Today I want to talk about six things that you need to know before quitting
your job without having another job lined up or without having a clear plan
about what you want to do next what I will try to do is to share with you six
things that I think are really important to be aware of before making this big
decision so if you're still on the fence right now I think that after you finish
watching this video you'll be able to make up your mind and especially number
six will help you to make a really solid decision so stick with me to the end so
let's get right into it number one is that building anything new takes longer
than you think when I first quit my job all that I
wanted to do is to focus on acting and eventually yes I got some acting jobs
and yes I built my side businesses which generated some income for me but I have
to tell you that it took a lot of time much longer than I expected
getting acting jobs was a long process and it also took a while almost one year
to get my small business up and running till I got to the point that it could
generate some income for me but had I know when I was still in my old job that
everything would take that much time I might have decided to stay just a tiny
bit longer in my old job the problem was that all of my plans hinged on things
that were new to me and the point is that anything new is likely to take much
longer than you think especially if you don't have any experience in that new
field yet by the way in case you're thinking about quitting your job what
are your biggest concerns are considerations please share them with me
in the comments below so right now you might be thinking about
quitting your job right now and only after that start applying for a new job
or only after that start building your new business and it might sound like a
good plan but believe me it isn't you will waste a lot of time doing it that
way so I'm not telling you not to quit your job I'm just saying that it might
be a good idea to just stay there hang in there a bit longer stay in your job
for a couple of more months or year just as long as you need to plan your path
ahead more carefully treat this as a warm-up phase while you are still
working in your old job that you are getting paid for in parallel you can
start preparing your next move when planning ahead you need to make some
room for error you need to plan it a solid buffer this
means that if you saying that you will need two to three months to get your
dream job you should build in a buffer there and be prepared for five to six
months or even longer don't rely on the chance that everything might just
magically fall into place by the way if you like this video so far then please
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notification bell so that YouTube will notify you of my new videos the next
really important thing that you need to know about before leaving your job is
the importance of cash flow and many people tend to confuse cash flow with
value and profit of course your skills and work experiences are valuable and
your property if you have a house is also valuable you might even have a
business that is running and that is profitable but profit is not the same as
cash flow you might have assets skills and a business that is valuable on paper
but all of those things can't feed you of course eventually you can convert
your skills and your assets into cash flow but your skills themselves cannot
directly pay your bill you need cash to pay your bills and the moment that you
don't have any cash any more than it's game over
you might have saved up quite some money when you were working and you might also
have an emergency fund but those savings will only last you
that long once you quit your job and you don't have a steady income stream
anymore your savings will dry out faster than you can imagine my point here is
that if you want to continue to play the game which in this sense is to go after
your dreams your passions or whatever you need to have a healthy cash flow and
you do this by planning your cash flow in advance carefully while you are still
in your old job while you are still earning an income you need to plan and
project your cash flow going forward this means that you need to make good
estimations about how much cash will flow out and how much cash will come in
as soon as that number becomes negative in a month what is likely to happen is
that you either have to rely on credit card debt or you are forced to go back
to your old job the other thing to keep in mind here is that everything is
likely to cost more and not less than you think so let's say for example that
you estimate your monthly expenses to be two thousand five hundred dollars
including your mortgage groceries health expenses transportation and so on but
think again does that two thousand five hundred dollars really include
everything have you counted four trips to the cinema vacations electronic
purchases or gifting to family and friends if you include all of that your
monthly expenses is likely to be more than two thousand five hundred dollars
and here again I'm not telling you not to quit your job but what I'm trying to
tell you here that it is really important I would say the most important
thing to really plan out your cash flow because as soon as you don't have any
money to pay your bills and your expenses then you will be forced to
either go back to your old job if they will still take you or you will need to
take up another job another part-time job that you don't really want so what's
the point then if you leave one job in the hurry just to get stuck in another
job that you don't like as well a better plan would be to hang in there in the
company just a bit longer to sort out all of your finances and when you think
that you're ready perhaps you might talk to a personal finance adviser or so only
after you've sorted that out then go ahead and quit your job another thing
that I want to mention in relation to cash flow
is that you shouldn't rely on income that is not generated yet and what I
mean by this is that of course you should put the estimated amount of money
that you will be able to generate in future in your cash flow projection but
you cannot rely on that number although you project that in your fourth month of
freelancing you will be able to generate $2,000 per month that is not a certainty
yet instead of assuming that you'll be able to earn $2,000 in your fourth month
