I read it in threads all the time, women asking “How do I transition out of employment into my own business?” or “When is the right time to quit?” and having done exactly the opposite to what I’m about to say, my advice is to hold on for as long as you can – even if you hate it, even if you wake up every morning with a lack of motivation, even if you sit at your desk feeling vague and fraudulent, because the income is often the only resource you’ll have to drive your business forward.
When BubDesk first started it needed bank guarantees for rent and personal loans for operating expenses, all of which would have been impossible without a salary to show that I could service the loans and on quitting my job I can’t even begin to tell you how the stress for needing BubDesk to survive amplified by about 100 times or how my home life deteriorated now that both of us were self-employed. We had been your typical dual income couple with money to burn and now we were nothing short of miserable, watching every cent and the worst part, I was responsible.
Until you reach a point where your business can pay you somewhere close to what you earn at work I would find any possible way to hold onto your job – even if it means using some of your own wage to pay someone else to help with the running of your business. Had I had that realisation before quitting my awesome job, I would have recruited the incredible VA I now use in Romania (at $7.50phr), and she could have done most of what was taking my time in the business, at a fraction of my Woodside wage.
Six months out of work and I realised, “I have to go back to work”. Woodside wasn’t an option and I needed something that could allow me enough flexibility to still work on BubDesk. I consider Uber for a while there, but in the end I took a very casual, very flexible, very low paying logistics role for a freight forwarding company located out at the airport in a 1970s building, in an environment where the conversation bored me to tears and where the only option for lunch was a little coffee van that came by at 10:30am ……I often found myself thinking, “Kill me now”.
Truly, what had I done? At half my old hourly rate, I now needed to put in double the number of hours working for someone else to keep myself afloat. If you’re reading this and toying with the idea of chucking in your day job, learn from my mistakes. Maybe it’s time, but maybe it’s not!
To read Part 1 of this 6 part start-up series visit:
https://www.behindthebrands.com.au/the-art-of-perception/
