068 It's Time to Quit Your Job

Hey there, real quick, before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, Grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. Are you ever wondered, you know, how do I quit my job or how do I transition from one business to the next? Well, here's the thing. There's a lot of people that'll tell you, just jump, just jump. Let me tell you something. There is a difference between being committed to something and being reckless. So in this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur show, which I did live, I talk about the entrepreneurial transition formula. I walk you through the framework that I use with my clients, that I've used for many, many years to help people transition from a job to a business or from one business to the next, or to grow the steps you can do to raise the probability of success, reduce your risk, increase your cash flows, and get you to a place of success and the success you deserve. I'll see you in the episode. Cheers.

This is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom, because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

All right, so welcome to this episode of the Absolute not first show. I wanted to do a special live episode. You know, often I get questions that come in. I've got a voice line, askmelnow.com where you can leave a question there. You can email me, DM me. And question came in from someone who is sitting in a corporate job. And this may be something you relate to and sitting back and they have this side gig now. If you've been following me, man.

Then you know that I truly believe in today's world. In today's time, multiple income streams, they're no longer a.

Luxury. They are a necessity. They are. They're a Requirement. Okay. And whether you're an employee or not, having additional income streams is going to help you navigate the crazy, uncertain times that we might be in. I mean, if you look at it as, as we're doing this right now, now the market is up now 600 points, but you've got inflation the highest it's been in four decades. You've got rising interest rates, mortgage rates that were at 2% are now close to 6%. You've got, you know, things costing more and all the kinds of uncertainty that, you know, top people are talking about. Recession, there's companies that are missing earnings or giving guidance that they're not going to make the same kind of profits that they did. We have supply chain issues. We've got all kinds of issues that are going on that could affect our world, our financial world, our ability to build wealth. And one of the things that I think is important for us to think about is this idea of making sure that we have more than one income flow coming in. Because if something gets choked off, if something stops, you have something else to at least soften the blow. All right, it still might hurt, but it's not like an all or nothing play. And so having having multiple income streams is, is a necessity. It's a requirement in today's world to, to help you build wealth, to accelerate your path wealth, but more importantly, to give you a foundation of safety. A foundation, a cushion of safety, what I call a margin of safety. And so this question came and said, I've got this side, you know, business, it's a coaching business, if you will, but I have my corporate job and I'm not sure when to transition and when to move and, you know, what should I do? And you might be surprised, but I have a framework for that. So, because this is a question that I get asked a lot, Mel. I want to build wealth, I want to create wealth. And I, I, I, I, I don't know the best way I want to start a business. And so how do I do that? Now, let me get clear. There are those out there that are saying if you want to do it, you jump off the, jump off the ledge and just go do it.

There is a difference between being reckless and being committed. Okay?

If you have a family, if you have children, if you have responsibilities, if you have bills and you don't have a cash cushion, then jumping ship and burning the boats is reckless, not committed. Okay? Hopefully this makes sense to you. What I want you to do is do it methodically. I'm going to walk through a framework. And some things.

