How to Quit Your Day Job with Alex Sanfilippo

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/100

In this first solo episode of the Creating a Brand podcast, I (Alex Sanfilippo) am going to share my journey toward leaving my corporate 9-5 job after 15 years. I've identified 10 key steps along the way to make the process far easier for others who want to explore full-time entrepreneurship for themselves.

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/100

Transcript

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You're listening to the Creating a Brand Podcast, where we deliver weekly interviews on topics to help entrepreneurs make their first or next step in business the right one. I am your host, Alex Sanfilippo. Welcome to the first ever solo episode of the Creating a Brand podcast. In this episode, I'm going to share with you 10 things I've learned about quitting your day job. Everything that I share is going to be from my own journey, things I learned along the way toward becoming a full-time entrepreneur myself. To give you a little bit of background, it was actually January 1st, 2016. I was doing some self-reflecting that day, as many of us do at the turn of the year. And I made the decision then that I wanted to quit my day job. So it began right away. I kind of hit the ground running with this. And I had a failed startup during that time. I had a failed side hustle. Many failed side hustles, in fact, and projects. It seemed to just be failed attempt after failed attempt. And it was for five years that I went through that. It wasn't until finally on January 7th, 2020, that I had my last day at the job that I'd spent over 15 years in. And I'd finally become a successful startup entrepreneur. Now, when I look back at that, why did it take me five years to do that? That seems like a lot of time. It can be very disheartening. And for me, it was. There were some days where I really struggled with it. I'm at least thankful to say that I enjoyed all 15 years I had at that job. I can't imagine if I really wouldn't have enjoyed it along the way. But what held me back? What kept me from being able to quit my day job sooner? And I thought this would be a very appropriate topic for the Creating a Brand podcast, especially on our 100th episode and two-year mark of the show. So I want to share with you 10 steps I've learned for quitting your day job. So let's get started.

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I want to go and dive right into these, starting with step one, which is to get the right mindset about why you are leaving. Get the right mindset about why you are leaving. This is something that really got wrong, especially initially going back to January 1st, 2016, that first entire year. As a matter of fact, I really wasn't getting this right. I had a wrong mindset about why I was leaving. So I actually want to give you some of those wrong mindsets that I hear commonly. I said a lot of these and I hear people almost every day that I talk to about wanting to leave their day jobs. They give me these same reasons, usually even a combination about them. It's not even Now, all these things in and of themselves are fantastic, I suppose, right? And aside from maybe not liking your job or your boss, but... Here's the thing. It's the wrong reason to leave. And this is what I really had to learn that first year, especially I made that decision. So it was basically 2016 through 20 until 2017, that I just had this wrong mindset. I wanted to leave because I wanted to make more money. And I wanted to leave because I wanted freedom. I didn't want to work as much as I felt like I was working. These were the reasons I wanted to. First off, it's kind of like a false sense of, I guess it's a grass is green on the other side type of thing. You are going to make less money in a startup, especially initially, you're gonna have much less freedom, you're gonna work more hours. And truth be told, you're I'm always going to like your boss, even if it's you. For me, sometimes I'm like, man, this dude's annoying. He's always got me doing stuff, right? Like, you will find all these things to be true. But getting the right mindset around why you're wanting to quit your day job is just so, so important. So I'm going to share that with you real quick. And these are just a couple things to think about. You want to quit your day job because you want to solve a problem with a group of people to help serve the world. You want to solve problems for other people. You want to build something, a legacy for your family or for other families as well. You want to start a business to start a business knowing that you're going to work hard and diligently. It's going to cost you even more than any nine to five job where someone else is in charge is going to cost you. But you know that's something that you want to do. You want to create something for yourself. These are some right mindsets around leaving and starting a job. And again, these are things I got right wrong I was thinking I wanted to leave to escape something when in reality what I wanted to do was leave to create something so you're not escaping you're creating so really think about it that way and if you're struggling with this I mean some people you might hear me saying this first point and you might already decide you know what maybe I don't want to leave maybe I just need a different job or maybe you need to