- If you're watching this video
and your first instinct is to rush to the comment section
and tell me that everyone can't be an entrepreneur
or that you love your day job
and you don't think everybody who works
a nine to five should be put down,
I totally get it and this video probably isn't for you.
This video is for people who are on the fence
and are struggling with the decision
of quitting their day job, leaving the nine to five
but it also might be for you.
If you have any fear at all that you might be fired
at some point in your career
and you wanna know things that you could do
to protect yourself and to protect your income.
So let's go ahead and jump into
should you quit your day job?
Should you leave the nine to five?
Why or why not?
Oh and spoiler alert, there's no such thing as job security.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake
helping you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
If you are new here, welcome, my name is Roberto Blake.
I am a creative entrepreneur as you might have guessed.
I don't work a nine-to-five job,
I built a successful coaching business among other things,
I am a public speaker at events
and what I wanna do with this video series
that I'm covering is to have real conversations with you
about money, financial freedom,
and how you are going to ultimately build the life
and career that you want.
Because you have the freedom to do that,
you have more choices than you might believe
and you actually can determine your outcomes in life.
So if that's something that you're interested in,
I invite you to subscribe to the channel,
hit the notifications because we're going
to be doing a whole series for those of you
who really are dissatisfied with where you are right now.
We're gonna do a whole series on the steps
you need to take to leave your day job.
So let's go ahead and get into it.
There are a lot of valid reasons to stay
at your nine to five job if you're thinking of quitting.
For one thing, you may not know
where your money is going to immediately come from,
you don't know where cash flow
is coming from most of the time
if you're thinking of leaving your day job.
You don't have another job lined up,
you might be getting health insurance
and healthcare benefits for you and your family,
there may not be another person
who's bringing in a source of income in your household,
there are valid reasons to stay exactly where you are,
at least for the time being.
However, all of those things would still be true
if you got fired tomorrow or God forbid,
you had a health care crisis, an issue.
There are many people in the community,
I've talked to many of you in the comments,
I've talked to many of you in other social media platforms,
and you were happy with where you were at your job
but then you developed an illness
or a chronic illness finally got diagnosed for you
and you realized why you were having migraines,
you realized why you were having chronic pain
or chronic fatigue and you weren't able
to work the job that you loved anymore.
And it was a decision that was completely
out of your hands but you still need a way
to produce income for yourself.
This is why it's been so important for me
to talk about developing high-paying skills,
doing remote work, doing freelancing,
or becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business.
Because when your financial freedom is taken away from you,
either because you are forced out of a job,
maybe there's ageism and you're being
put out to pasture early, or an unfortunate
or unforeseen circumstance happens in your life,
you still need a way to take care of yourself
and to take care of your family.
But it's also entirely possible that you are being
underutilized, underpaid, and underappreciated
in your current job and you work hard and you're considering
if there might be better opportunities.
And not everyone can be an entrepreneur,
some of you should be looking for a better job
or transfer to another part of the industry
or another career field entirely.
So as I said, the advice in this video
isn't just for those of you who are entrepreneurial,
there are a lot of you who should be thinking
about these things regardless because to be frank,
you're just not being treated fairly.
You can do better.
I wanna get into some very practical things that you can do
and you should do before you transition
to leave your nine to five job.
Like I said, I'm gonna do a series of probably three videos
on how to quit your day job but before we do that,
I'm gonna cover some basics here.
But I also want to address something
that I think is very important,
signs that maybe you should leave
your job in the first place.
Because again, some of you have this idea
in the back of your mind and you're trying to sort it out,
so here are some things you should ask yourself
and these might be signs that's time to leave your job
even if you are somewhat happy with it,
there might be other things you need to look at.
Maybe you've been working hard
and loyally at the company for a number of years
but you can't seem to climb the ladder.
You can't get a promotion or a raise
that you certainly are qualified or even overqualified for,
that might be a time to leave
because you've hit the ceiling.
You've gone as far as you can
and you're not going to get anything in return
for working harder or having more experience.
That's a good indication that's time to move on
and that might not mean start a business,
that might mean it's time to go to a better company
and to shop your options.
What if your job is negatively impacting your family
and your relationships at home?
It's possible that aspects of your job
may be affecting your marriage,
or your long-term relationship,
or it could be affecting the ability for you
to interact with your children
and be the type of parent that you want.