That come up that you need to think about to make the transition more effective and a higher likelihood of success. Because here's what I know. If we don't do a transition properly, then what ends up happening is you're living a dual life. You're partly in your job, you're partly in the business, and neither one is really excelling. Your boss and the company is noticing that you're not really in the job and your mind's somewhere else. And your business isn't flourishing because you're partly in the job. And the challenge is we don't have a plan, we don't have a process that you're following to get you there. So the other thing that happens if we don't do the transition out of a job to an entrepreneurial endeavor correctly is there's no joy in the earnings. You just feel like you're on a treadmill. You know, I've talked a lot about the treadmill entrepreneur, and the only thing that treadmill entrepreneurs end up with is burnout, breakdown, or crash and burn. That's it. Okay? Over time, they may have some momentary successes, but it's eroding their quality of life. And so you don't have joy of earnings. You got low or no cash flow, and in the end, you struggle. But when we do this transition effectively and we follow a process, a plan, and a strategy, you actually feel in flow. You don't feel like you're in constant conflict. You have a passion that you're monetizing because you're creating value out in the world and ultimately on the path to freedom and cash flow. That's the game. That's the game. That's what we're looking at. And so this question came in and said, well, what do I need to do? Well, the first thing is to make sure that you're committed and not reckless. So understanding your circumstances. And I'm going to go to my iPad, we're going to walk through a framework here. The second thing you need to do is plan and test. And the third thing is to understand what your scale threshold is. I'm going to explain all of that. So let's walk through something that I call the entrepreneur transition formula. Okay. I'm going to jump to the iPad. We're going to do some drawing, we're going to do some writing, and see what I can do to help you understand this. If you're in this situation, you're thinking of starting an online business, because that's where you think you can make some additional money. Now, I'm going to be frank with you. An online business is probably one of the highest margin businesses you can create. It's got one of the lowest barriers of entry that you can have. It also means that there's a fair amount of competition, but that doesn't mean that you can't do it. I think it's a wonderful place to start to, whether it's creating digital products, whether it's doing coaching, like this person that reached out to me asked, whether it's speaking, whether it's training workshops, it doesn't matter. But when we go into the online space, we can expand a reach beyond what we had before. We can reach people that, that are beyond location, geography and everything. We can put our stuff out there in a cost efficient, cost effective way. Margins in an online business, when done correctly, when understanding how to do it, the way, the way we teach it is that you're going to have margins. You should have margins at a minimum of 40%, meaning that for every hundred dollars you generate, you should be able to put $40 in your pocket. Now you're not going to put it all in your pocket. I have a process of what you do with the cash to build wealth and create a wealth machine. And you can have it as high as 80%. Our margins are, you know, north of 70%. But it's because of the way we operate, the way we run it. And so when someone says, I want to scale my income and the affluence blueprint. One of the pillars in the affluence blueprint is the generate pillar. And the generate pillar is all about optimizing profits and scaling income, scaling cash flow, optimizing profits. This is about getting high margin types of things in place. Online business is one of them. So that's where we look at this. Now how do we do this and how do we transition to build something while we're in a corporate job or we're trying to transition from one entrepreneurial endeavor to another entrepreneurial endeavor? They're the same. We need to understand this. Let me walk you through the framework. It's called the, the entrepreneur transition formula. And so here's how this will play out. Okay? In order to do this, when you have an effective transition, you're going to have three things. You're going to have clarity, and I mean clarity of where you're going, how you're going to get there. And in a plan, you're going to be living your calling. Okay? You're going to be Doing something that you're yearning to do in a. In a. In a big way, okay? And you're going to have some comfort. Those are the three critical outcomes when you have an effective transition. You've got clarity, you're living your calling, and you have comfort. Now, in order you say, great, that sounds great. I'd love to have clarity. I'd love to know that I'm living my calling, what I was meant to. To do here on. On earth. And I'd love to be comfortable in the sense now. Comfortable in the sense that. Confident. I know where I'm going. I know what I'm doing. This is going to be successful, and we're going to make it happen. There are three pillars to make this happen, all right? Three pillars to make this happen. And so the first pillar is what we call the preparation pillar.

The preparation pillar is how you go from sketchy, okay? An idea, if you will, okay? You go from sketchy to confident, okay? Sketchy to confident. This is really. This is really where you sit back and go, I think it'll work to. This is. I. I know this is going to work because so often, especially if you have an entrepreneurial mindset, if you have an entrepreneurial way about you, you see ideas, you come up with ideas, you might even start them, But a lot of times they. You've got a lot of unfinished ideas. Some of you might know what I mean. All right, I've got a. I've got a fair number of unfinished ideas, okay? But the idea isn't enough. We have to get the execution and all of that behind it. So that's why we want to go from. From sketchy to confident, okay? But our preparation is the process of thinking through it. And there's three things to that preparation that I'll walk you through in a moment. But let's get to the other pillars, because preparation. This is about our thinking, okay? This is about us thinking about it differently.

All right? The second pillar, though, the second pillar, once we have the preparation done, now we have to look and do some evaluation, okay? Now, I'm an accountant, so I'm not a. I wouldn't be what you call a.

Extreme risk taker, okay? So the purpose behind the evaluation is to go from feeling naive, from not necessarily knowing exactly what to do to feeling empowered. So. So we're going from naive to empowered, okay? We're going from naive to empowered. And what I mean by evaluation is looking at what is possible. Doing your market research, doing your testing, doing the things that you do. Again, There are three things that you need to do in this stage of the transition process. So I'll talk about those in a second. Let's get to the third pillar, which is really now all of a sudden, what we're talking about here is now we get to execution. So think about the process that we've gone through. We did some preparation to get us from sketchy to confident. We did the evaluation to get us to understand some of the things that go into place. Then we go into execution. This is where we end up going from idea to results. Okay, so there's three phases if you truly want to do a transition effectively. So the thinking phase is the preparation phase. The an analyzing phase is the evaluation phase. And then the execution is all about doing. It's about getting it done. It's about getting in there and getting it done. So hopefully this is making sense to you. And as we do this now, you look at it and say, all right, how do I now put this into action? What are the things that I need to do? Well, let's look at the preparation phase, because there's some. There's three things that you need to do in the preparation phase to really have this start to take, take form. And the first is this is make sure that you're passionate about it. I mean, look, if you're just chasing the mighty dollar, the mighty lira, the euro, whatever your currency is, that's fleeting. It's not going to get you through the difficult times. What's above that? Why? Ask yourself why? Is it my passion? Is it something that I love to do, that I find joy in doing? Because, look, being straight with you, building a business sometimes isn't easy.