see if I can get more time freedom for my boss can I work a different schedule these are all things that in today's world especially are more than open to you so I encourage you don't start a business because of any of these wrong mindsets make sure that you have the right Thank you. though, in this is to make sure that if you decide you are going to stay in a nine to five job, that somehow some way you're doing the things you're passionate about as well. It doesn't have to be a main thing. It doesn't have to bring a revenue stream or anything like that. Just make sure somehow some way you're doing the things that you're passionate about, that you believe add value to people's lives and that you just really enjoy doing. But all this you're going to discover through self-reflecting. But again, this first step here is so important before we move on to any others. Get the right mindset about why you are leaving. This is one that held me back for an entire year. So I want to make sure that I really drive this point home. All right, that's enough on that first step. Moving on to step two, understand that your ideas don't work. Step two is to understand that your ideas don't work. This one sounds a little negative, right? But the truth is I've learned this one the hard way, and this is really like the key to everything for me. I realize that my ideas, although maybe good ideas or normally bad ideas, I'm sure they just don't work. And it's because there are own ideas from our own unique minds. There's a better way to determine how to start a business and how to actually build something that is going to last and really serve people. And here's what I recommend doing. This is kind of framework that I've been sharing on a lot of podcasts that I jump on that I've just found to be so helpful for people. Here's what you want to do. you want to identify your area of passion. What is it that you want to do? I'll use an example here. I love playing soccer. Soccer would be a great example. What I want to do is I want to think about, okay, that's where I love being, out in that field. Let me get out there with some other people, key there, people that are also playing soccer, and just start getting to know them. As I'm doing that, let me ask them, what are you struggling with when it comes to playing soccer? You might find some different ideas from different people. The idea is to keep some sort of list of what people are telling you they are struggling with in soccer. So again, I found my area of passion, and I'm asking other people that are in that same space as me, that are users in that space, if you will, what are they struggling with? What is their problem? And if I constantly hear something like, oh, well, Alex, Jacksonville, Florida, where we live, it's a big city, so I don't know if people are playing at these fields. How can I determine if people are actually going to be there or not? Because I keep on showing up and sometimes they're here and if they're not, I have to go drive 20 minutes to another field to go check that one. I just want to play soccer. How do I do that? If you hear a bunch of people saying that, now what you can do is you can create a solution to that problem. So again, passion, the people, and then offer a solution to the problem that they are having. That to me is the framework for building a good business off of an idea that's already been validated for you instead of just trying to come up with ideas out of thin air like many of us entrepreneurs do. There's nothing wrong with attempting to do things that way, but I found this is a much better way to do things. This is such an important point here. So if I was just using that example, we're having that problem. Well, what can I do? what I could do is I could set up maybe a Facebook group with all the fields listed in it, or have a Facebook group for each of them, or have a website for each of them, right? The idea is to really think, okay, how can I solve this problem for people as simple as I possibly can? I have a friend, he's actually the CEO of Basecamp, David Hannemeyer Hansen, and he says, leave the difficult problems up to your competition. Anything that's complex or just crazy, don't work on that. Work on the simple problems and the simple solutions. So for me, I would probably just start with something like a Facebook group if I was trying to serve those soccer players, right? To say, okay, let's all get in a group and let's chat about where we're all going to play. You might have just created a solution there and eventually you can find a way to monetize that because here's the thing I've learned. People will pay for a solution to their problem. But if you just have an idea that you don't know for sure if it solves people's problems, then you're probably not going to get paid for it. So what you want to do, again, find your area of passion and make sure you're finding people that are in that same space, offer a solution to the problem they have. And when you start doing that, you will be able to build a business off of those things. And again, you're passionate about it, so you're excited to be there as well. And now this might not work 100% of the time, just like anything, you might miss it. You might think, okay, here's the problem that they have. And when you bring it back to them, you might realize, oh, this isn't really what they're struggling with, or this isn't really what they needed. And