If your personal relationships in life,
the thing that hopefully will outlast and outlive
any career that you have are being put in jeopardy,
you might need to reconsider and reevaluate
whether this is something that you want to do long-term
because you're going to have to live with it.
Maybe it's something less emotional than that.
Maybe you just need more money
and that's not an option for this job or this career field,
maybe it's just not a high enough paying skill.
This might mean that you need to invest in yourself,
I would recommend using vocational training
or online learning but maybe you even go back to school
or to a community college or some other training program,
get a higher level skill and then you switch jobs
because there's a higher salary cap.
This is a very real problem, a lot of people
settle into jobs and get comfortable
but there's no more earning potential,
they can't go to a higher echelon in terms of their income
and they get stuck and as your life circumstances change,
as you get older, maybe you build a family,
remember your needs, or lifestyle needs, or desires change.
This is gonna become more and more of a problem
if you allow yourself to get stuck.
Keeping up with the industry, learning new skills,
adapting, learning and embracing new technology
adds to your value.
If the company doesn't reward you, producing more value
and offer you more money for the value you provide,
it's time to go.
Here's a real sobering thought.
What if the job is directly impacting your health
in a negative way?
You know, if you don't live, you can't work anyway
and it really doesn't matter at that point.
Or if you end up working to the point
of crippling yourself in some way,
it doesn't do you or your family any good.
Someone I know personally, recently got a diagnosis
and the doctor was very blunt.
You can continue working the job
in the way that you're working
or you could live longer than another five to ten years.
Pick one.
That was a very sobering diagnosis and it was brutal.
Thankfully, there are options available
when you find yourself in these kinds of situations.
You can look at how the stress in your life and your career
is directly impacting your health
and then you can try and position yourself
to make a change that fits your lifestyle.
We now have the options of remote work,
we now have the options in the gig economy
for freelancing and even though it is not for everybody,
starting a business is more accessible
than it has ever been.
And there is a lot of content I've done on the channel
to help you with that.
Whether you want to learn a new skill,
embrace the gig economy and freelancing,
or start your own business using the internet
and social media, there's a lot of value
that I provided and this is the reason why.
The reason why is it might actually save your life
and protect the financial situation of you and your family.
And that's something that I wish people had done for me
a lot sooner in my life and my career,
so I want you to have that.
Now nothing that traumatic has to be going on
to justify you leaving your nine to five job.
You can just be unhappy and depressed,
you could feel like the people around you are toxic
or that the industry is toxic,
and you could just decide this is not for you anymore.
So now the question becomes well what do you do about it?
Before you even think about quitting your day job,
I recommend you do a couple of key things.
One, update your LinkedIn profile
and get as many recommendations as you can
from people at your job, people at previous jobs,
people you went to school with, your industry,
just get those recommendations up
and reach out and make new contacts and connections.
Use the tool in LinkedIn
without alerting your current employer
to look at recruiters and to let people know
that you're interested in new positions.
These are things that can help you
find options and create opportunity for yourself to move on.
I also suggest that you do a Google search on yourself,
see what comes up and then considering using social media
or starting a website or blog to start to really elevate
and control your public profile in a meaningful way
that makes you attractive to potential employers
and to people in your industry and to recruiters.
This is something a lot of people take for granted,
it's why there are so many videos on this channel
about getting into Instagram, Twitter,
starting a blog, starting a podcast.
It's not just for people who want to be entrepreneurs,
it's not just for people who want to quote unquote
blow up in social media.
This helps establish some of your credibility
and this helps you when you either need to negotiate
for a better salary or be on the radar of someone
who can pay you very well or when you need a job
in-between career opportunities.
So just kind of take a look at these things
and see if it's something that you wanna consider,
just give yourself a little bit more leverage.
Leverage is everything.
Also look at your situation with debt.
I would recommend that you try to get your debt down
and eliminate that before you consider quitting or leaving.
Set aside some money obviously,
we'll get more into that in future videos
of the things you really need to do in-depth.
But these are just some of the basics you need to cover.
I would also say that if there are free opportunities
to travel with your job, there's time off
that you haven't taken, you can use that
but not just to rest and recruit
but to make a plan or to go to a conference
or a networking event that can help position you
for your next opportunity when it's time to leave.