skill down the projection to a lower figure knowing that you'll not be able
to rely on your income that early you'll know that you might need to save up more
for your emergency fund your emergency or your savings fund will act as a
backup during those months during which you haven't achieved your new income
targets yet the third important thing to know about before quitting your job is
not to burn your ships and your bridges you might have heard about the advice
about burning your old ships to eliminate any possibility about going
back so that you can focus on the thing that is right in front of you now you
might also have come across the quote from Sun Tzu which says when your army
has crossed the border you should burn your boats and bridges in order to make
it clear to everybody that you have no hankering after home while this strategy
might have worked well in war times it's not a strategy that will work well when
you're about to quit your job guys this is not war I get that you might
hate your job and that you want to get out of there as fast as possible but
guys do not burn your ships do not badmouth your company there's absolutely
nothing that you can gain from that you might be thinking that at any cost you
do not want to go back to your old company ever and I'm not saying that the
reason that you should keep the door open is because it gives you the
possibility of future employment but rather because you never know where and
how and what capacity you will cross paths with the company or your former
employer and future as a freelancer or even as an employee in another company
there is always the possibility that in future you will work on common projects
or that you will be their client or they will be your client it's a very very
small world and you have to keep your reputation intact don't destroy your
relationship with your former employer or company on the contrary I would say
that while you are still in your old work on strengthening the ties and
relationships that you have there after I quit my job in banking I stayed in
touch with some of the key people that I admired and with whom I wanted to stay
in touch in the long term I was looking for funding to produce my own feature
film but eventually the introduction done by one of my former colleagues in
banking who introduced me to someone else who then again introduced me to
another person was what got me there so never underestimate the long-term
importance of your former relationships and that is what I mean by not burning
your bridges like I said you'll never know how and in what capacity you might
cross paths in future you might get a project referred to you by a former
colleague or you might even join up with a company to work on a common project
number four is to be aware about how your decision of quitting your job will
affect the people around you the people close to you and oh man this is really a
tough one this goes out to all the people who have other people relying on
them I really understand if you feel that right now you want to leave your
job immediately and don't look back perhaps you just can't stand it anymore
and you just need to get out of there as soon as possible whatever the cost and
if you're single you don't have kids and you don't have anyone else relying on
you financially then that is something that you could do because you're only
going to be responsible toward yourself but if you are someone who has kids or
you have parents or other family members relying on you then you really need to
think about how all this affects them of course you might say this is my life I'm
living my life for myself and not for other people and in the end this is what
I need to do in order to be happy but think again is this really what you want
think about how quitting your job right now at this very moment will affect the
people around you it's up until now you had been supporting people financially
in your family and after you quit you'll not be able to do that anymore
think about what that will mean for them when I was still working in my banking
job which paid me a very high salary I was able to support some people in my
family financially I that supporting these people financially
was not my responsibility but yet deep down inside I knew that that was
something that I ideally would like to do I cared about these people and I
wanted to support them but after I left my job and didn't enjoy that high income
anymore I was no longer to support them to the same extent as before and that
turned out to be a very heavy burden on my shoulders right now if you're still
working in your job supporting other people you might feel that doing this
job is a very heavy burden but if you think that this is a heavy burden now I
can't tell you how much heavier it will feel after you quit your job and you
have to tell those people that you will no longer be able to support them at
times that situation that fact was making me really sad and I was even
feeling guilty at times about it even though I knew that I shouldn't be
feeling guilty about it because it wasn't really my responsibility but this
is something that you should consider really carefully even though you might
be thinking that those people you're supporting are by now either grown-up
enough or whatever enough to be able to support themselves instead of relying on
you still you need to give them some time at least a transition don't
Surprise them and come out of the blue and tell them that okay starting next
month the 1st of February March or whatever I will no longer be able to
support you a better solution is to communicate to them foreign advance
months before six months before or even longer about your plans that you will
eventually quit your job and that they might need to find other solutions in
order to pay their bills and if these people are really important to you then
you might even want to take in some feedback from them and reconsider your
time of your plan resignation and in the end it may mean that you might need to
stay in your old job a bit longer for a few more months and I know that you will
hate it but trust me in the end even though you're staying longer as long as
you've accounted for all the people that you care for you will feel better in the
end number five is the importance of a transition and exit strategy you need a
transition strategy for your finances as well as for your career
and this is what I mean if after quitting your job your plan is to start
