https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLsWhSRypzM

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 me quitting my job was the single
hardest decision that i've ever made in my entire life so rewind a
handful of years ago i was sitting on my balcony i was 22 years old and
i was staring out over this condo that i had purchased because the job
that i had you know paid me well and i was looking over the city of
baltimore and i thought to myself is this it and this was a rock top and
rock bottom moment for me specifically because at that time i had
graduated in three years from vanderbilt mad come laude i was president
of all these things while i was at school i got a good consulting job
and i had saved almost 50 000 at that point and i had this condo that
was increasing in value and i saved pretty much everything minus my
mortgage and i was as i was looking out there all i could think to
myself was how i hated my life and how i hated my job and i just didn't
i felt so empty inside and i was so depressed that i really every day i
would consider as i was driving like what if i went

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 into the other lane and just like
things would end and so that was like my actual reality and so that's
called passive ideation which is like i'm not saying that i would want
to you know kill myself but if i died and didn't wake up tomorrow i
wouldn't be upset and that was kind of the existence that i lived for
two years of my life and it was very hard time for me and so i don't
know where you're at in your entrepreneurial journey but i kind of
wanted to answer one of the questions that i get most frequently which
is you know when should i quit and start my own business and so i think
a lot of it depends on you specifically in self-awareness and i'm going
to talk about skill set in a second but i want to talk about the mindset
first me quitting my job was the single hardest decision that i've ever
made in my entire life and i mean that genuinely it was the hardest
decision that i've made it took me six months to do it and i listened to
arnold's rules of success speech every morning when i wake up about you
know it's okay to fail and i had to keep saying this stuff because i was
so outwardly driven i was so status driven that i didn't want to take
the risk of being seen as a failure and so it only was when i was
literally confronted with my own

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 you know the fact that i was really not
even willing to be alive anymore is when that was kind of my jogging to
awaken this moment where i was like you know what if i don't even want
to be alive anymore then what's worse than that and so that was what
ultimately shot me on the trajectory to you know quit that job sell the
condo put everything that i had in my car and i drove across the country
in 36 hours to california which is where i thought the land of fitness
opportunity would be now mind you i was a management consultant we did
space cyber intelligence for the military at a subcontractor or a booze
allen if you're familiar with that consulting firm and that's what i did
for two years and it sounds really you know cool and sexy but it was not
at all for me and i really did not enjoy it but i learned some valuable
lessons like how to learn while i was there and so i think that what
most people you know it really depends on who you are and understanding
your skill set and honestly and how much pain you're in and so there's
also different ways to satisfy that pain i think true to my core if i
had been in a different company or i was working on different projects
at that time in my life

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 i probably would have never quit it was
so hard for me and i didn't have a wife i didn't have kids i had zero
dependence and i lived on nothing and it was still one of the hardest
decisions of my life because i'm very risk-averse so believe it or not
most entrepreneurs you know a lot of people talk about how they you know
they didn't do well in school and you know teachers never understood
them they always knew they had to go out on their own i never had any of
that i worked really hard in school i did really well in school teachers
liked me for the most part and you know i got a good job afterwards and
so i did not have the traditional entrepreneur journey and it was only
because i was so sad deeply depressed in that time of my life and felt
so empty that i actually made the jump and so i think the first thing is
like one are you are you incredibly sad are you incredibly dissatisfied
with your life so much so that you'd be willing to uproot and change
number one number two entrepreneurship is not easy and so if you need i
think elon musk said this on a clubhouse meeting and i just think it's
so true people are like what words of motivation would you give for a
new entrepreneur if you need motivational quotes or motivational words
then entrepreneurship isn't for you and i tend to agree with him like if
you