So we need to do it in. In a place where I find joy. Everything I do, I. I love what I do. I love doing this with you. I love serving. I love seeing your dreams come alive. I love speaking and, and helping people build businesses. I mean, I'm sitting on a board of directors. I was just in a board of directors meeting this week. This is a company that was found, founded in the late 1800s, and it still exists today.

And to see the generations and the pictures on the wall, this, what this is, what you can create is a business that builds legacy, that builds generational wealth, that builds things. But you better be passionate about it, because that's what's going to carry you through it. Now, once you have the passion. And now a lot of people say this, just follow your passion and the money will follow. Let me tell you something.

Just because you're passionate about it doesn't mean the money will follow. Build it and they shall come. It may work in the movies, but it doesn't work in real life. Okay, here's the way you need to tweak it. And this is this, this is the second thing that you need to look at when you're, when you're preparing, and that is this. Once I understand my passion, how do I take that passion and create value for someone else? Create value for someone else. In other words, how do I change their lives? How do I improve their human condition? How do I impact them? Because unless I can give them a transformation, unless I can change the human condition, unless I can solve a problem for them, my passion has no value, commercial value in the marketplace. It's a passion. It's good for me. It makes me feel good, but it isn't something I'm going to be able to sell. So it's not the fact that it's a passion that makes it make money. It's the fact that you're, You're. You can create value by shifting someone's life, by improving their conditions, by solving a problem with your passion that allows the passion to make money. Hopefully, that makes sense. So. So this step is often missed. I'm passionate about this or I'm passionate about that, and they decided to build a business around it. But they got to. You got to ask the question, how am I going to create value through my passions for the people that I want to serve? And when you find that equation of passion plus value, that is when you have the possibility of creating a business around it, hopefully that makes sense. Okay? And so now all of a sudden, you look at the third piece of this pillar, and the third piece of this pillar is interview. Okay, let's talk about this. What I mean by this is, now you figured out your passions. You figured out how you believe you can provide value to people.

With your passions. Now, I want you to go out to the market, I want you to research, I want you to interview. I want you to talk to people. Now, I don't want you to talk to the. Your, Your friends. I want you to talk to your demographics, the people you want to serve, because your friends go, oh, that's a good idea. Go do it. But if they're not the ones that are going to stroke a check, write it, swipe a credit card, and give you cash for it, they're not the ones you want to talk to, because what I want to do is have a conversation with those people. That are going to vote with their credit cards, with their checking accounts, with their money, and if they're willing to write a check for it. Now all of a sudden, you might have something that makes sense. Now, all this is done before you do anything. You're doing the preparation and understanding so you can sit back and formulate it before you ever take it to market. I'm sitting here right now with someone that's helping me do market research and talking to my customers and the clients and the people that I've helped build their wealth, give them financial freedom, what was it? So we can extract that gold.

To bring it back to market in a bigger way. And so if you look at your preparation phase, your preparation phase is about defining your passions, figuring out how you can create value in people's lives by solving problems and giving solutions, improving the human condition, and then interviewing or researching to your demographics to make sure that it is something they're willing to pay for. You might have the greatest solution in the land. But if they're not willing to pay for the solution, then it doesn't make sense. And I'd rather do that and know that before I get into it or decide to quit my job and then get caught behind the eight ball. Now let's go to evaluation. So the first piece of evaluation then is this, okay, is I want to plan. I've interviewed, I believe I have something in place. Now. I need to create a strategic plan, strategic plan of how I'm going to develop it, how I'm going to take it to market, what I'm going to do to launch it, who I'm going to go to first, the marketing, all of that stuff. So we create a plan of attack, plan of launch.

And now that gets us to go to this next piece. Now I have a plan in place. Now I do.

What I call a micro launch. Okay, this is, this is something that, if you look at the software industry, they do this, they, they do beta launches.

