MBA2708 Q&A Wednesday: How Did You Make The Leap From Your Job To Starting a Business

Thinking about leaving your job to start a business, but not sure when or how to make that move? Wondering what it really takes to go from employee to entrepreneur without risking everything overnight? Today’s question comes from Grant, who asked: “How did you make the leap from your job to starting a business?” Omar shares the behind-the-scenes story of his own transition, including the practical steps, the challenges, and the strategies that made it possible. From side hustles and “escape funds” to quitting strategically and managing the ups and downs, you’ll hear what the journey really looks like and how to prepare for it yourself. Ready for some clarity and motivation to start building your own path? Hit the play button at the top of this page and get the lesson that could help you take the leap with confidence. To submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. SUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You love what you do. You also love the idea of not doing it one day. But it's getting harder to know the best way to move into the future, towards retirement. We hear about inflation, rate hikes, the changing market. Got to get the kids through college, build an emergency fund, and then there's retirement. Here's where Fidelity comes in. Fidelity can help you find clarity in saving for the future, even as your path and priorities evolve. How? Well, they'll help you create a free personalized plan that adapts as your priorities change. They'll also show you what's called timely insights, small tips on ways to save and invest to help meet your goals. And you can monitor your plan, so you stay on target. The future's coming, and so is retirement. Fidelity can help you take it on your way.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Learn more at fidelity.com/future. Expenses charged by your investments and other costs and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account apply. Fidelity Brokerage Services, member NYSE, SIPC.

• 0:55Speaker 01

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• 1:38Speaker 01

  Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block Incorporated brand. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Everyone on the internet says, "Follow your dreams, start your business, take the leap." But what they don't tell you is that there's a lot of gravity on the way down. In today's Q and A Wednesday, I'm going to answer Grant's question. How did you make the leap from your job to starting a business? And I'm not going to hold back. I'm going to give you the raw truth, the good, the bad, the ugly, of how I left my teaching career and started my first business.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  I got a quick favorite ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff, practical business advice that you're getting from the show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  My first career was teaching. I was an English teacher. I taught English as a second language. My first five, six years, I was in the classroom, teaching my students, but later on, I became a manager. I was the head of department, and then I became the chair of my department at the university I was working at. But education was my jam. I had a good paycheck. I had great benefits. I had a long summer break. But all my free time was spent building businesses on the side. I was building side hustles, small experiments. Some made me money, some didn't do so well, and I failed. But I learned a lot in that process. Even during my long summer breaks, I would invest that time into trying to invest in my businesses and try to become better at this game of entrepreneurship.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  But I never actually made enough money on the side with my businesses to replace my income. But one day, I was really frustrated in my job, because I was the chair of department. I was actually the acting chair, because the chair that was there before, the person that managed that was there before, left the position, and I took over his responsibilities. And I was doing it for 18 months, and I didn't get a promotion officially. I wasn't getting an increase in pay. That's a long time, a year and a half. So I decided to talk to my boss, the dean of the university. And I went to her office, and I said, "Hey, do you think I'm doing a great job at my position?" She was like, "You're doing a fantastic job. You're creating so much value to the university and doing amazing work." And I was like, "Okay, great. So why am I not getting this promotion? What's going on?"

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Eighteen months and she was like, you know, I gotta level with you. I know that the directory of the university actually wants to make an outside hire for this position. And in that moment, I was crushed, right? I was frustrated and angry and I say, in that moment, my frustration outgrew my fear. I felt like, man, I have no power over my future. I can work as hard as I want and at the end of the day, somebody else, my boss, my superior, is going to make a decision that's going to change the trajectory of my career. I don't have the power to elevate myself in my life and in my business and/or my professional life. A lot of people say that action is preceded by inspiration or desperation.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  I feel like desperation is really the biggest motivator in life when you have to make a change. So I want to start there because if the pain is not strong enough, it's really easy for you to just continue to do what you're doing. So you've got to really want to leave your current situation and you're willing to sacrifice or even take a few steps back in your lifestyle in order for you to pursue something new. Now, that's not the only reason why people don't make the leap because they're not frustrated enough or it's not a must have. But a lot of people don't take the leap because they think that jumping out of their job is like jumping off a cliff and that's not the truth. The truth is that you need to start thinking about building a bridge.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Now, I was in teaching and education. It's very hard for you to resign and leave in the middle of the year. You actually have to give six months notice and that was great for me because that gave me six months to have a plan, to build that bridge so that I can have a safe landing. The trap is to think binary. Think I either have to have a job or I have to be a full-time entrepreneur. My six months period where I gave my notice is when I started to say, okay, I'm going to be an entrepreneur in six months. How do I start relying on my entrepreneurial skills? Start building more and more traction in my businesses so that when I do take that leap, it's not a total risk. I'm building on safe ground. I have some. Momentum in what I'm building in my business.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  So that mindset of I'm gonna quit my job, have no paycheck, super scary. That usually stops people in their tracks. Don't do that, okay? What you wanna do is you wanna start thinking, okay, I'm gonna leave my job in six months or a year. Let me work backwards. What does that look like? First of all, when I leave my job and I have my full-time business, how much money am I making? How much money do I actually need? All that kinda stuff. So I'm gonna walk you through step by step, how I did it and how you should do it. How to quit your job and start your business full-time and how to build that bridge. So let's start with number one. Step number one. And that's the side hustle stage. You wanna build a proof of concept first. Before I said, "I quit at my job," I had a side business that was making me money. It was profitable. It wasn't making me as much money as my paycheck.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  But I wasn't putting as much time in that business as I was at my job. So that wasn't really fair. In fact, I was making about $2,000 to $3,000 a month. Let's call it $2,500 a month. But I was putting in like eight hours a week into this thing. Just spare hours in the evening or sometime in the weekend. So if I was putting in eight hours a week and making $2,500, logically, if I put in 40 hours, I should be able to make $10,000, right? I know it's not exact math, but I had a proof of concept. I was building websites for friends and family, for small businesses. And I was showing and proving to myself that, hey, someone is willing to pay me for this product, for this service. So, don't quit your job to start a business.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Start a business so you can quit your job. That is something you need to remember. This is especially important if you are not single, right? If you are a family person, you have a significant other, you have kids, you have people around you that rely on you. You need to prove to them as well that, hey, what you're building on the side has traction, has potential. And if you put more time and effort into it, it can only grow. Be honest, as a business owner, how much of your day is actual work? And how much is it just getting ready to do the work? Answering emails, tweaking presentations, hunting for numbers? That stuff adds up fast, which is why upgrading to the premium tier of Google Workspace with Gemini is a game changer. One subscription gets you Google's AI