freelancing building a business or changing careers to get into a new
industry there will be a considerable amount of time a phase in between where
you need to figure things out let's say that you were a marketing manager and
you are planning to become an interior designer but you haven't fully made up
your mind yet whether or not you want to go back to school or maybe just take an
online course or work as an apprentice for someone and so on and the danger or
the risk that I see here is that of wasting your time if by the time that
you quit your job you don't have a concrete and clear plan yet chances are
that you will get into a situation of analysis paralysis and I have made a
video separately on this topic that I linked up here for example if you are
interested in interior design but you don't really know yet whether or not you
want to really spend money on a degree what you can do is simply just take an
online course that is not much of an investment that will not cost you a lot
of money perhaps a couple of hundred bucks and not that much of your time
there is not much risk in that but on the positive side what will happen is
that you will be likely to discover new things about yourself you also need to
have a transition strategy for your finances because after you quit your job
it is very likely that you'll not be able to immediately earn the same income
as you did before and of course you can spend all of your savings but who would
want to do that so a better solution would be that while working on building
your business or trying to get your new dream job to take a part-time job at the
side or do some freelancing in an area that you are already an expert at I know
it's not the ideal situation but it is a good interim solution taking a part-time
job on the side or doing some freelancing will mean that you cannot
spend 100% of your time working on your new and ever but at least it will give
you a peace of mind knowing that money will come in on a regular basis number
six is something that is very specific to your personal situation and that is
that you need to know the risks that you are taking of course it's impossible to
know about all the possible risks that exists but at least by having
a rough overview about what the risks are when you quit your job you will be
able to make a well informed decision most people would saying that only
quitting their job is something that is risky but I would say that even staying
in your current job that you really hate that is so dreadful that makes you feel
miserable has its own set of risks the famous psychology professor Jordan
Peterson says this about staying in a dead-end job what about the risks for
you to stay with this job you absolutely hate hmm well let's think that through
okay so I have this dead-end job I hate it I'm getting better where am I gonna
be in five years I know where because I've watched this with people you're
gonna be you're gonna be just like you are now except a lot more of what's good
about you is going to be gone and a lot more of what's terrible is going to be
amplified so let's think about that a lot about what's good about you is going
to be gone and a lot more of what's terrible is going to be amplified and I
think this makes totally sense a job or a career is not just about the money or
the career development but it goes much further than that the wrong job or the
wrong career can have long-term negative effects on your enthusiasm and your
outlook for life or more about that check out my other video which I linked
up here so in each person's case there are risks to staying in the job as well
as leaving the job there is no way around that and you surely know that
everything that is worthwhile to pursue has its risks and challenges so what are
you going to do about that what you can do is try to identify the risks and then
manage them or at least try to minimize them a bit let's say that you are
planning to spend $10,000 of your own money working on a startup business for
two years and its first phase think about what are the risks in this case
what is the worst-case scenario that could happen the worst-case scenario
would be that you would lose the $10,000 if the startup doesn't work out there
might be some embarrassment your business might fail completely and you
might need to start all over again and then you need to ask yourself knowing
these risks am I going to go ahead anyway
and again here I'm not trying to discourage you from going ahead but
saying is that by knowing your risks you will eventually have smoother sailing
because you will know what to look out for what the dangers are what the
pitfalls are and instead of being surprised by unexpected things coming
your way you will already be prepared for them and have an idea about how you
will deal with the situation if you're starting a new business and you are
aware of the possibility that it might fail because many businesses do you will
have less regret in future because in future in case your business failed you
will not tell yourself something like why were you so stupid back then and
took that decision but instead of that you will tell yourself no I'm so happy
with the decision I made I made the best decision possible at the time with the
information that I had because I was aware of the risks and nevertheless I
still wanted to go ahead because at least I wanted to have a shot talking
about risks might sound scary but I think that once you know your risks and
you know how to manage them then you can put that aside for a while and then you
can focus fully on working on all of your opportunities and making the best
of your plan so all in all there is no one standard formula that can tell you
whether or not you should quit your job but by knowing about these six things it
will help you to arrive at a well informed decision by the way has any of
these six things change your mind on your decision of quitting your job
please share with me in the comments below also please share with me in the
comments in case you think that I left out anything or if you have anything to
add I hope this video was useful to you please share it with your friends or
other people who you think will benefit from this video I hope this video was
useful to you also don't forget to check out my other videos on career change in
multiple careers as always I thank you so much for watching all the best and I
hope to catch you again soon