When is it safe to quit your job if you have a business? Whether you are working part-time, full-time, or want to retire your spouse, you NEED to know a few necessary steps before you make the jump. Here’s how to ensure you don’t quit too soon. Or worse, work too long! Tune in now!
Chris Miles Bio:
Chris Miles, the “Cash Flow Expert,” is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, and Entrepreneur on Fire, and he has spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results.
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When Is It Safe To Quit Your Job?
It’s another episode and another flop team for me to serve you. Thank you so much for doing that. I love the fact that you have been participating, learning and growing. I appreciate all the feedback you have given me about these shows and how it’s helping you. Keep that up. Keep letting me know what serves you and what topics are great for you. If you ever say, “I want to know this,” and you want to build a semi-private message, send an email to Chris@MoneyRipples.com. I’d love to read it.
Let’s talk about how you can quit your job. I’m speaking to those of you that either 1) You have a job on the side and maybe you’re trying to start a business, or maybe you have a business, but you haven’t been able to go full-time yet. 2) You’ve got a spouse you want to retire from their job. 3) You’re in business maybe you are full-time, but you want to make more money so that you don’t feel like you have to keep making money in your business to keep providing for yourself. Sometimes if you own a business, you feel like you own a job. You feel like you basically worked yourself into a very long hour type of job in business and you don’t feel like there’s any freedom, even though that’s the whole reason you went into business was to have more freedom.
I want to talk to you specifically about how can you know if it’s the right time to quit your job? When is it safe to retire a spouse or whatever it might be? Many people have that question looming over their heads and they often don’t take any action on it. They don’t know what to do. Here are the four easy steps you can start working on to get yourself to that place where you can say, “Now’s the time I’m good.” Granted, every situation is different. I get that. That’s something I see whenever I work with one-on-one clients. Sometimes it’s easier. Sometimes it’s harder or it takes more time. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s harder. It might take more time to come to fruition. What I’m telling you here is general rule of thumb, but for you, your situation might be different here. Let’s get into it.
Number one, you’ve got to know your numbers. Plain and simple. You’ve got to know how much money is coming in and what’s going out. You especially need to know how much money it’s going to take for you to survive and keep going. What’s your bottom line personally, not just in your business, although that’s important too, but personally in your life? How much money do you need to bring home every month?
I remember I had a situation. This one was in direct sales and very successful with it. Her husband was also working in this family business for about 60 hours a week. They didn’t know how they could get them to quit. Sixty hours a week is a lot of time, especially when you’re making good money in a direct sales company. They are working hard and they say, “We want to know how we can get him to retire and quit his job.” Even though it’s a family business, there’s a possibility of continuing the family business there. That wasn’t his passion. His passion was to work with his wife and their business.
If you've got work, enjoy it. Be grateful for it. Don't look at it like this ball and chain keeping you down. That's funding your dream. Click To TweetWe finally got them to get me the numbers. We looked at everything, the business and the personal. I said, “If you make a few little tweaks here, he could quit right away. You guys have got savings, which is good, but you’ve got to know your expenses and even having a good lifestyle.” I didn’t want them to be cheap. I said, “You guys can still travel around the world like you’ve been doing as long as your income stays up. Let’s have a plan that your income doesn’t always stay up. Maybe there’s some fluctuation. If we make a few little tweaks here for $1,000 a month, you could do it.”
He did. Within a couple of months, he had his retirement party and he looks so old. He was about 40. It was awesome to have that kind of retirement party. I remember reading the comments of people on Facebook said, “I wish I could retire.” I’m thinking, “You can.” The problem sounded like, “Good for you.” It’s because they don’t know what to do. They aren’t seeing those options. They’re not looking hard either. They’re looking at the traditional stuff. You’ve got to change a whole entire mindset to even make this possible.