that is perfectly fine. You are always going to fail more than you succeed. And that is perfectly fine. I am simply giving you a better way to start something after validating it instead of starting with an idea and then validating it afterwards. I have found some people get burned time and time again as an entrepreneur because they have not done this properly. So I encourage you once again, make sure that you understand that your ideas don't work. Instead, solve problems for the people you care about, and you will succeed tenfold by doing this. This leads me right into step three, and I've already alluded to some of this, and it's called starting ugly. Step three is to start ugly. Now, this is a term that has been coined by my friend Chris Kermetsos. I actually interviewed him on this topic at creatingabrand.com slash 029 if you're interested in hearing that. And starting ugly simply means what it sounds like. You're starting a business, but you're starting it ugly, which means you're going to skip the logo. plain text is perfectly fine. You're going to skip the LLC for now. You're going to skip the whole legal team. I know my CPA and my lawyer are both going to be after me now that I said that, but I am telling you, skip those things initially. What you need to do is continue to validate the product or service that you're creating, the solution that you're building for somebody that you care about. And starting ugly simply means Start with a minimum viable product, an MVP, just the absolute bare bones of what you can do. And this is exactly how I launched Podmatch. As a matter of fact, when we launched Podmatch, we launched it with 100 people that asked for a solution to the problem they were having, which was I can't find guests for my podcast. So we said, all right, 100 people, come with us. We're going to launch this thing, and you tell us if it works. And right when it launched, a lot of them were like, there's no logo. It's all plain text. It's super ugly. And then I just repeat the question, does it work? Does it offer you the solution that you are looking for? And the answer was yes, actually 100 times. out of the 100 people. So there was a complete slam dunk for us, like got it 100-100. And From there, this is what's really important. It's called start ugly. It's not called finish ugly. You need to continuously improve. Now we have a logo. Now we have an LLC. Now we have a whole legal team working behind us. But we didn't start with those things. And so many companies get this wrong, including big organizations. I know many people that have started million-dollar companies where they never validated the idea. It was just somebody with a good idea. I'm doing air quotes there. It was their good idea. So they went ahead and got a branding expert. They got somebody to build the tech out. They got somebody to do all these big things to make it work. When in reality, should have gone the route that I just said in the previous step, which was to make a Facebook group to see if it even worked. Do people even want this solution? You have to start this way. And I'm telling you, if you start ugly, you can also bootstrap a business this way because you're not starting off with a huge budget having to spend millions of dollars. No, you can start off with virtually spending nothing. As a matter of fact, I'm working on another business right now. And I have spent$0 in four hours validating something that I believe by next year will bring in$100,000 a year. And I have spent nothing on it. And you yeah, it's ugly right now. It barely works. But is it working enough to get the job done? And is it actually proving that I'm solving a problem for people that need a solution to something? And again, so start ugly, super important. Don't overthink it. I know we all get it very attracted to the logo. We want all of our social channels built out. You don't need all those things when you start. Work your way into them. Start by creating an MVP, minimum viable product, to make sure that it actually solves the problem for the people you care about. Moving right along to step four, which is to think smaller. Step four is to think smaller. This is unconventional wisdom. Most people actually tell you the opposite of what I'm about to share. People always want you to think bigger. They want you to think about scalability. They want you to think about adding teams. They want you to think about having millions of customers. They want you to start building those systems from day one. It's terrible advice. Again, I have watched so many companies fail, including my own. When you think smaller, you are going to set yourself up for much faster and long-term success. I actually wrote a blog post that really... Got a lot of hate. Some people liked it, but it did get a lot of hate. I titled it Please Stop Trying to Change the World. And here's why. I listened to... Influencer after influencer, expert after expert say, you've got to change the world what they're doing. We all got to be thinking about how we can change the world. That is the worst advice you could ever give in all reality. You should be thinking about how you can serve one person. Because here's what I've learned. The people that are trying to change the world, they will step right over the one person who needs them most so they can serve, air quotes here, the world, the masses. They want to serve millions of people so they won't