If you do specifically plan on starting a business
and becoming an entrepreneur,
then use the opportunity and the resources you have
in terms of the finances from your regular
nine to five job to invest in yourself
and to get the means of production.
If you're gonna go into photography,
the obvious answer is start using some of your spare money
to buy the cameras and lenses you need
while you're still employed
because it's gonna be harder to get those things
once you are on unemployment or once you're in-between jobs.
So start doing that.
Consider how you can start moonlighting
or freelancing without breaching your contract.
Look at it very carefully, look at your options,
and then try to do other things
to create income for yourself.
Start dabbling on the weekends
and building a passive income.
I've done videos about this
and it can help you just so that in-between
if these things take longer than you thought
while you're in-between work,
there's at least money coming in.
Prioritizing money coming in and cash flow
is one of the most important things you can do
if you're considering leaving your job,
or if you feel like you're going to be fired,
or if you realize that you might not be able
to sustain in this business or this industry
for one reason or another.
It could be health, it could be that the industry
is in decline, a lot of people are reluctant
and they say they want to
or they don't like these conversations
because what about the people who like their job?
You could love your job but it may not
be up to you if you keep it.
You can love the job, you can love the career,
you can love your profession,
you could love the people you work with,
it doesn't mean that that love is given to you in return,
it doesn't mean that you're being valued
and paid appropriately,
it doesn't mean that they're gonna hold
and keep a place for you.
There's any number of people that right now
are being pushed out of the job market
because they're being written off at 40
and 50 and 60 years old with a tremendous
amount of experience but the market is telling you
that you're worthless.
That's not something you did, that's not entirely fair,
and it wasn't up to you.
Everybody ages, that's not something you just decided to do.
And again, maybe your lifestyle changed,
maybe you started a family and now your priorities
and your values are different.
Maybe you had a moment of self-awareness
and reflection and realized that where you are right now
is not where you want to be or it's not allowing you
to be the type of person you wanna be
in the life of your spouse or in the life of your children.
So you have to think about these things,
you have to weigh everything.
Of course there's the practical considerations of money
and healthcare and insurance but like I said,
there's no such thing as job stability.
But if you build yourself, you can rely on yourself
and that's what this channel is here for.
To give you resources, tools and information
so that you can have personal power
and only through personal power
can you really achieve financial freedom
because once you are in that position,
you can have control of how much you earn.
Whether it's through your career
or whether it's through entrepreneurship.
If you know how to negotiate, if you build up
and raise your public profile and personal brand,
if you stay on the cutting edge of technology
and keep learning high-paying, valuable, marketable skills,
you always have an advantage over someone in the market
who doesn't do those things.
Anyway, I hope you guys found this video helpful.
Many of you have written to me
telling me that you're on the fence,
you're ready to leave, you're ready to move on,
but you're nervous and I hope that this helped
either give you some questions
that you need to ask yourself before you go,
provided at least a few answers
and is on the way to helping you prepare
for this decision one way or the other.
Some of you, you may need to stay longer than you think.
I hope some of you take this seriously
instead of quitting tomorrow.
You realize you might need to give it three to six months
just so you're in a better position
and it's also possible things might change for you
in those three to six months
and you might be a little bit more comfortable
and you put it off and it's okay, that's perfectly fine too.
Maybe I need to have talked some of you
out of quitting your job.
I also hope some of you who've entered this
with skepticism realize that you might be undervalued
and you might be able to do better,
you might be leaving opportunities for more money
on the table and now that you realize
that there's things you can do to raise your value
or to start at least putting feelers out there
'cause there might be better opportunities
that you just don't even realize are there.
You could be getting 30% more money
if somebody wants to make you that offer,
if they know that you're interested.
So just something to think about.
I hope you got some value of this video,
I'm planning a series like I said a three-part series
on how to quit your day job.
So I need your help.
I need the questions and I need the pain points
that you're going through
in terms of wanting to quit your day job.
So if you have questions about
how to quit your day job, leave those in the comment section
so that they can be included in the videos
that I'm making for this three-part series.
If I get enough questions and I need to do
four or five parts, then that's something we'll do.
So just kind of let me know, help me build that content
so we can serve more people and give them an opportunity
to move on to something better
and maybe make the right choice.
Like this video if you like it, don't forget to subscribe
and hit notifications for all of my videos.
As always you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today.
Maybe it leads you to a new opportunity.
Take care.