Once we knew the numbers, they had confidence. That’s the key. Clarity creates confidence. The clearer you are on what you need to do, especially around the numbers, it’s very easy to create some strategies around that and to make a plan. That was for them. It was very easy. Other people are taking a little time. I had another person in that same direct sales company where, the same thing, they retire their husband, but it took a little bit of time. It took a couple of years, but it didn’t take that long at all.
Especially as we got her to start making more money in her business, it made it easier for him to make the jump. That’s the thing. The less expenses you have to overcome, the easier it is to quit. You want to get out of that rat race. It is controlling your expenses for sure. With that couple, their expenses were still pretty high between business and personal. I kept it up there. It was about $15,000 a month. We’re keeping the expenses at. If they could do it, I’m sure you can too.
Number two is to build some savings. This is key. This is something I wish I would have done before. I quit. I wish I got this kind of advice years ago when I finally made the leap to go full-time in my business. I’d been working my business for about three years and I was like, “I want to get done with this.” I made the leap. I said, “I’m done.” I thought, “This is going to be great.” I didn’t have a lot of savings built up. I was right back trying to scramble to find work again. I couldn’t go back to my old job. I didn’t want to do that because it killed my pride. I ended up working other jobs that I hated because I didn’t do this, which is building some savings.
I recommend people to have at least 6 to 12 months of monthly expenses. That can include some of your retirement plans. Although that’s questionable, depending on how much money you can access from that retirement plan, sometimes you can make the leap. If your monthly expenses are $5,000 a month, you probably want at least $30,000 to $60,000 a month saved up. You might be thinking, “That’s a lot of time. That could take me forever.” Maybe, but if you’re doing it right, if your business is paying you in the meantime and your work is paying you, then hopefully you’re taking a lot of that money from your business and building out savings.
I’m sure you’re probably re-investing something to keep making more money in the business too. That’s great, but you want to make sure you’re putting some away for savings to ensure that when you make this leap, you don’t ever want to be in a place where you feel like you have to make money. This is the problem that I made when I made that jump from my business when all of a sudden I realized, “I’ve got to make the money. It’s up to me. If I don’t do it, I don’t pay my mortgage. I can’t feed my family because my wife wasn’t working. We just had our first kid.”
I remember thinking like, “It’s all on me.” Back in those days, my expenses were only $3,500 a month. It wasn’t that much, but still that stress and pressure of, “What if I don’t make it? What if I don’t make the money? What if I’ve got to make money? I’ve got to get business. I’ve got to make sure I’m doing this.” I went from living the dream of having my own business and being full-time in it to living in a nightmare. That scarcity drove the results away to where people stopped buying. It repelled business for me, which is ironic because I was working harder and more hours in my business full-time, but I was making less money than I was when I had a 30-hour-a-week job because I gradually worked down my hours there.
You want to make sure you’ve built up some savings to get that cushion to when you meet with people, when you have a sales conversation or whatever it might be, you know you don’t need their business. You don’t have to sell anybody at that time, but you know you can help them. When you come from that place of power, people will say yes much more easily. I hope they understand that. See if you can build at least six months of savings on your expenses.
Number three is to have a working business. We want to make sure you have a business that is paying you. Sometimes you make a leap in your businesses and paying you. When I made that leap to go full-time, I was getting paid, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even to what I needed to make every month. I realize when all of a sudden I had a good month. I said, “I made more of this month than I made it my job.” At that point, my business paid me more than my job was paying me. I said, “I can’t afford to be like this. I can’t afford to stay this way because I was being more busy than productive. I’ve got to leave.” The thing is I wanted to leave so badly. I thought it was a bad thing as in my job.
It seems so appealing to have your own business and to make your own schedule, money, and everything else. However, it's not appealing when you're broke. Click To TweetHere’s a bonus. If you’ve got work, enjoy it. Be grateful for it. That’s the very thing that’s funding your dream. Don’t look at it as like this ball and chain that’s keeping you down. I’ll get people so many times that boo-boo, whine and cry. I get it because I was there. I was that person, but they’ll whine about how they hate having a job and how it’s slowing them down. I can promise you. It’s not slowing you down that much. You are slowing yourself down, not your job. It has nothing to do with it. It’s you, your job. If you look at the right context, you realize that this thing is your funding source.
