Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show MBA2714 Q&A Wednesday: I Can't Quit My Job. How Do I Start My Business? About this episode Starting a business while holding down a 9-to-5 can feel impossible. You want to chase your entrepreneurial dream, but quitting your job just isn’t an option. So how do you make real progress without burning out or risking your security? That’s the question we tackle in this episode. Today’s question comes from a listener who asked: “I can’t quit my job. How do I start my business?” Omar shares the exact strategies he used during his own journey from teacher to full-time entrepreneur. You’ll hear practical advice on managing your time, creating focus zones, setting minimum commitments, and getting the people closest to you on board with your plans. Ready to hear when you can quit your job? Hit the play button at the top of the page and get the full lesson. Your business-building adventure starts right now. To submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | 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.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 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's retirement. Fidelity can help you take it on your way.
0:44 Speaker 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.
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1:54 Speaker 01 You don't need to quit your job to start a business. And honestly, you shouldn't because the fastest way to kill a good idea is to put yourself in survival mode, to put yourself all the way to the edge where you feel like you have to make this happen or you can't pay rent. I know a lot of people say you shouldn't have a plan B, but in my experience, you are not the most creative person when you have that kind of financial pressure on you. Today, I'm going to show you exactly how to build a business while keeping your job without burning out, without gambling your future, and without lying to yourself. This is what I did. I was in a teaching job. I was a teacher for 10 years. I side hustled for a very long time before I went to full-time entrepreneurship.
2:34 Speaker 01 And yes, you will need to take the leap at some point from your job to full-time business. But you need to build something that's valuable, so it's worth taking that leap.
2:51 Speaker 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.
3:04 Speaker 01 We read every single review. Seriously, it's how we know what's helping and what to dive deeper in on the next episode. So if you've got 20 seconds, leave a quick review and tell me what you want more of. I'd love to hear from you. I'm going to give you five tips that will change your life and allow this to happen. Let's start with number one: Don't quit your job. Stability equals creativity. You cannot think clearly when you're worried about rent. Financial pressure kills creativity, in my experience. Your job isn't the enemy. It's your oxygen right now. It's keeping you calm. It's allowing you to think clearly about the business. In my experience, stress leads to desperate decisions, bad decisions. I made bad decisions due to financial stress.
3:49 Speaker 01 You don't want to do that. Desperation also kills the quality of your work because you're either rushing or you're just have the sense of urgency to just get things out without really making sure it's high-quality. Consistency beats intensity. So you want to make sure that you're able to do something sustainably. That you're able to build this business and continue to build it day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And the best way to do that is to do it on the side while you're in your job. Tip number two, use discretionary time wisely. Listen, you have time. Yes, you are working eight hours plus probably a half hour to go to work, half hour going back.
4:32 Speaker 01 So nine to 10 hours a day, your job is taking up your time. But you've got 24 hours in the day, right? Eight of them, you're sleeping. So eight plus 10 is 18. That leaves you six hours. What I'm asking you to do is to choose two to three evenings a week to work on your business. And use some time on the weekend. One of your weekend days, use some time out of that day to work on your business. Maybe even work them on the holidays. When I was a teacher, I had the summers off. I was full-time business during the summer. If you're an early riser, maybe early mornings are good for you. Or maybe if you're not an early riser, become one because maybe it's the quiet time in your household. Listen, the truth is you will not match full-time entrepreneur hours.
5:17 Speaker 01 But that's fine. All you need is proof that your business idea can work. You don't need perfection. This is how it works. Let's say, for example, you put in 12 hours into your business every single week. And after a few months, your business starts to make, let's say, $3,000. You know that if it's making $3,000 off 12 hours, if I put in 30 hours, 40 hours, there's a good chance I can make $10,000. And for many people, $10,000 a month may be enough, if your expenses are low in your business, to cover your lifestyle. But by doing nothing, you have no proof. You have no dollars showing you that this business has legs. You can't extrapolate that revenue and say, okay, listen,
6:02 Speaker 01 if I make that leap in a couple of months, I can see myself building myself up to that point where I can make enough revenue to live. Tip number three, minimum commitment. I say 10 hours is A minimum that you need to dedicate each week. You may want to think about doing a bit more. Okay, that might help a little bit, but minimum 10 hours. So this might look like two, three hour sessions during the week. What I did is after work, I would go to a coworking space or I would go to a cafe and I would work for three hours before I went home. You want to add another additional four hours in this scenario. So you could do that one day in the weekend. So wake up early, knock out four hours. The reason why I say two, three hour sessions, I like three hours.
