MBA1980 Q&A Wednesday: I got offered a promotion a month before I was going to start my business. What should I do?

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So Carrie was planning to leave her job and start her own business in about a month, but she just got a promotional offer and it's huge. She will see a huge raise of 40% and it's something that's going to really be a big shift in her career. What does she do? Does she take the promotion or does she stick to her guns and go ahead and start that business? I first want to say I can't make this choice for Carrie, but. But I can help her through it and help you who might be thinking about leaving your job uncover what's important to you so you can make a decision for yourself. I also want to say that this is actually all good news. Okay? This is actually a great problem to have. You are choosing between two exciting, fun, great things. A new promotion or opportunity in your job with a good bump in salary, a great bump in salary, or going ahead with your business idea that you've been thinking about for some time and betting on yourself. These are two really amazing options. We all should feel privileged if we have these options available to us. So first of all, Kerry, this is not bad news. This is great news. And congratulations for being in this position. Next, I want to just outline the fact that this is a hard decision, okay? And there's a reason why this is hard, and I'm going to give it to you. And the best way to explain it is with a quote. This is by Kevin O', Leary, you know, Mr. Wonderful over at Shark Tank. He has a very famous quote. He says one of the most addictive drugs is a steady paycheck. This is one of the hardest things to kick, is that you're going to get paid every two weeks or every month or whatever it is, and you're relying on that money, right? You have bills that you have to pay, you have responsibilities, you have goals. You may even have not that many responsibilities, but you're just used to a certain standard of living or life that is afforded by this steady paycheck. This is what makes this decision so hard is because you're choosing between stability, comfort, even more comfort with a raise and kind of the status quo or things not changing too much is a new challenge. But you're working in the same place, in the same field. It's not something totally new versus total uncertainty, starting a business, taking a massive risk on yourself and really just going into the unknown. And the best way to decide is to really understand your why. Because if your why for either of these decisions, if it's not strong enough, it's not going to allow you to easily make a decision. So it's really important to dig deep. Let me explain a little bit. Let me unpack that. When I quit my job, my career as an educator, when I left my job in the university, I was actually the head of the department and doing pretty well. My salary was pretty comfortable. But I was unfulfilled as a professional, as somebody who wanted to achieve more, I felt like I could do more. And I also was hungry for freedom. I couldn't do much on my own, meaning everything needed approval, everything needed to go through a system. There were a lot of red tape. I really wanted to do what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted it. I was craving that. I was really hungry for that. And I got a taste of it because I was side hustling. I was building businesses on the side while I was an educator, while I had a job. So I knew what that Feeling was like. And I wanted to feel like that all the time, not just on nights and weekends. And my increased frustration at my job as well as not getting a promotion, I thought I deserved this, kind of pushed me to strengthen my why to be a full time entrepreneur. Like, I want to see what this is like. I know this is a risk. I know that nothing's guaranteed. I don't have an income coming in. But I always say my frustration really outgrew my fear. And I thought, I gotta try this because I'm not sure when I can do this if I don't do it now. So I had a strong why to make a choice to leave my job. And this is incredibly important, not only in the decision making, but once you make that decision to persevere down that path, that why has to be very strong. Because you're going to have some tough times, some challenging times, and some doubts, and you're going to need something inside you to say, okay, but I'm doing this for this reason, for the freedom, for the ability to be as creative as I want to, to build something for myself, to build an asset that I can be proud of one day. This was my why. And that's why I was able to kind of make the decision to leave. I also tried to find a why to stay. And I listed things, I explored the reasons why I could stay in my job and persevere and keep pushing. But at the end of the day, my why to leave was a lot stronger. So you can do the same for your situation. If you have a lot of strong reasons why you should take this promotion, stay in your job and continue on this path. If that excites you, that gets you going, if that really kind of outweighs your why to start your business full time, then it makes it super clear for you to be like, you know what, I have to give this a try. Or it could be the opposite for you. You're not going to know until you explore. And a part of this is just writing down notes. You just make a line down a piece of paper and write why for staying, Wait, why for going. And you just start jotting down reasons why. And you'll know when one why is stronger. When it's just easy to write things down. It just flows. The list gets longer and longer and it's just super apparent to you when you look at the paper and say, wow, one column has a bunch of whys that I'm very, you know, passionate about and the other one, not so many. So this exercise is incredibly helpful. Why is it helpful? Because it allows you to understand what is making you feel a certain way. It addresses all the factors. So say, for example, one of your whys is like, you know, this bump in salary can really help me me pay off debt or get ahead of my savings or reach certain financial goals. I can get to those goals faster because that would kick in immediately instead of me trying to build my business. And maybe a few years from now, I'll be able to do that. Just being honest about how you feel and writing down those things is really going to help you. Next thing I want to mention is you need to look at the opportunity cost and the cost of risk. What do I mean by that? Well, opportunity cost is very simple. If you choose to do something, what are the other opportunities you're going to miss out on if you take that option? So, for example, if I say I'm going to go to Europe