This is your business capital, the money that’s going in. This is what’s allowing you to even make your dream possible faster. If you get that and understand that that job is not a detriment, but that is something that’s fueling the fire, fanning the flames and making a better, you should be saying, “I’m grateful for every single day I have this job because it allows me to do what I love to.” I get it. It’s more time and effort.
There are overtime hours that you’re doing. You’re spending some weekends working and stuff. It takes time away from the family a little bit. I get all that, but it’s a lot faster and easier a path doing that than jumping full-time into a business when you had no right to jump full-time into it, and then you’re panicking. You’re desperate. You’re at the welfare office trying to figure out how to make ends meet. You are working weekends and nights to make ends meet because you’re not making any money of your business. You’re away from your family anyways.
It seems appealing to have your own business, make your own schedule, money and everything else. It’s not appealing when you’re broke. That stinks. It’s horrible. Don’t do that. That’s why savings is the thing that helps you. That’s why also having a working business, working up to the point where it can start making money consistently, and it doesn’t have to be the same every month when you’re not consistently making money, this is good.
This ties up the fourth point, which is to have your business pay you at least 10% more than you’re earning right now in your job, or at least 10% more than what you need every month to survive. Let’s reframe that. Granted 10% more than what you’re being paid, especially if you’re getting paid more than what you’re spending, great. That’s awesome. I’m saying is at least 10% more than what your current expenses are. The reason is you might be getting benefits from a company right now, like health insurance or something like that’s saving you money.
There have been a few cases where I’ve had people get an individual health plan and it’s cheaper than them getting it through their company, awesome, great. Then that was wonderful, but that’s not common. The likelihood is you’re probably going to have to pay a little bit more out of pocket for different things that your company might’ve been providing for you. Not to mention, you’ve got to make sure that your business is also making money enough to reinvest in your business and help it grow.
When I say 10% more, I mean the business is paying you 10% more in profit than what your expenses are at home. That’s money you’re bringing home, not just money that you’re making your business a very different point because you might say, “I only need $5,000 or $6,000 a month.” You say, “I’m making $10,000 in my business every month. This is awesome. I should quit.” Maybe, but if your expenses in your business are $6,000 a month, that means you’re only left with $4,000. That’s not enough. Make sure you have to work in business. This can be okay if you’ve got the savings in place.
If you’ve got a little bit of a gap to make up and maybe you’re going to be tapping into savings a little bit, cool. That might be fine. I don’t want you to coming from a place of desperation where you think, “I need the money. I’ve got to make it now.” Don’t come from that place. See if you can try to make at least 10% more of profit than what you’re currently making in your job. This might require a little bit of patience and time, but if you do this right, it can happen much fast for you and right. You’ll come out on top. Sometimes, it’s worth it to do it at the right time. Every person’s individual situation is different.
I work with somebody. We just freed up over $4,100 a month to the point where now they could save half of the money that they have from their job, 50% of the money they’re making. That’s huge. I’ve got another client that we’re working on creating real estate income streams to help allow them to make that jump to replace income so that she can work full-time in her business. There are some other opportunities. You can make money in business, but there are some other streams of income you can make, especially when you’ve got savings. Maybe you’ve got retirement accounts. If you’ve got retirement accounts, there could be some cool things that you do to create cashflow to help make it easier so you are not stressing over money. That’s what’s awesome.
My challenge to you is if you’re looking to go full-time in your business, do it right. If you need some guidance, let me know, reach out to me at Chris@MoneyRipples.com. Let’s see what we can do. I have some of the coolest conversations with people. When we look to do something like that, I love being able to retire you from your job or retiring your spouse from a job. It’s rewarding. I love seeing people live their dreams that way. Make it a great and prosperous week. We’ll talk to you soon.