They know that, hey, we're going to launch this beta. There might be errors, there may be room for improvement. There may be some things. But we want to get it to marketplace so we can get some feedback from it. So then I want you to do a micro so you don't sit back, like, for instance, you want to go sell something that's. That is a new program that you've never done before. You know, if I'm going to go out and bring new content to the world, I'm not going to do it. When I get booked with for My, you know, my full keynote fee is $25,000 for a keynote. And so someone books me on a stage for $25,000 to go speak to their organization, and there's 2,000 people in the audience. The last thing they want me to do is test my content or test my material on that audience. They paid for a transformation, they paid for an experience. They paid for me to show up and deliver, not to test my stuff. So what we do is we use a micro launch, a beta launch, a pilot launch where we take a small group and we pilot it out. We work out the kinks. We do, look, comedians do it. They go on the road and they test their material. Okay? Software does it. A lot of industries will do pilot launches and micro launches to get feedback that. So now I want you to do a small launch. This, you're still in your job. You're going to do a small launch. And then based on that launch, you now look at it and say, okay, let me now assess. And there's a specific way that, that you can do a micro launch. You, they, you assess the results. What was the feedback? What did they need? What was missing? What could you do better? What was the, all of that stuff? Because once you do that, once you do that, you now have the make because they're willing to buy it. You've tested it, they got results with it, but you found out little holes and things that you could patch or fix to make it even more effective, more efficient and more value. You assess it, you make the change, and now you move to phase three, execution. All right, hopefully you guys are with me. Let's look at the execution phase because this is where now you start to take it to the marketplace. And the first thing to consider is this, okay.

Financial viability.

How much is it going to cost for you to deliver this? How much are you going to make? Does it make sense? Is it going to be profitable enough for you to carry this through? Instead of just going half cocked into the wind, instead of just going out there, great guns and say, I don't know, I'll figure it out. You're going to look at it and evaluate and say, what's my worst case? What's my best case? What's my most probable case? We build multiple business plans or multiple avenues to try and create the success that we're looking for. And we look at that and we test and stress test the financial viability. We do this with wealth plans. When someone's sitting back and looking at their portfolio and saying, am I You know, do I have enough to retire? Well, let's stress it. What happens if you, if you retire at the worst time of the, of the economy, the market, you know, we just had a 30% decline. And what, you know, what happens to your portfolio and what happens to your retirement? What happens if you do it at the best time? What happens if you do it in midtime? So you know what the boundaries are. So I want to test and I want to create and understand that I have the financial viability. If you are in a job that you're making $150,000 a year at, and plus bonuses and benefits and all that stuff, and this thing, the way you're, you're building it, is only going to make you $50,000 a year and you don't have any other income and you don't have a second, you know, you don't have a bunch of cash set aside, then the financial viability may not be there for you to go and execute on. But we have to take a real look and not just put rose colored glasses on and, and, and look at it from that perspective. But I want you to also ask a.

Entrepreneur'S question. And that is if you look at, and say I don't like the numbers, instead of saying, well, this doesn't work.

Ask yourself a different question. And that question is this. How can I make this work? How can I increase the financial viability of this, this. Okay, then from financial viability, you need to look at this. The, the next piece is to say, what's the team? Who do I need to pull this off? Maybe it's just you. Maybe you need a va. Maybe you need, you know, other consultants, maybe you need. Now I have a whole thing on whether you should be in joint ventures or partnerships and how you do that. Because they can be dangerous, dangerous places to play, but they can be extremely strategic and helpful. Also if, when you get it dialed in so it's the team, who, what are the resources, what are the people that you need to pull this off by having them in your court, by having them, they may be, they may be volunteers, they may just be associates, they may be mentors, or they may be partners or they may be employees. Define that up front to make that happen. And then the last piece, and this is when you decide.

