Can I quit my job to pursue my passion? YES. Can I quit my job to find my passion? Big NO.
Today, you’re excited. Every entrepreneurial hormone in your body is racing through your veins eager to take action, but be warned; you must learn to get your emotions under control. This is an emotional process. Passion may easily take over our rational thoughts. When this happens, we can easily sell ourselves that our business idea is the next big thing.
Do NOT shoot yourself in the foot; Avoid selling yourself your idea! If you want to quit your job and start your own business, start by sharing your idea with as many people as possible. Search for potential users of your product or service — find business coaches, investors, and mentors, talk to them and LISTEN to what they have to say!
AVOID GETTING DEFENSIVE!
When you’re getting feedback on a business idea, let people say everything they want to say. Do NOT interrupt them. Most will make a big effort to help you, so know that if you’re not hearing what you expect, it’s a golden opportunity to LISTEN CAREFULLY to what they’re saying!
When a person takes his job seriously, he will learn a lot of things. Full-time jobs have taught pretty much everything to a lot of people.
What is working here?
What is not?
How did this company that hired me to go from small to big?
In that trajectory, what has it lost?
What is it doing well?
What are the things I should never, ever replicate?
What inspires people?
What kills their spirit?
What affects creativity?
What is it that the world needs the most?
Find some challenges and goals in your career and pursue them for a year or two. Else, find something to do after work. You need to believe that you will find what you seek in this journey. You gained a lot of life experience on learning life in general from a student and employee perspective.
A full-time job and pursuing your passion are not at odds with each other. They are not a dichotomy. One is not a distraction from the other. There are many ways to get from here to where you want to be. Every way is full of answers and offers the tools you need to assist in the expedition that is your life. But Practically, there are three approaches. None of them are easy, but depending on what your real job is and what your passion is, one may be easier to execute than the others. All of them require careful planning and a realistic approach in order to be maximally effective.
- Stay in your real job, and set aside time each day to work on your passion, until your passion can replace your real job. In terms of financial risk, this is the safest option; in terms of the progress you’ll make on your passion, it’s likely to be the slowest option. Still, plenty of people do make it work.
- Scale back expenses, so that you can do your real job part-time and your passion part-time. This might take the form of moving to a less expensive place to live, paring down your lifestyle, or both. It may not be a practical option if your current career doesn’t really allow for part-time work.
- Save money until you have enough to support yourself for a period of time, quit your real job, and jump feet first into your passion. This one is going to be dependent on how hard you’re willing to grind to save money, how much money you can practically save from your current income, and what the start-up costs for your passion are. If you don’t make much and your passion costs a lot, this may not be an option unless you’re willing to massively scale back living expenses in order to save more, or willing to wait until much later in life to get started.
Many people will advise you that the only “real” option is to jump in feet first, regardless of your level of financial security, so that you “have to make it work.” Desperation does not lead to good decision-making, and the last thing you want to do in any new venture is set yourself up for bad decisions.
When you have a safety net, a bad decision is a setback. When you don’t have a safety net, a bad decision is a disaster. So how do you figure out which approach to choose? Take lots of time to think and plan. Don’t pick any of them without making a plan! Try making a plan for all of them if you’re not sure which one would work best for you.
Sanq4
