The Honest Truth About Quitting Your Job To Start A Business (And My Exact Blueprint)

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During or after the call, you can chat with your notes, ask Granola to put out action items, help you negotiate, or even write a follow-up email. I've been using Granola for some time now, and one of my favorite features is that after a meeting, I just ask Granola, what are my action items? After a 30-minute or 60-minute meeting, sometimes you'll forget to jot down a thing or two that you need to do. So it's always good to know that Granola's got my back and I can just ask it after the meeting what I need to do next. Head to granola.ai/mba and get 3 months free with the code MBA. That's granola.ai/mba and get 3 months free with code MBA. I wanna tell you about a meeting that changed my life. It was 2012. I was in my teaching career. I was the acting chair of the department I was working for at the college I was at. For 18 months. I was doing the job, I was running the team, I was getting the results, but I didn't officially have the promotion. I was acting chair. So I asked my boss, the dean of the college, for a meeting. I wanted to sit down across from her and ask her two questions: why I did not get the promotion yet, and am I doing a good job? She looked at me and said, Omar, you're doing a fantastic job. The department has never been better. And then she said, But I gotta level with you. The director of the university wants to make an outside hire for this position. In that moment, I was crushed. Something happened inside of me when I left that room that I didn't expect. My frustration finally outgrew my fear. In that moment, I realized something that changed everything. I had zero control over my career. Zero. No matter how well I performed, no matter how hard I worked, no matter how much good I was doing, someone else always is going to make a decision, make a final call that dictated my future. And I was just done with that. I handed in my resignation one week later. And today I'm giving you the honest and ugly truth about quitting your job to start a business. I'm going to give you the exact 8-step blueprint I used to build a 7-figure business when I left. If I had to start completely over tomorrow with nothing, this is the exact timeline I would follow and the exact steps I would do if I was doing it all over again. Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhom, where I deliver practical business lessons 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. Let me start with the thing that most content about quitting your job completely just skips over. Quitting is not the hard part. The hard part starts the morning after, because when you leave your job, you don't only lose a salary, you lose structure. You lose someone telling you where to be, what to do, and when to do it. When I was a teacher, I knew exactly which classroom to go in, what subject to teach, who am I teaching it to, from what curriculum. It was prescribed. You lose any external accountability that most of us have relied on for their entire lives, right? Somebody looking after you, somebody making sure that you're doing your job. And the crazy thing is, is when you start in the beginning of your entrepreneurial career, and you have no alarm clock for someone else's schedule. You have no commute, you have no meetings to jump on, or you have no calls. You have ultimate freedom. And that lasts about 2 weeks and then reality hits. Okay? You have no idea what to do with yourself. You're sitting at your desk, every hour of the day is available to you, and you really have no structure, no plan. You gotta start from scratch. Nobody warned me about this. I thought the hard part of entrepreneurship was the business. The hard part is actually learning to be your own boss when you never had to do that before. You have to have the discipline, the schedule, the ability to sit down and do the work when nobody's checking on you, when nobody's gonna ask you, "What did you do today?" This is the real challenge in your first 90 days. Not the market, not the product, you. Now here's something I gotta address right off the top. Most people believe there's a perfect time to quit their job. They think that when I have enough money saved, that's a good time. When the business idea I have is ready, when the conditions are right. Do any of these sound familiar? Maybe you know somebody personally that has said these out loud. I'm telling you right now, there is no perfect time. There is only a time that is right for your specific situation. And here's what I mean by that. You can quit your job anytime if you're willing to adjust your life to to match the risk. Think about it. If you're willing to move back with your parents, you can quit your job tomorrow. But if you need to maintain your current lifestyle, you need more preparation, you need a plan. The question is not when is the right time? The question is, what are you willing to do and what can you not live without? That's really the question. The answer to that question tells you your actual timeline. When I quit, I gave 6 months notice as I was required, 'cause in teaching you can't just leave in the middle of the year. And I used those 6 months not to wait, but to prepare, to plan the business I would start, to cut my expenses ruthlessly. I sold my car, right? I moved to New York and rented a dungeon apartment that was cheap, the cheapest thing I could find. Nicole and I, we set up our life so that our savings could carry us for the next 12 months with zero income. That's my version of right timing. I had to sacrifice a lot in order for that to happen. The conditions were not perfect, but I wanted it bad enough that I'm willing to downgrade my life in my 30s. Right? Right. I'm downgrading my life and starting from scratch because I wanted to chase the dream. As you can see, my conditions were not perfect, but I had enough runway to survive long enough to figure it out. Now let's talk about the blueprint before you quit your job. Let me give you those steps, those exact steps starting before you hand your notice. Step 1, you need You need to know your number. What do I mean by that? Calculate your absolute minimal monthly expenses. What's the minimum amount