When you're going to leave your job. So this gets to the heart of the question that she was asking. And this is something that I call the scale threshold. When we talk about the scale threshold, literally what I'm talking about, is at what point can I get this thing to an income level, a profit level of where I know that I can scale it and replace my income. You might sit back, like I said, let's just play the numbers. You have $150,000 salary and you say, look, if I can get this generating 50,000, I know that when I put full time into it, I can get it up to 150. So I know that in that process I need to be able to finance the gap between 50 and 150,000, the timeframe. So, so if it's going to take six months, eight months, nine months after you leave your job, you got to be able to finance that, you got to have, that's part of your plan, your financial viability plan and all of that. But if you look, look at it and you say, look, I'm single, I'm living in my parents basement, I have no debt, I have no responsibilities, you know, if you have that, your scale threshold might be even less. You might sit back and say, look, as soon as I make my first dollar, as soon as I know someone will buy it for me, I can go into it and I'll just make it happen. But everyone's scale threshold is going to be dictated by their circumstances. Like I said earlier, reckless versus committed. If you have family, if you have kids, if you have kids are going to college, you're expecting a child, are you expecting to get to expect a child, are you getting all those things go into figuring out your scale threshold. So we don't through throw caution to the wind. We don't just flippantly decide to quit without understanding I have a viable possibility. I've tested it. I've done a financial plan. I know what the financial viability is. I know what my scale threshold is. I need to make, you know, 30% of my salary, 40% of my salary, 50% of my salary before I step out and walk away. Because that has proven to me that, that I can scale this. Okay? It's not, I'm not going to tell you, look, it's 30% to and then you, then, then you're out. Because each person is different. You know, my son, he's got a brand new baby girl. My little granddaughter Emily will be 1 years old in August. You know, they're in a different place than Stephanie and I. You know, our responsibility is our one year old puppy. Okay? It's a different game. And so our scale threshold plus we have a different level of net worth and wealth. So our scale threshold is very different than theirs might be. Mine is different than yours, yours is different than, than someone else's. So. But it is a number. It's a place where one. You've proven the concept. You know that you, you can, that people are willing to buy it, you know that it's profitable, and you know that all it takes is more dedication and time, more for you to scale it and that you can sustain yourself financially.

During that scale time. Okay, now that's, that's how I would look at this, is that if I'm going to do a transition, I'm going to do it very methodically. I'm going to look at the numbers, I'm going to look at the possibility, and I'm going to make it work that way. I don't flippantly just quit. I don't just say I'm out and I'm going to do this unless I have a bunch of cash and do that. Now there is something else. There are those folks that are going to find themselves or potentially find themselves in a situation of being what I call a necessity entrepreneur. In other words, you didn't have a choice. They decided to outsize you, downsize you, get rid of you for whatever reason. So you find yourself on your own. This same process works, but now your back's against the wall. Now you got to look at it really critically and you got to get going. Because unless you followed the wealth priority ladder and some of the things that we teach in the affluence blueprint, you may not be positioned financially to sustain yourself for a long period of time, depending on what the company does or with a severance package or something like that. So you want to be prepared for this. And this is why I'm saying that whether you feel like you're comfortable in your job or you're comfortable in your business, I think you need to look at how do you create additional sources of income. Because additional sources of income will give you the possibility of choice. Something happens to one job or you can't earn in another job, you've got other income streams. When my cancer hit and we decided to step away from the business, I knew that that was going to drop the cash flow, but I had other income that was coming in. I didn't have to sell anything. This is the crux of some of the things that I want people to get. I want people to understand we have to build not only the business machine that's going to allow us to cash flow, but we need to build the wealth machine. We need to Build the other machine from the business machine to give us the financial freedom. The freedom doesn't sit in the business. The freedom doesn't sit in your employment. The freedom is in the wealth creation machine that you have created from those things. And part of doing that is scaling your income, optimizing your profits, and. And finding multiple streams of income. All right, I hope that this helps. I hope that this kind of gets you to start thinking about things. And if you. If you only have one source of income, it's time. It's time for you to look for other sources just so you can give yourself a bit of a safety net. If you have other sources of income, it's time to look at them and say, are they optimized? Are they maximized? Are they doing the things that they want to do? Are they totally stressing the heck out of me and they're not working in concert with each other? Other. Okay, I. I had the blessing of shutting everything down and then redesigning my businesses, my financial life and everything.

You know, it came at the cost of cancer, but it was a blessing nonetheless. All right, but this is a perfect time for you to take the time to look at it. I hope that. That you found this helpful and that you see the value in doing this to move you forward financially, to move you closer to financial freedom. You know that my true belief to the core of my being is financial freedom is a birthright. I want to help you claim that. I want to give you the pathway to make that happen. All right? You got to run the miles. I'll point you the right direction. All right? And if there's anything that I can do to support you in that journey, let me know. Send me a note. Send me a question. Send me something. Send me a homing pigeon. Let's keep you on that path to financial freedom. Let's give that to you. That's what an affluent entrepreneur does, and that's what we want to make of you. In the meantime, until we get a chance to see each other on another episode, another show, or on the road, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. Cheers.

Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of building your money machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.