serve one person. But I'm telling you, if you can think smaller and you can niche down your product or service or company, whatever it is that you're building, We'll be right back. to offer that solution that is most needed by one person a day. How can I find that person? How can I serve them with this? So I want you to stop thinking about scaling from day one. Don't think about that. You can get to that point, but from day one, think about how can I change one life with what I'm doing? And That is really going to serve you well. As a matter of fact, it also keeps you from thinking about how do I get a software developed so I can build this? How do I get AI involved with what I'm doing? It keeps those things out of your mind. So again, you can focus on the true solution that you're needing to offer to the one person who needs it most. So think smaller when you're launching your business. Again, that's step four. And this leads me right into step five, which is to build a community around your brand. Build a community around your brand. Now you might be saying, well, Alex, you told me not to start a brand. I don't have a logo. I don't have any social media for this company or anything like that. And yeah, that's fine. because that's not really what your brand is. Your brand is the solution to the problem that you're offering, and you want to build a community around that. Now, a simple way to start a community is build a Facebook group, or if it's in person, do a meetup.com group or whatever it is, or use a third-party app like I use Mighty Networks. The important thing is to have somehow, some way to get people involved in what you're doing, the people that you are serving to be able to hear from them and get real-time feedback about how it's working in a group setting, a community of people working together. And what I recommend doing as well is something we've done with Podmatch and I'll do with all future companies is I don't design my product roadmap. So I'm not the one coming up with the future features that we'll have or the next iteration of things. I actually let the community decide those things and the order in which we do things because guess what? I'm not taking things back in my own hands and coming up with ideas. I, from day one, have been trusting them to come up with a solution that they need and I'll continue to do that. So by putting the product roadmap in the hands of the people whose problems I'm solving, they're reminding me of, hey, here's what we need instead of me guessing on those things again and here's the other thing that building a community does and you'll find this more and more as time goes on because the younger generations Gen Z included in this they're becoming the decision makers and they think differently than some older generations they want a community they want to be part of a movement they want to be part of creating a solution to serve other people and if we find more and more people step into this role having a community is going to be so important around your brand I see far too many companies that just have a wall in front of them and their customers as they call them as a matter of fact we don't call anybody who's used our product or service customers. We call them members because we are co-collaborators. We are working together to solve a problem. And by doing this, they've actually become our ambassadors. Here's a little secret about my companies. I have never spent a dollar on advertising, yet we've grown faster than almost any business I've seen in the SaaS, software as a service startup space. And that's because our people, the members, the people that I'm with, they're willing to go out there and share it, which I am so appreciative of. And we've built a community around that. So again, I don't think that you need to go out there and build a logo and and have your social media all done perfectly. What you need to do is build a community of people that are using your product and service and continue to listen to them and encourage them to bring others that might be needing that same solution to the problem that they're having. And that's a perfect segue into step six, which is getting your clients. Many of us really overcomplicate this process. And Leonardo da Vinci says, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. And this is something that I've just fully embraced and gone for. What I hear people say that you need to do to get more clients is is you need to start advertising on social media. You need to build some great ads. You need to get a massive social media following, even if you have to buy them. Somehow you've got to get a big following. And then you've got to consistently be posting great curated content, videos, pictures, anything else that you possibly can, do some engagements, some giveaways, all these complex branding things and brand building things that we're just told we have to do. And the funny thing is the people that are telling us to do this are the big techs of the world. So the Facebooks, the Instagrams, the LinkedIns, the Twitters, like all these places are the ones telling us this is what we need to do and who benefits the most from that what do you know it's those people because you're using their platform and they're charging you for advertising dollars so very interesting that they're telling you spend money with us and it's the best thing you can do for getting more clients now