6:46 Speaker 01 I like deep work because you get a lot done, but I wouldn't do any less than two hours at a time because it's very hard for you to get any kind of concentrated effort and progress in your business without a solid block of time. Support for today's episode comes from Square. You probably know Square is the thing you tap your card on at your favorite coffee shop, restaurant, salon, or local store. But for the person running that business, 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
7:29 Speaker 01 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. Today's episode is sponsored by Upwork. I don't need a script to tell you how much Upwork has helped my business. I've been using Upwork for over a decade and it's the easiest way to find top talent to grow your business. From software development to AI implementation to marketing, design, and business operations. You can browse profiles, review past work,
8:12 Speaker 01 and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. With over 170,000 and freelancers holding five star ratings you can hire with the confidence that comes from hiring someone with a verified track record I've hired engineers customer service agents marketers copywriters all on upwork that helped grow my business from the moment they got hired the best thing is it's free to sign up and posting a job is easy visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free that is upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow that's upwrk.com upwork.com
8:59 Speaker 01 tip four create sacred work zones I kind of hinted to this before but what you want to do is make sure that you're working in a coworking space a local cafe a quiet corner of the library that's free you want to choose anywhere where you won't be interrupted okay so that may not be home it's probably not home so you want to choose a third space outside of work because you don't want to work at work because you know that's not good for you or your business because you know your job can claim the things that you do at the work site as their ownership so you want to make sure you do it outside your job but also distraction free so maybe outside the home you want to make sure that your
9:41 Speaker 01 space itself is also distraction free so put your phone on airplane mode yes airplane mode you can live without any notifications or distractions or anything like that for three hours you may want to do like silent mode and have like a bypass for emergency numbers like your family but please make sure you don't allow any distractions to come in make sure that it's impossible for it to happen you want all notifications off on your computer no switching between apps no tabs open except the ones that you need these are all ways for you to make sure you're distraction free listen if you can't learn self-discipline now for only 10 hours a week the entrepreneurial world will eat you alive
10:22 Speaker 01 so this is the training ground if you could do it for 10 hours you can graduate for more hours later tip five get your inner circle on board anybody that's close to you that you see on a regular basis That you live in your house, your friends and family, people that you see regularly. Tell them your goals. Tell them what you're building. Tell them your schedule, the hours that you're putting into the business, when you're gonna go and work on these things. Tell them that these hours are non-negotiable. Tell them that they're sacred. Tell them that you cannot break those scheduled hours. You can't break those plans. This is gonna allow you to reduce guilt, reduce friction, and builds accountability. If you tell everybody what you're doing, you're gonna have to do it, or you're gonna look like a loser, right? You're gonna look like you're a big talker, but you don't take action.
11:05 Speaker 01 Like I mentioned, I was a full-time school teacher. I didn't have rich parents. I had no investors. I had no safety net. I had a job and a dream to be a full-time entrepreneur. So I decided to dedicate 15 hours a week. I did 15 hours a week. I did two, three-hour sessions after work. I worked all day on Saturday, so that was about eight hours. Sometimes I did 10 hours. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't easy, but it built momentum. Within months, I made half my teaching salary with my 15 hours of dedicated effort. For me, that was my signal. If I can make half the money I was making in my salary with just 15 hours of work, I have enough belief in myself that I could make more than my salary with all 40 hours.
11:49 Speaker 01 Unfortunately, a lot of people think that success will happen on its own, or they tell themselves, "I'll start when I quit my job," or "when the time is right." That never happens. That's the truth. You need to start now with minimal hours, and you wanna make sure you wanna mitigate risk. Mitigating risk is a part of being a successful entrepreneur. Also, why do you wanna do it now? Because you have less pressure now that your bills are paid, right? Pressure kills creativity, like I said. Fear kills risk-taking. So now that you have your bills paid with your job, you could take some risk with your business, with your time, right? And if you have low startup costs with your money. I've seen a lot of people quit their jobs, start their entrepreneurial journey.
12:34 Speaker 01 They have no habits because they've never tried to build a business on the side. They have no good work ethic. They have no discipline, like I mentioned. They panic because things are not Moving along fast enough and it leads them to quitting the entrepreneurial journey, never going back and just getting another job. I don't want that to be you. Your job is your chance to have some training wheels and be able to build your entrepreneurial muscles on the side. I want you to think of business like any career. Let's say, for example, you are a salesperson and you work in a car dealership. That's your job. That's what you do, but maybe you want to become a nurse. So what would you do? Well, you would continue to work, but then you'd go to nursing school at night and you would learn how to become a nurse.
13:17 Speaker 01 You build those skills, you get accreditation and then maybe you do some part-time hours in the hospital as a volunteer and you get, you know, your experience. And then eventually you would quit your sales job and become a full-time nurse. That's how you would do that. The same thing in entrepreneurship. But with business, you can learn by doing, by building, and you do that on the side in your own night school. I'm telling you right now, the hardest part of entrepreneurship is this part, is the beginning, is building the margins of your life and making sure that you can pull it off. If you can't do this part, you really can't do business because what this part means is that you're sacrificing short-term happiness for a long-term gain, right?
14:00 Speaker 01 You're sacrificing the fun that you can have in your downtime, whether it's, you know, watching Netflix or hanging out with your friends or going on trips, whatever it might be, you're sacrificing that in the short term, in the next six months, year, two years, in order for you to have a lifetime of enjoyment and happiness and pride in being a full-time entrepreneur in the future. Once the money starts flowing, everything gets easier. This is why you just have to get through this part. But getting to that point requires discipline, like I mentioned, but most people never develop that muscle, they never get to that point. And I don't want that to be you. That's why I'm encouraging you to get started on the side. So here's your challenge. This week, I want you to commit to that 10-hour schedule minimum, right?
14:45 Speaker 01 Write down your sessions, when you're going to do these sessions, put them in your calendar, tell the people in your life that you care about, make the next 90 days your Proof of concept phase. See if you could build out your business and launch it and start getting customers. You'll be shocked how much progress you can make when time is structured, when you're focused, and you're working on something that makes you excited. So don't quit your job. Build your bridge. And when your business shows you it can carry your weight, then you can walk across it. Then you can quit your job. If this episode has given you clarity, has helped you in any way, send it to somebody else you think it would help. A friend, anybody, send them on WhatsApp, personal message, tell them in person, whatever you want to do.
15:29 Speaker 01 Go ahead and send them the link or tell them about this episode on the $100 MBA Show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This phase, building your business on the side while you're in a job, requires grit. It requires sacrifice. And to be honest, some honesty, being honest with yourself. You're going to get tired. You're going to question everything. And you're going to wonder, is it worth it? And hopefully you'll answer yes, because this is where your identity as an entrepreneur is forged. This is where it actually gets built. If you can build when things are busy in your life, you can for sure build when things are less busy. So if you can master that discipline, you are lining yourself up for success in business.
16:12 Speaker 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.
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