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 need that motivation like it is one of
the loneliest paths period you know at least in co-workers you have
other people who are around you you can but when you start on your own
you're starting at zero with no one and basically no one's rooting for
you like for me when i left like no one really supported me my parents
thought i was stupid and that this was a stupid idea i was throwing my
education away and i was risking everything just go start a gym right
which is really not even that good of a return on investment you know
what i mean but i was so committed to the fact that i was so miserable
that i was like at least i can just live my life doing something that i
enjoy i don't even care if i make money and that was literally the
mindset that i was able to to quit with and so i again i don't know
where you're at but the first piece of this is understanding short and
long-term payoffs i did not make a significant amount of money for years
after i quit my job right so i'd say for the first four years i i
essentially broke even and made less money than i did as a consultant
all right so like think about that for a second right now there's a lot
of mistakes i made too and you're going to make them as well

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 because none of us is perfect there's
so many skills that you have to like you have to acquire so many skills
to run a business right and so you may have a single job right now and
you're you're doing one specific function of one specific sub department
of a business but in order to be an entrepreneur you have to understand
all of it right in order to be a successful entrepreneur so you have to
understand how to generate demand you have to generate understand how to
generate leads you have to understand how to work leads you have to
understand how to sell you have to understand how to fulfill and deliver
and how to manage people how to communicate how to relay expectations
how like how to recruit how to hire how to interview like there's so
many things that you have to learn and i don't want that to be
overwhelming i just want to confront you with reality because honestly
if i knew how hard it was going to be when i started my first business i
don't know if i would have done it i just i forced myself into a hole
and i always like to say this is you'd be surprised what you can
accomplish when you have no choice as as dark and morbid as i'm gonna as
what i'm gonna say is and don't get triggered by this but like the fact
that an entire race in our country was enslaved

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 for hundreds of years and was still
able to do that every day shows the strength of the human spirit and
what is possible when you have no choice and so i think that to
juxtapose what i said about how hard it is if you can put yourself in a
position where you have no choice you will be successful right if you
want to succeed as bad as you can breathe you will be successful and so
i think that was the situation where i was in where i was i knew that
the alternative to what i was doing was death for me and so it was just
anything is better than this and honestly the next you know year of my
life even after that was still incredibly hard but it was different but
it was still incredibly hard and so just to give you a couple of stats
on this that i think i think everyone should have data to make decisions
um it's proper expectations right so the average so this is according to
small business administration the median excuse me the median income of
a small business owner 49 000 a year so i don't know what you're making
right now but this is what the middle of the small business ownership
makes now you might be making more than that there are people who are
number 30 at

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 google we make way more than this right
and they're and so you have to understand kind of where you sit on the
hierarchy and there are some people who would be so much better served
there are so many of my ex-employees who ended up going out on their own
and i don't think many of them make more than they did when they were
with us and they probably have more stress and that's okay that was
their choice and there are trade-offs you make for freedom right there
are trade-offs right risk and reward there are both of those things in
the aspect of this decision now that's supposed to say average sorry now
if you're curious what's the average small business owner make according
to the sba 73 000 a year now averages are skewed because there's top end
people that move that average up so that should say average sorry but
median's 49 that means that the most likely most repeated outcome is 49
000 a year which is pretty much the median household income of the
united states kind of interesting and then the average is 73 000. so it
depends on where you're at and how dissatisfied you are and so the first
thing is are you dissatisfied because you don't like the company you
work for are you dissatisfied because you don't like the work you do

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 now both of those have solutions that
are outside of starting your own business right you can just go and find
a different position and learn on someone else's dollar which is i think
is so wildly under underappreciated like go to a company that you like
and learn and get paid to learn that's amazing right like because you're
not going to learn anything at school that's going to be useful for
business right so if you want to be an entrepreneur you're going to have
to learn these things in the real world and so going and getting paid to
learn is one of the best things you can possibly imagine you just have
to understand that what you're getting paid for is not going to be your
income for life it's literally you getting paid to learn how to do
something which is amazing i did not have that i literally went from
making money to starting to learn everything from scratch and i and it
was very difficult for me now the the piece here about short short term
versus long term if you make this decision expect a three four maybe
five year decrease in income right you're not going to make as much
money for the first few years right and then maybe if you are successful
and you reinvest in yourself and you grow and you acquire skills and