I'm not underplaying it those things are great but I do not think they're even close to the best thing you can do for your business matter of fact I don't do any of those things at all and again my business grows a lot faster than almost any SaaS business I've ever seen and I say as humbly as I possibly can of course now what I recommend is Instead of spending money and spending all your time doing those things, remember, you're solving a problem for someone with a specific need. So to go with what Leonardo da Vinci says, again, simplicity being the ultimate sophistication, let's not overcomplicate the process. Instead, start thinking about how can I build a referral-based business? How can I build an affiliate program so the people that are using my program or my software or my solution, how can they start being the ones to actually go out and spread the word about it? Nothing is more powerful than referral-based business. I'm telling you that now. It might sound a little bit old school, but people still to this day do business with who they know, like, and trust. And if somebody that they know, like, and trust tells them about you, you already have some of that barrier broken down. So if you don't have the beautiful curated content, they don't necessarily care anymore because now they're saying, oh, well, my friend trusts this guy, so I should probably trust him too. And apparently he has the solution to my problem, so I'm going to go after that. The best thing that you can do is to be yourself in this process. Connect with people one-on-one. And I know this is doing things that don't scale. I've already talked about it a little bit, but here's the thing. When you can get those early adopters in, the faster you can do that, the better off you're going to be. You never know when you'll bring somebody into your tribe that can just have a crazy amount of influence. I've had some people that have literally brought hundreds of people to my platform, and they didn't even want to use their affiliate link. They just said, I believe in what you're doing, and I think it's a great solution. So I'm going to help solve that as well. That's a beautiful thing. So make sure when you're thinking about getting your clients, don't think the mainstream way of, again, getting advertising, building social following, all those things. Instead, start asking for referrals. Start adding one person at a time. This is doing things that don't scale, but I promise you it's going to pay off in the long run. All right, step seven, realize that there will always be risk involved. Realize that there will always be risk involved. Now, if you've done these first six steps I've talked about, chances are it's probably still a side hustle, like it was for me for a long time. But at some point, it's going to come to that point where you need to make decisions The shift. And I'll get to that in a minute. But before you do that, you want to start thinking how you can calculate the risk to make sure it's going to work. So when I was leaving my job, people said it was crazy. I mean, I left during a year where COVID was still crazy. People were like saying you couldn't get another job if you left, like all kinds of things were being discussed. And people were like, what are you doing, Alex? Like 15 years, your perks are insane at this job. You've got a really good senior director position, like doing really well, like your departments are all at the top of their game right now. What are you doing? What I did is I sacrificed the good for the sake of the potential great. So there was no telling if my business was going to be great or not, but potentially it could be. And that's because I actually took a calculated risk. I looked at what it could do and decided, you know what, it might be able to do more than what I'm doing here. Now, let me explain this real quick. When I was looking at some numbers here, because I'm going to actually share some real data, I went to policyadvice.net and seekingalpha.com to figure out the average American household income. I know not everyone listening is in the United States, but this is just a good baseline for us. There was some conflicting information. It's between 60 and 70 thousand dollars So I'm just going to say$60,000, let's just pretend like that is the average household yearly income for an American person. So let's just imagine that you're making$60,000 a year, or your whole household is, and you're going to break that down, that's going to be$5,000 a month. So what you need to do to calculate the risk of if you're going to move this side hustle to full time is say, can it bring in$5,000 a month? Let's just imagine you're doing some coaching, and you're charging 10 clients$500 a month. So if you had 10 clients on some sort of retainer, that means you would be replacing that income, right? So what you need to do is just decide, okay, how long does this take now? So you need to add a calculation to it. Okay, this is taking me 75 hours a week. That's not realistic. I need more clients I'm spending less time with. How can I streamline that? These are different things that you have to think about is how much time you're going to be spending. So for me, I just need to calculate, okay, here's my income I'm making. How many members does PodMatch need? Because that's the company I started with. How many members does this need for me to actually replace that? And is it realistic