of money that you need to spend every month so that you can survive, that you can live a life that you can be okay with? Okay. It doesn't have to be your ideal life because remember, this is temporary. This is just a part of your life. This is just a chapter of your life that is going to be a little bit rougher than the ones that are to come, the chapters to come, right? So you want to calculate everything when it comes to like your rent, your food, your transport, utilities, you know, nothing glamorous. Forget about holidays for a moment. Forget about like, you know, a budget for new clothes. And what I would do is that once you calculate your minimum expenses, add 20% on top of that number for emergencies, because emergencies always happen. That's your monthly burn. That's how much money you need each month to live. Now divide your savings by that number. How many months do you have of runway? This is what's called runway. How many months do you have to survive on your savings? In my opinion, you need an absolute minimum of 6 months. 12 is better, but 6 is the minimum. Do not quit until you have that runway. And remember, that runway is malleable depending on what your minimum budget is, right? What you cut. Right? Maybe cutting something that you didn't consider, like moving to another city that's cheaper. Some people think that's extreme, but hey, you're changing your life here. That's pretty extreme. Now, the reason why I recommend this runway is because a runway will curb desperation, because knowing you have that runway removes that desperation. Desperation kills new businesses like the plague. Okay? Desperation makes you take on the wrong clients. It makes you price yourself too low. You make decisions from fear instead of strategy. It's a horrible place to be. It's hard to be creative when you're desperate, right? The runway buys you the ability to think clearly. That's step 1. Step 2, validate before you leave. Okay? Do not quit until you figure out what business you are going to start. Start figuring out while you're still getting a salary from your job and covering your expenses of your life, if the business will fly. I'm not talking about a business plan. I'm not talking about a logo. I'm not talking about a website. I'm talking about actual customers. Actual evidence that someone will pay you for what you are offering. Even if you have one customer that ends with somebody buying, you can extrapolate some information. Meaning, let's say for example, that customer pays you $2,000 and it— you spend 10 hours a week on your business while you're doing it part-time. Well, you know that if you had 40 hours, you can make $8,000 a week. with this type of math. You can actually make that assumption to some extent. Missed calls and slow follow-ups are silent killers for your business. And that's exactly how businesses leave money on the table without ever realizing. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QO, spelled Q-U-O, the business communication system built so you never miss a call. With QO, calls, texts, voicemails, transcripts, the contact details, They're all in one clear view, so your team always has the full picture and can follow up for every customer conversation, ensuring a seamless and more personalized experience. Everyone on your team sees the full thread, replies are faster, and customers actually feel like they're taken care of. And QoWorx, wherever you are, right from your phone or computer. Keep your existing phone number, add teammates in minutes, sync your CRM, and let the call routing handle itself as you scale. Money's on the line. Always say hello with QWO. Try QWO for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to qwo.com/mba. That's qwo.com/mba. One of the biggest growth hacks is realizing you don't have to do it all yourself. That's how you can scale your business. This is why I'm so excited to have Upwork as a sponsor because I've been using Upwork for over a decade. Why? Because it makes it easy to bring in the right freelancer when you need them so you can stay focused on what you do best. Upwork is a one-stop shop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. I've made some of the best hires in our company through Upwork. I'm talking about people that has changed the trajectory of our entire business. It's free to sign up to Upwork and posting a job is super simple and easy. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent across 125 categories. It makes it simple for you to just fill in those skill gaps, to launch projects faster and scale your support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. And let me tell you about Business Plus. It's a game changer. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under 6 hours. No endless searching required. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com, upwork.com. Step 3, tell people in your life. This is one of the most important steps and you cannot skip it. If you live with a partner, a spouse, family members, parents, you need to let them know what is coming. It's only fair. Not after you decide, before, before the decision actually affects their life, because it's going to affect their life. It's going to affect their sense of security, their routines, their financial planning. If they're going to go on holiday next year, all that. Okay. Get them on your side before you make any moves. Why? Because explaining what you are doing early And convincing them and making them understand why you're doing it is going to allow them to square their concerns. Understand that, hey, I'm a little bit worried, but I understand why this is happening. You need to have an open conversation. You need to be willing to sell them the idea. Okay? Because if you can't convince your loved ones, the people that care about you the most and want to see you win, then you're going to have a hard time selling to strangers. Give them the honest picture. You got to get them on side because trying to build a business with the people that are closest to you working against you is really, really hard. And business is hard as it is. You don't need to make it harder on yourself. So make sure you do this. Have a family meeting and have a discussion. If this episode is giving you some clarity and some clear