to make. How much money do you want to make so that you can live in your ideal home, so that you can adopt 10 more cats, live your best Taylor Swift life? My favorite fact about that woman is that she is the crazy cat lady that we all aspire to be secretly. Personally, I'm kind of allergic to cats, so I can't necessarily be a crazy cat lady, but I can have a deep appreciation for them and with the pride that she has around her cat ladyhood. For you to get there though, you need to not just be focused on your survival, you need to be focused on what your bigger dream is, what your big goals are. You know that saying, aim for the stars and land on the moon? I'm not sure if I made it up or if I heard it somewhere, so maybe you haven't heard it, but anyway, there's this belief that, like when you shoot for something that feels so big and so out of reach, you're more likely to land somewhere that is still a huge accomplishment to get to. When I start with clients and we're trying to figure out their basic pricing, we actually don't figure out how much money they want to make in the first year of their business because that's not really helpful. So if you say that you want to make a hundred thousand dollars that year and we base your pricing off of that a hundred thousand dollars, you're probably only going to make 33,000, right? Because you're starting a business, there's ramp up time, there's figuring out your niche. You have to start marketing. You're not going to have a full list of clients right away after you decide you're starting this business. That's not how it works. However, if in year three you decide you want to make $300,000, great. We can base your pricing off of that. And if you're only making a third of that, you're far more likely to make $100,000 in your first year. And realistically, when you're on sales calls and this is a new business and you're asking for big money for your work, are you going to be more confident asking for it when you have zero money in savings, or are you going to be more confident asking for it when you have a good chunk of change socked away and you know that if this person says no to working with you, you're going to be fine. You'll be able to feed yourself, you'll be able to pay the mortgage, your children will have shoes if you have children. Thankfully, pets don't need shoes. They need other things. Watch Luna come up and be like, mom, I really want shoes. You can talk. So whatever it is that your brain is telling you is possible for you. I want you to tell it to fuck off. Your brain doesn't understand how this works. It's never done it before. It has lived in a world where you're constantly made to feel like you're not good enough. For you to succeed in the neurotypical systems that have been designed for things to function, you have to go above and beyond. You have to bend yourself into a pretzel that got twisted in the conveyor belt to be able to be successful. One of the most beautiful things about starting a business is that you get to design the business to function for how you function. You do not have to create a business that that will require you to bend into a pretzel to be able to run. You absolutely can. If you really enjoy making yourself suffer. If you're a masochist, go for it. But you do not necessarily have to do that. One of the things that I walk my clients through is designing a business that works for them to have their ideal lives. This is one of the reasons why those business programs that are like one size fits all, follow my step by step plan that worked for me and just do it yourself. Why? Those don't really work for everyone. They maybe work for 5% of the people that sign up for them. And for those of us with adhd, when we start programs like that, we get a couple lessons in and we just feel so defeated because it feels like we're back in school and we're being given instructions for a project that just feels completely alien to us, that has all these complicated instructions that don't really feel like stuff that we like doing. And so then we get into executive dysfunction about doing the one little bit, but then we can't get to the next little bit without doing that first little bit. And so then we start feeling all the shame bubbling up of, oh my God, I just can't do it. All that comes up when you sign up for these one size fits all programs. If every single business were able to function in the same exact way, starting a business wouldn't be hard. It wouldn't be something that the failure rate was super high. Everyone would just do the same thing. Okay? You're not meant to do the exact same thing as another business owner. You have to find a way to design this business in a way that allows for you to be in your strengths, for you to feel lit up, doing the things that you love day in and day out. It's okay that you don't know how to do that. You've never done the stuff before. And up until now you have lived in a world that is designed for neurotypicals by neurotypicals. And you've had to work really hard and you've had to sacrifice parts of yourself that you don't even realize to be successful. Your brain is going to take a beat to understand that that's not necessary when you start a business. It's a learning curve that I'm personally still on and I train on this shit. I literally work with other ADHD entrepreneurs and I'm still struggling with it myself. Your brain is not going to be able to be truthful with you because it doesn't actually know the truth here. So whatever it is that you think is possible for you, whatever dream or goal you think is quote unquote realistic for you to reach, I hereby call bullshit. And I hope you call bullshit too. And sure, Come up with your five year plan. Bring that five year plan to a generate income strategy. Call with me and we'll have a nice little laugh about it and we'll come up with your five month plan. And if you want to book that generate income strategy call, the link is in the show notes and you can go to weeniecast.com strategycall I can't wait to talk to you there. I don't know where that came from. It was really playing it out in my head. Like I'd be really surprised. But about that Squirrel Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. If you're enjoying this episode, would you do me a small favor? 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