for me to have that many members? Or am I just dreaming? So there was an actual number I was able to figure out. I put it all in an Excel spreadsheet and I figured out, you know what, I only need, 12,000 members to replace my income, and if I have 12,000 members, then I'm in good shape. And how long would it take to get 12,000 members? Well, based on my last three months average, it looks like it's going to take me 14 months to do that, is what I was able to calculate. Okay, and how much am I going to make each month off that? How much savings do I have? Do I have enough money to fill that gap now so I don't have to run out and get another job? Now, again, there's always going to be risk involved because things could not go according to plan. So I made sure I was conservative with that number, but there's a lot of information I'm sharing here. But what I realized is, you know what, I'm actually able to leave this job now after 15 years because I have enough savings saved up that by the time PodMatch reaches the point where it has replaced that income, I will still have a little bit left in the bank, and then I can start actually taking more money than I was previously with this job. So again, this whole point, I just really broke it out there for you. But the point is, realize there's always going to be risk involved. Your job is to calculate that risk and determine whether it is worth making a move or not. When you feel like you've really calculated this risk and you're ready, move on to step eight, which is when it's time, take courage and jump. When it's time, take courage and jump. When it's time means that you've calculated it. You understand that the timing is right. And then you need to take courage. You need to jump. When I look back at me leaving that nine to five job and it taking five years to do so, I realized I actually could have left sooner. But the truth is, I didn't determine the time. I didn't go through step seven, which was to calculate the risk and make a decision based off of that. I didn't do that. But additionally, after I did, I still didn't make the jump quick enough. And it's because I didn't have the courage to do it. I was scared. And rightfully so. That's a nerve wracking thing. I mean, I'm not gonna make excuses for myself, but I've been there for 15 years at that point. That's That's a lot of time. And for you, you might just be saying, well, I got this stability. It's really easy for me to stay here. And that is the truth. But here's the thing. If you're solving a problem for people and you know if you had more time to do it, you could better solve the problem or help more people, then you owe it to those people to do that. You owe it to yourself to do it as well. Taking courage can be really difficult. And there's a quote that I love on the topic of courage, and it's this. Courage means being afraid than doing what you have to do anyway. Courage means being afraid than doing what you have to do anyway. And I encourage you, if you're ready, If you feel like you're at that point, take courage and jump. This is the best thing that you can do for yourself and your future business. I can guarantee you, again, if you calculate it properly and you really feel like you've done your due diligence, in just a couple weeks or even months' time, you're going to look back and be like, wow, I wish I would have done this sooner. I know it was the case for me. It's scary. It takes a lot. But if you do it, it's really going to serve you well. And we're getting close to bringing this thing to a close. This moves us right into step nine, which is don't go the path alone. There's a quote by Helen Keller that I absolutely love, and she says, alone we can do so little, but together we can do so much. Alone we can do so little, but together we can do so much. This has always been true in my life. When I just talked about being scared, being nervous, I didn't finally get the courage to actually jump and to move on until I started telling people about it. And I want to make sure that you have people in your corner. Yes, your community is great. They're going to help, but they're also provide some pretty harsh feedback along the way. And you have to be okay with that. But you want to make sure you have people in your corner that you can always rely on. So I'm going to encourage you get into a mastermind or a community with just some of your friends or like minded entrepreneurs as quickly as you can meet with these people regularly, share your struggles, share what you have going on, be transparent, and make sure that people understand that, hey, here's where I'm at with this. Don't go the path alone. I can tell you, by doing this, you're really going to set yourself up for a long-term win. Additionally, just having people around you, you also want to devote yourself to continued education with your craft. So whatever it might be, if you're saying it's just becoming a better entrepreneur or it's learning something very specific, like more about soccer, to go back to my example earlier, whatever it might be, make sure you're devoting yourself to education in that field. And I want to encourage you, if you've not listened to every episode of this podcast, Creating a Brand, don't miss out on that. I've brought on some of the best of the best, and these are people that I continuously learn from that I think would also serve you. So make sure it's your thing about