• 8:54Speaker 01

  right into all your apps like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Meet, so it can handle all the heavy lifting across your day. Need a reply drafted in your exact voice? Gemini handles it in Gmail. Need to turn messy spreadsheet data into visual insights? Done in Sheets. Missing a meeting? It takes notes and gives action items in Meet. It acts like a full-time assistant connected across your entire business. Make work less work. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini. Support for today's episode comes from Square. You probably know Square as the thing you tap your card on at your favorite coffee shop, restaurant, salon, or local store. But for the person running that business,

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Square is a whole lot more than a way to get paid. Square brings the tools you need to run and grow your business together in one system. From payments on appointments to staff, inventory, sales, and customer relationships. Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, detailing cars, running a restaurant, or starting something new. Square keeps your business tools working together so you can focus less on managing the moving parts and more on what's next. And right now, listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/mba. That's S Q U A R E dot com slash go slash M B A. Visit Square to get started because running a business is complicated enough. Your tools don't have to be.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Step two is the runway stage. You want to save six to 12 months of expenses so that if for any reason you leave your job, you still can cover your expenses at least six months. I call this your escape fund. I called it my escape fund when I did it. It was my chance to be able to give myself six months to survive without a paycheck. Every dollar I made from side projects went into a separate account. That money was oxygen for me when I left my job. Right? It gave me permission to focus on what I really want to focus on: my business. Now, super important when it comes to the runway stage. You can extend your runway.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  You can save time and save this money faster if your expenses are lower. Okay, I personally drastically changed my lifestyle when I became a full-time entrepreneur. And I left my job and became a full-time entrepreneur. I decided to slash my expenses more than half. I sold my car. I lived in a small apartment. I took mass transit, just took the subway to get around. I walked, barely bought anything for myself. You know, Nicole and I, when we were starting out, we barely bought even clothes for ourselves or even entertained ourselves or went on any trips. No, the first couple of years of full-time entrepreneurship was really frugal. And the reason why we did this is because it gave us more oxygen.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Now, remember, if you're going to cut back when you're making this transition, know that this is temporary, okay? You're going to have plenty of time to spend on luxury goods later, right? You can have the Mercedes and the Rolex and the fancy vacations and the, you know, beautiful clothes when you have an abundance of wealth. Right now, that money that you're saving is oxygen. It's fuel. It's your chance to think clearly so that you don't have to worry about, you know, the roof falling over your head, right? You have some time to start growing your business. Step three is the transition stage. You're going to quit in phases. What I would recommend is you try to reduce your workload.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  So, for example, if you're working in your job, ask your boss, "Is it okay if I work four days a week, 10 hours a day?" So, you're still doing 40 hours, but you're doing 10 hours a day. That gives you now three days to work in your business instead of two on the weekend. The next step could be a sabbatical where you ask your boss, "Can I take three months leave and then come back?" In those three months, you might find that your business is thriving and growing, and you don't need to go back to your job. Some people, like in Australia, have what's called a long service leave. So, after being in a company or in a job for over 10 years, you get a full year off or a series of months off where you can just take the time. Time off and basically focus on something else other than your job.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  You might want to even consider moving from full-time to part-time to give your business more time, but also to have a little bit of side income from your job along with your business. So you don't need to do all or nothing, alright? You can transition out of it and start seeing your business grow with that extra time. Step four, the commitment stage is where you burn the boats. At some point, you have to cut the safety rope and you gotta say, "This is the last day of my job," right? And once you've handed in your resignation, like I did, every decision becomes sharper and it becomes a necessity for your business to succeed. It's one of the best days of my life, actually, is when I handed in that resignation and decided to leave.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  I knew my last day at work and I was so excited because everything became clear. Everything became about building my future, my business, becoming a better entrepreneur. Every decision was easier because I wasn't torn between my job and my ambition to become a great business person. So this is a day that should be celebrated. It should be a day that you really embrace because it's the day where you start your new life. Step five, the leverage stage. This is where you start buying back your time as fast as possible. The first hire I made was a VA from the Philippines. That one decision freed me from all the busy work that you have to do when you're starting a business, but also running a business and allowing me to focus on the most important thing, which is sales and the product.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  These are the things that actually make the business money, right? Freedom isn't the absence of work, it's the control over your work. Work needs to be done, but you don't need to do it. You can figure out ways to get somebody else to do it, to outsource your tasks, to outsource the responsibilities so that you can focus on what's really important in your business. And the first hire I made was a VA because that freed up so much time. I think it freed up about 20 hours of my week of all this admin tasks. We're talking about calendar management and emails and even like spreadsheets and doing...