steps, I want you to subscribe to the show because I have an upcoming episode that's going to help so many of you that are struggling with marketing. If your marketing isn't working, I'm going to show you how to fix it. 99% of businesses get this wrong, and I'm going to make sure you don't get it wrong. You need to understand which kind of marketing actually works and helps your bottom line and actually makes you money. And which one is really a waste of time and energy. Hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode when it drops. Okay. What about after you quit your job? This is step 4, where you want to leave your job cleanly. When you resign, tell your employer you are happy to work with them for a smooth transition. That's what I did. I said, hey, I have 6 months to transition. This is my decision. I want to make sure that I leave my legacy here intact and I do what's right for the organization. I helped train my replacement. I documented all my work because I wanted to leave the place better than I found it. This might sound unnecessary when you're excited about leaving and starting your new business, but it's not unnecessary because the world is very small. Okay. It's smaller than you think. Your former employer becomes a reference. It becomes a client possibly one day. It could be a source of introductions, especially if you're using some of of the networks that you have from your current job. The people you worked with go on to other organizations. You have to leave your job in good standing. Listen, I'm telling you firsthand, I left my teaching job in 2012. It's been a good minute, right? There's still people from my old career that are listeners of the podcast, that find us on our webinars, that buy our products. I mean, these are people that I worked with day in and day out in the university, the college I was working at. Mm-hmm. So plan on the fact that you will be successful and you want people to want to work with you in the future. Step 5: Work like you never worked before. This is the reality. You are going to work as hard as you can possibly imagine and then some. The first weeks and months after quitting, you're going to have incredible energy. You're going to have incredible excitement for starting something new, something of your own. The urgency of knowing your runway is going to run out soon. I got to make sure I'm going to be successful soon. I got to make sure I can pay my bills. The clarity of removing the obligations of your job, and now you have full focus on your business. You need to use that energy. Do not waste that energy. That energy is so rare and you're never going to get it again because you're never going to start all over again in business because this is your first time you're starting. Use that energy. Don't waste it. Use it to get customers, to make calls, to send emails, to have conversations. Every hour, everything that you do, needs to be focused on getting revenue. Every hour that goes towards everything else is borrowed time. You do not focus on things that don't make you money in the beginning. There'll be plenty of time for all that other stuff later. Okay. Make sure that that work is pointed directly at building your business. And I'm telling you right now, when I look back at those days, I look back with exhaustion. Number one, I was so tired because I was literally working 14 hours a day, every day, 7 days a week for about 3 years. I know that sounds a lot and extreme, but that's what it took for me to get where I went. Maybe it's going to take less time for you. Hopefully it will, because you have so many more advantages these days with technology. But I'm just telling you that that was what I was willing to do to get to where I want to go. Step 6, surround yourself with people that are building things. This is so important. If you are around the right people, you'll be successful. It's just inevitable, right? Because it just becomes normal. Success is the standard. When Nicole and I moved to New York, we joined a coworking space and the effect of being surrounded by other people building businesses every single day was something that I did not anticipate. It was visceral. It normalized ambition. Success felt inevitable, like I mentioned. Every day people were doing something. Listen, nobody was giving me advice at the coworking space. It was just being around people that are actually creating. I could look around the room and I could see people doing exactly what I was trying to do. Close sales and build a great product, you know, do marketing. It was just immersion at an extreme level, which was exactly what you need in the beginning. And listen, when it feels normal to be building something, you build differently. You do not apologize for your ambition. You do not shrink your goals to fit what other people around you think is realistic. You operate at a level of the room you're in, right? That room, everybody's going after, everybody's chasing their dream, everybody's making it happen. So therefore you feel like you gotta do the same, right? That's what's happening here. I gotta, you know, I gotta walk the talk. So join coworking spaces, entrepreneurial communities, go to meetups, go to events, get yourself physically into spaces where the vibrations are at a different level, different frequency. Than your normal life. The environment you're in is not a backdrop. It's the engine of your success. Step number 7, drop everything that is not building your business. I'm talking about your life here. I've talked about this many times on other podcasts as a guest. It's quite controversial, but this is what I believe worked for me. Nicole and I looked at our social calendar. What are we spending time on? Right? What are the things that really are taking up our attention? And instead of cutting and saying all these things are a waste of time, We did the opposite. We said, what are the things that are important? What are the only things that we should be focusing on? And we chose only 3 things to make it simple. Number 1, the business. Okay. Number 2, family, making sure that we take care of each other and our close family. And number 3, exercise. Because if you don't have your health, you have nothing. You can't do anything. Everything else, all the other