that don't go this path alone again alone we can do so little together we can do so much make sure you have a tribe in your corner people can really help you along the way because when the going gets tough you really will have someone to rely on and i promise you it'll help and encourage and motivate you along the way and now for our final step today which is step 10 enjoy the journey instead of longing for the destination enjoy the journey instead of longing for the destination Life and work are both connected and both are often referred to as being a journey. And if you continuously wish yourself into the next phase, as uncomfortable as where you are may be right now, you're going to miss the beauty within where you are today. And yeah, I can promise you it's going to be difficult. It's going to be scary. You're going to potentially have a lot of stress in your life for a little bit. You might fail. You'll probably fail more times than you ever succeed. But if you can learn to enjoy where you are today and find the good things that are happening with it and just embrace the challenge that's going on, I can promise you you will live a more fulfilled life as an entrepreneur. You will learn to enjoy the journey. I've had some really tough times with Podmatch and with some of the other companies that I'm now working with and starting that have been really tough. But if I can continue to remember, this is just something for me to overcome. This is just a challenge for me to really step up and do. That helps so, so much. And I'll tell you, what really helped me develop the right mindset around this is actually an interview I did with Seth Godin. And you can find that at creatingabrand.com slash 074. And he talked about everything that we do being a practice. And look at it as practice instead of something we have to do perfect or that we have to get right. Just look at what you're doing is, you know, I'm continuously practicing and getting better and better and better at what I do as I get more and more reps with it. And when you do this, it actually makes the adventure a lot more fun. And it keeps me less focused on the destination. It We've seen more in the moment and enjoying the journey that I have. And yes, of course, as an entrepreneur, we all have these big aspirations and goals, right? We want to arrive and get there. But the truth is the grass is always greener on the other side. Where we are today can be just as beautiful as where we're going. Just make sure that you learn to enjoy the process and just live in that moment with that. I can promise you you'll have a more fulfilled adventure as an entrepreneur. And closing on this last step, I actually want to share one more quote with you. And it's actually from a strange place. It's from The Office, the last episode of the last season. Andy Bernard, he actually says, I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them. The good old days are a mindset, and you're living in them right now. And I want to give you permission to begin experiencing what you have going on now as an entrepreneur, because I believe there can be a beautiful journey for you. You can learn and grow a lot. You might not make a lot of money some days, but you know what? In the day, if you're serving somebody and having fun doing it, then it's worth it. I've always found that money will follow when you add value to people's lives. So continuously be seeking to do that. And remember, you're in the good old days right now, and I believe that you're going to have a great journey as an entrepreneur.

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To quickly recap these 10 steps for quitting your day job, step one is to get the right mindset about why you're leaving your job. Step two is to understand that your ideas don't work. Instead, come up with solutions to people's problems. Step three, start ugly with your idea, product, or service. Step four, think smaller. Stop trying to change the world. Step five, build a community around your brand. Make sure that you get people involved in what you're doing and give them the chance to become your ambassadors. Step six, getting your clients through referrals instead of following the normal trend of growing out advertising and massive social media accounts. Step seven, realize that there is always risk involved in whatever you do and make sure that you just calculate it well. Step eight, when it's time, take courage and jump. At some point, you have to make the decision to leave the comfort of your job. Step nine, don't go the path alone. Make sure that you have other people in your corner. Make sure you have someone to support you when the going gets rough. And finally, step 10, enjoy the journey instead of longing for the destination and you have a fulfilled life as an entrepreneur. Thanks everyone for listening. This was a really cool episode. My first ever solo episode on this podcast. If you enjoyed it, I'd love to know. So please reach out to me wherever you like to reach out. You can find me just about anywhere these days. And I would absolutely love to hear from you. And I hope this was really valuable for you. Again, these are 10 things that I've learned that really served me well. And it will take with me in every business and opportunity that I pursue in the future. So thank you as always for listening. Appreciate all of you. We bring you another interview episode starting next week.