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Finances and all that kind of bookkeeping, all that kind of stuff can be outsourced to somebody that can do some data entry. And a lot of stuff can even be outsourced with some AI tools like fixer.ai, which is a great email AI tool that can kind of save you some time, about two or three hours a week even. So think about how you can start offloading when you start making some money and you can afford your first hire. And these hires, by the way, are not that expensive, $500, $1,000 a month, depending on if it's part-time or full-time. And you can really start leveraging your time smarter by freeing yourself up to work on the things that actually bring in the cash. So as you can see, the leap into entrepreneurship from your job isn't a jump, okay?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  It's a sequence of small hops that add up to momentum, right? You don't need the courage all at once. You need the courage to commit that this is what you're going to do, okay? And then, once you've committed, "I'm going to do this," follow the steps I outlined and follow through. The consistency matters every single day. You need to wake up with the courage to follow through on your plan. This is what I want you to do as a challenge. I want you to think about leaving your job and want you to map that bridge this week. Step one, write down how much you need to live per month, the minimum, not what you spend right now. What can you cut back on? Think a little bit outside the box. What if you downsized where you live? Or maybe you downsized the cars you have?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Or maybe you stopped paying payments in your car and bought a used car? All these things are temporary, right? You're going to be doing this for a year or two and then you're going to rebound back even stronger in your business, hopefully. And that's what I experienced. You can't think so short-term and how painful it is right now, short-term. So step one, write down how much you need minimum to live per month. Step two, list what income sources you can create to cover that number, meaning that in your business, what are some ways you can be able to start building out income streams? Whether it's products, services, support, all kinds of things you could charge for. And then step three, I want you to set a date. Set a date, even Even if it's a year out from now, put it on your calendar, circle it and start moving

• 17:30Speaker 01

  towards it. Take the steps forward to make it happen because you're gonna feel so empowered and it's almost gonna give you this extra energy boost every morning when you wake up, once you set that date. Cause you know that every day you wake up, you're closer to that day. You gotta put your, your mind to it. You gotta put your ass in gear to make sure that you hit that date, ready to go. Once you have a timeline and a plan, the fear actually turns into focus. It allows you to be laser focused and motivated to make it happen. I used to think that quitting my job would be the scariest day of my life. It turned out to be one of the happiest days of my life. It made me feel so empowered. I felt in control again. I felt like the security of a paycheck wasn't that appealing

• 18:13Speaker 01

  anymore. I actually wanted to build something significant. I wanted to build something that made me feel alive, made me feel like I had meaning again in my life. And I started to realize, wow, I can now have no cap on my potential, on my earning potential. You know, when you're in a job, there's a cap to how much you can earn, right? In business, there is no cap. Okay. You can continue to add more value to the world and continue to earn more. That's exciting. So, before I go, I want to leave you with this. You don't need to be reckless to be brave enough to quit your job and start a business. You need to build a bridge. You need to have a plan and you need to execute every day. It's not all like binary, on, off. No, it's, I made a decision, let me take the steps. Each

• 18:58Speaker 01

  step I take gets me closer to the other side of the bridge. That's how you make the leap, the smart way. If this episode gave you clarity, share it. Share with someone who is standing on the same edge as you, who's thinking about quitting their job, who maybe shared their dream of starting a business with you. Share this episode with them. They'll thank you for it. Thanks so much for listening. If you made it to the end of the episode, you're my kind of person. You're a completionist. You're somebody that likes to invest in themselves, which I love. And you're serious about growing your business, which is what I am, serious about growing my business, even till today, you know, 20 years later. And what it tells me about you is that, hey, you're somebody that wants to make something happen. You

• 19:40Speaker 01

  wanna make a change and you're willing to make those steps or take those steps to change every single day. So, thanks so much for being here with me. Continue to tune in so that you can continue to grow and make those changes.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 20:32Speaker 02

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