for two weeks on a holiday, as soon as I make that decision, I basically say no to everything else in those two weeks of my life. Like, I'm not going to be able to do anything else in those two weeks because I'm going to Europe. Right? I can't go to Disney World or be at Disney World for two weeks. I can't be in two places at one time. I can't spend my money on both and enjoy both. Right. It's very hard to do that for the equivalent amount of time. Same thing with investment. Same thing with investment of time in your life. When I choose to watch two hours of tv, it's not just a waste of two hours. It's the waste of what I can be doing with those two hours, like going to the gym or reading a book. All the things I can get out of those things in those two hours are my opportunity costs. And the cost of risk is basically saying, what's the worst that can happen? What happens if I make the choice and it's not the right choice for me? How can I reverse things or how can I recover if the path I choose is not the right path for me? So in Carrie's example, say, for example, she takes the promotion. What's the risk here? Or the cost of risk? Well, by taking that promotion, she's probably pretty focused on this new job, a new opportunity, new position. So she's going to spend a little less time working on her business idea. She probably will have a few hours here or there, or maybe she'll have to sacrifice some of her hobbies or what she does to relax to get in some time to work on her business. That's really the risk here, right? She might be losing a little momentum on her business as it is right now. A side hustle. What about the other side? If I go full time in my business and I give it a red hot go and I try my best, but for some reason it doesn't work out and I have to go back to work, is it impossible for me to go and get my job back or get another job? These are the things that you'll have to weigh out. Now. I like to calculate my cost of risk or what's the worst that can happen because it gives me confidence, it gives me the feeling that, hey, you know what, it's not going to be that bad. So let me just give it all I can and whatever I choose. Life is about choices. And sometimes you're going to make the wrong choice for yourself and that's okay. You got to keep trying. And most of the time, these choices are not irreversible. But confirm that in this thought experiment.

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To wrap up today's Q and a Wednesday's question from Kerri. She's got a tough decision to make, but I hope some of the advice I gave you in terms of the questions to ask, the exercises to do to clarify your why, clarify why you're going to choose one over the other. What life looks like when you do that. What are the opportunity costs? What's the cost of risk? This allows you to be a little bit more objective about it and put your feelings aside for a moment. Because at the end of the day, this is your life and there is emotion, right? This is an emotional situation because it's how you view yourself. It's your significance, it's your career. It's all your investment of time and hard work over the years. I want to just wrap up with something very important. Whatever you choose, whether you're Carrie or anybody who's listening to take that promotion to stay in your job or to start your own thing. If you know you've done the work, you've done, the research you've done, you know, the exercises in the exploration, the self exploration, and you know one way is going to make you feel better, is better for you. It's what makes you comfortable. That's okay. There's no reason to feel bad if you don't choose one over the other. There's no right or wrong answer. There's only what's right or wrong for you. And even if you make the wrong choice for yourself, often it's not something that is permanent. You can change it, you can go back, you can figure things out. Now, having said that, change is uncomfortable. I can't tell you how uncomfortable it was to go from an incredibly structured system and job where I knew exactly what to do every day. Everything was laid out for me. I didn't have to make up any kind of procedures or rules or timetable or schedule, to a totally unstructured life trying to figure it out as an entrepreneur full time. That was super uncomfortable, super hard, very challenging to get over and to kind of talk to yourself and say, hey, you know, I gotta figure this out. I gotta structure my life. I gotta put my own rules, my own procedures. I gotta set this thing up so I can win. No one's here to help me but myself. So sometimes our choices, even when we have a strong why, are going to be hard. They're going to be uncomfortable. So just keep that in mind. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you got a question you want to ask, just email me over at omar100mba.net and I'll make sure that we answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. A lot of people ask me, when did you know that you made the right choice to go into full time entrepreneurship and leave your job? When did you know? Is it instant? Was it the first week when you started to build out your business? And the honest truth is, is that I actually didn't know for a very long time if it was the right choice. I know that it was an adventure and it was fun, but I was just trying to survive. I was just trying to build something significant. I was trying to figure out what works for my business. I know I made a choice and I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur really badly. So I just focused on trying to get some momentum, some traction every single day and just focus on that and not really worry about Did I make the right choice? Am I making fast enough progress? Where should I be by now? It's been six months. Every day I just focused on how can I make my business a little bit better, get more customers, serve them better, all that kind of stuff. In hindsight, I look at it and I say I'm pretty sure I felt like, you know what, this was my calling. Maybe two years in, if I have to be totally honest, because it took about two years for me to believe I can really do this, like 100%. And you don't hear many people share that. And I thought it was important just to share that. It's not going to feel amazing all the time. It's not going to feel like 100%. I made the right choice and this is exactly what I wanted all my life. You're going to have doubts, but your job is to move forward and work through those doubts. To move forward despite those doubts. To just move closer and closer to being a successful, profitable, sustainable business every single day. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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