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 beliefs and attitudes and character
traits then you will be able to have the long-term payoff but
entrepreneurship is the ultimate value investment in yourself and so
again there are lots of people who don't have the risk tolerance for
that and that is okay the vast majority of people should not be
entrepreneurs the second thing in terms of the choices right in the
beginning it's do i need to switch companies that's if i don't like what
i'm doing uh sorry if i don't like the company i'm working for number
two is do i need to switch what i'm doing and get paid to learn which is
a second alternative to quitting your position number three is if i if i
like what i'm doing and i like the company am i just not getting paid
enough well then talk to them and see how you can provide more value do
not ask i would like to get paid more say how can i provide more value
if you ask that question any any smart business owner be able to tell
you exactly how to provide more value so that you can make more in a low
risk environment and then the fourth way you can do this if you're
considering quitting is start investing all of your extra time in
acquiring the other skills and start actually doing it spend some money
on marketing do some

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 outreach do those types of things to
generate demand for your business now in the beginning it's going to be
a side hustle but over time it can grow and then at a certain point it
will grow in excess of what you are currently making and then you can
make the jump i did not do that what i did was candidly very stupid i
got lucky i got very lucky i got extraordinarily lucky that i had people
who were able to speak into my life at an early time point i was able to
learn from experts very very quickly which candidly i invested in that i
paid all of my savings that i'd saved up the 50 000 was gone within the
first three months of me starting entrepreneurship gone because i paid
for mentorship i paid for coaching programs and i bought and i and i
reinvested in a gym which i shouldn't have done um i shouldn't have
opened it the way i did because i didn't know any better right and so
the biggest issue your biggest risk when you start on your own is that
you don't know what you're doing right and so the idea is if you can
decrease your downside risk by learning more skills getting paid to
learn them asking your business how you can provide more value which
will allow you to learn more skills and get paid more as you do it right
if you do all of those things and after doing all those steps you still
are not satisfied then be willing to

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 make the risk and make the short-term
trade-off that you're going to make less for a period of time and so
this is why i'm so such a big believer in in in living cheap right live
cheap and keep your expectations at cheap so that if your your income
does drop you're still not losing money and then long term you can keep
reinvesting in yourself so that you as the valuable asset can become
more valuable and then increase in your earning potential and by
extension because of the skills you learn grow your business so to
answer the question um when do you when you couldn't start a business it
depends on who you are and where you're at in your life there are lots
of other steps you can do before that like switch a company switch the
job ask if you can do things that are making you more valuable start the
side hustle first then start making sure that it works if you like it
before betting everything on it and then finally if none of those things
uh work for you then at that point i would say okay if you have
reasonable means that you've that you've saved up you have a vehicle
that you know is tested you know other people who are doing that
specific thing and you can do it then i would say by

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 all means but i think that i made a
lot of stupid decisions and candidly i think i got really lucky and so
um that is that is the the long way to answer to this question which is
when when do you when do you quit start your own business it depends on
you i can't give you a perfect answer because i don't know who you are
but those are the frameworks that i'd be thinking of and these are the
expectations that i would set in understanding the average 18 year old a
senior in high school when surveyed believes that they will be a
millionaire by age 25. how ridiculously unreasonable is that that they
believe this is the average right believes that they're going to be in
the top 1 within 7 years of graduating high school let's be real here do
we think that that is a reasonable expectation no so if you believe that
the stats are against you doesn't mean i'm saying i don't believe in you
i believe in you 100 i'm your biggest fan but understand that these are
the actual expectations of what this means all right i remember when i
quit my job and i found out what the top gym owners were making and i
remember literally my first

14 00:13:00.000 --\> 00:14:00.000 thought was that's it and so you have
to understand that there's there's the hullabaloo of revenue which i
made in another video about measuring value lots of people talk big
numbers not a lot of people make big numbers most people are broke and
the reason i have this channel is to make sure that you are not one of
them and so uh hope you enjoyed this click subscribe if you did and i'll
see in the next video