activities, whether it's parties, fun, movies, whatever it might be. Go on pause until the business has traction. I think that's fair enough. I think for me, it's like, hey, you want to change your life? It's going to take a lot of sacrifice. It's going to take a lot of motion. And listen, I understand that plan only focusing on those 3 things is not sustainable long-term. And that's why I only say at the start, the first 12 months, it's just a chapter in your life. And then once your business starts going and you can start hiring and you start scaling, You can then adopt some of those things you let go of again, and you could be actually more selective about those things and not just choose it because that's what your habits are. Step 8: One customer at a time. Do not try to build a mammoth company. Okay? Build your first customer relationship, then your second, then your third, then your fourth, one by one. The mistake that most entrepreneurs make is they try to think at scale at the start. They think, oh, how do I get 20 customers in one day? No. Just get one right now. You don't have any. Don't get caught on this idea. Okay. Everything has to scale. You know, a lot of these entrepreneurs, they want the funnel and the team and the systems before they actually have 10 customers. Okay. Get some customers first, because the customers will tell you what they need. They'll tell you what kind of business you need to build. They will tell you what are the skill gaps you have and which hires you need to make. So just start with one customer, then another, then another, then another. Start learning from them. The power of compounding takes over. One customer loves what you do, tells someone else. That someone tells someone else as well. Your skills start to improve each time you engage with a customer. The repetition builds with each result, right? You get a result, it encourages you to try it again and do it again and do it again. Your confidence grows with each yes you get from a customer. The compounding effect again is tremendous. So just remember. Yes. You need to take it one customer at a time, at the start at least. Now, this episode, this lesson would not be complete if I didn't give you the real reason most people will never quit their jobs. I know so many people that told me, I'm gonna quit my job this year. I'm in transition, da da da. And 10 years go by, they're still doing the same thing. They haven't quit. And I don't judge them, but I do wanna say that you need to be aware of why this happens so that if you actually do wanna quit, you sidestep this issue. Most people say they want to quit their job and start a business, but they never do. Why does this happen? Are people just liars? No, it's not because the timing is wrong. It's not because the idea is not good enough. It's not because the economy's uncertain. It's because of one reason. It's because the fear of the unknown is greater than the pain of the known. The pain they're currently in, in their job, the thing that they're not satisfied about, it's just not that big in comparison to the fear of taking that leap. And here is how I know about that calculation after 20 years of building businesses. The known gets worse over time. The longer you stay somewhere that has a ceiling you can't control, the more frustration compounds. The more you watch other people building the things and wonder, why? Why not me? The more the gap between your life and what you want to live is starting to grow. Like the vision you have for your life and what you're living starts to look really different. And that gap has a cost and it's paid in the currency of regret. That's the truth. My biggest regret in my career as an entrepreneur is that I didn't start earlier. Like I mentioned earlier, I sat across my boss. I heard that someone else was going to get The future I've been working so hard for, they're gonna be given this future. I didn't even get a chance to earn it. In that moment, I stopped being afraid. In that moment, like I said, my frustration outgrew my fear. And until you find that moment, you will keep waiting. You will keep waiting for the best time and the best moment. But in my opinion, until you have that experience, it's hard for you to choose an unknown future. For me, I was like, anything's better than this. I'm going to jump into the unknown. And figure it out. If you're at that moment and your frustration has outgrown your fear, then take that leap. Let's start planning. Okay, make the decision and follow the steps that I outlined today. By the way, today's episode topic came from a question from a listener of the show, Henry. If you have a question you want to ask, go to 100mba.net/q, submit your question. We might just make it a whole episode about your question. If this episode has given you the blueprint you've been looking for, I'm glad. That's why I created it. This is why my whole team has worked on it for the last couple weeks. If you wanna take the first step and start learning how to build a software business, you might wanna check out a recent episode we just published called How to Build a Software Business with AI This Weekend, Zero Coding Skills Required. Go check it out. Thanks for making it to the end of the episode. I am in your corner. Anytime you need help, we're here via the podcast, okay? And of course, if you're part of our newsletter, just go to our website, 100mba.net, sign up for any of our free templates or guides. And you'll be part of our newsletter. You can reply to any email and I will reply personally. It takes me a while, but I like to reply to everybody. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode. Who knew Walmart Business could help a bustling school district stay on budget? Principal Lewis knew. He uses Walmart Business to easily get the items his elementary school needs. Our tax-exempt status works online and in store. And with our tight budgets, they have everything we need at prices places I love. Expense management tools help him stay on top of what he's spending. I keep track of hundreds of things every day. Jenny, get out of there. Thankfully, Walmart Business lets me keep track of all our expenses in one place. Aaron, don't eat that. Michael, uh-uh. 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