The Expert Podcast

So you're thinking about leaving your job? You and everybody else in the world. There's the great resignation that's happening, and everybody wants to quit and leave their job. There may be a good reason for it. The job may be unfulfilling, may be underpaid, or you may have to do things that really don't make you happy. And that's fine. But before you do that, think about what your next move is. Are you trying to do a side hustle? Are you trying to get into your own business? Do you want to take a different job?

The question is why. What is behind it? Do you want more money? Do you want more freedom? Do you want less work? Do you want to do your own thing? Do you want to be not controlled by a boss or a corporate overlord? Think of all the things you hate about your current job. Maybe it's that you don't have a day off. Maybe it's that you have certain working hours that you don't like. Maybe it's the commute. Maybe it's that there's just things about your job you don't like doing—painful tasks or parts of it that are unsatisfying or maybe even disreputable.

So the question is, what are you going to do about it? If you go to another job, is it going to be the same there? When you took your job that you have now, you probably thought it was going to be good. You wouldn't have taken it otherwise. Case in point: this article from Vice says there's no such thing as a dream job, and that's why a job, by definition, is a job. There's an old quote that says, "Do a job you love, and you never work a day in your life." It's true. You might think that you want to play video games all day, or maybe you want to be outside in nature all day. And you might say, "If I can find a way to get paid for that, I'll be happy." Well, yes and no. Even people who do the thing they've loved their whole life eventually realize there's a part of that job that you're not going to like.

What should you do? Yes, you should go off on your own and do your own thing. We recommend that you are self-employed and have your own business. As long as you're working for somebody else, you're at the mercy of another person's beliefs about business, their strategy for operating a company, their needs, or failures in management. You have to deal with all of that. Maybe they forgot to handle a customer, and you have to fix the problem. Maybe the way that they handle scheduling always puts people working at hours they don't like. There are many things about your job you don't like, so you should work for yourself. However, it's not all utopia because all of the things that need to get done in your current job, working for yourself, somebody's got to do them.

If you open up a restaurant, somebody's got to clean the toilet. If you open up a bookstore, somebody's got to sweep up at night. You could do that yourself, or you could hire somebody. But if you hire somebody, now you have somebody working for you who's in the same position that you were in. Somebody who hates their job, someone who doesn't like their task, and now, instead of it being you, it's somebody else that you have to take care of. So if you truly care about other people and you know that task—sweeping the floor, cleaning the toilet, taking out the trash, dealing with problem customers—whatever those things are that you didn't like, it's worse now because you're forcing somebody else to do those things that you don't like. As a caring, altruistic person, that should affect you more than doing it yourself, shouldn't it?

So what are you going to do about that? Well, there's a strategy. No matter what you decide to do for your own business—open up a deli, bookstore, landscape company, or programming company—there are going to be things that you're not going to be able to do yourself, nor do you want to do them yourself. Maybe there's some kind of programming that you can't do. Maybe there's accounting that you can't do or don't want to do. Even if you could literally do everything that needs to get done for your company, you're not going to have enough hours in the day. So you are going to need colleagues. You are going to need business partners. You're going to need employees. You're going to need assistance with your enterprise.

At first, you might not be able to afford to pay because you have no income yet with your side gig. So how do you do that? Well, you can partner up with other people that are in the same boat as you but like doing the other thing. Let's say, for example, you want to start a company that researches information. Let's say you find that realtors need certain information for marketing. I'm just making something up, and you get into that business. Now you're going to need somebody that does sales. Maybe you don't like sales. You're also going to need somebody that does accounting for your business. You may not like that. But if you like doing research and you start your own business for research, there's somebody somewhere that likes doing sales but doesn't like doing research. There's also somebody somewhere that likes doing accounting but doesn't like doing sales. If you and they want to start their own business too, or maybe they have started their own business, those are the people you want to find: the people who are interested in starting their own business, doing the things—the pieces of the puzzle—that you don't want to do, or can't do, or don't have time for, and attaching yourself to them.

So you have this cluster of self-employed people with these businesses that do all the pieces of the puzzle to make the final result for your business, and you're doing the same thing for them. Maybe you do like sales, but you don't like research or accounting. Well, you can do sales for the research company. You can do sales for the accounting firm. You can do sales for your own company. So if you like doing sales, offer that as a business. Now you're a sales company, and you can do that for other businesses. Either way, don't try to do it all on your own. Don't try to burden the whole thing on your own shoulders because there are things about a business that you need help with. You need other people for.

Look, maybe you want to take on a business partner. But if you take out a partner, now you have to give away half or some percentage of your revenue or your success. If you want to do it all on your own, that's fine, but align yourself with good resources. Make sure they're trustworthy. Make sure that they have the same mindset and belief system as you. Make sure they're disciplined. Make sure that they want to work hard. The good thing is you can interchange them. If you work with somebody that maybe doesn't work out, you can find another company. It's not like an employee where you're attached.

So look at all those pieces of the puzzle and think ahead. You need them. Think about your company, you work for now, before you leave, and look at all the things in that company that are getting done that you're not doing. There's an accountant. There's a bookkeeper. There's a salesperson. There's marketing people. There's maybe service delivery service. Make sure you account for all of those things that you need and how you're going to accomplish that. You don't want to accomplish it by having a fixed monthly cost that you're obligating yourself to starting out. You want to be scalable. So maybe you tell your accountant, "Look, I'll only have you do stuff when I need it." Maybe your salesperson is only on commission. Maybe your delivery person only gets paid per piece. But align yourself with other companies that you can offer things to them and vice versa so you can scale your business up. Do the things you like doing. But remember, all of the things you hate about your current job aren't going to magically go away if it's your company, because all the things that you're doing that you hate have to get done for every company. And if you just disregard them and think it's magically going to disappear, you'll be sad when you have to do them.

It'll be worse too because you're still going to have to do the same crappy job, but you're going to get paid less, and you're not going to get a paycheck every Friday like you do at your current job automatically. You're only going to get paid if you've built up some customers, which you probably will at some point. But in the meantime, you're going to do all that terrible work and the things you hate doing at your current job, but not get a paycheck on Friday. You're going to be doing it for free. Basically, in the long run, it'll be good, but make sure you're planning for it and looking for those opportunities to align yourself with like-minded people, good-hearted people that want to be entrepreneurs, that want to stand on their own and do good things for the community as you're building it up.

Don't live the fairytale that all the annoying things about business will go away. And I know you're not doing that. I know you're thinking about all these things, but just plan for how you're going to plug in other people to do it, because somebody likes doing everything. And use that to your advantage.