Have you just had enough of working for someone else? Why not quit your job and work for yourself?
There are so many reasons why you would want to drop your job and become your own boss. It’s a dream millions of people have, and they fantasize about it daily. If you’re one of those people, it’s time to stop dreaming and start doing.
You really can quit your job and start working for yourself. It’s easier than you’d think.
Here’s a proven process to help you get started, plan for your new career and drop the 9-5.
Table of Contents
8 steps to quit your job and work for yourself
1. Get Away From Other Influences
When you’re thinking about dropping your job, there are lots of places you’ll go for advice. You can talk to friends and family, other industry experts, your co-workers, people online… the list goes on.
You’d think asking for advice is a good idea, but in fact, it can get too confusing. You’ll often get conflicting advice, which makes becoming your own boss difficult.
You’ll also come across a lot of negativity. Friends and family will worry about you dropping your job and striking out on your own.
This worry is well-meaning, as they don’t want you to lose security and potentially fail. However, that’s not going to help you get started.
Instead, take some time to yourself and really get away from other influences. You want to understand your own reasons for becoming your own boss.
2. Understand Your Reasons
There are so many reasons why people think about working for themselves. If they’re not fulfilled in their current job, why not go out there and make their own job?
There may be many reasons you’re fed up with your current role. These could include:
- No work/life balance
- Terrible commute
- More hours with less pay
- You hate your boss
This could easily go on, but you get the picture. Do any of these reasons sound familiar to you?
When considering why you want to become your own boss, you need to think about whether it’s the right solution to your problems.
For example, if you hate the commute, could you convince your workplace to let you work from home? If you hate your boss, can you transfer to another team?
These may be enough to help you fall in love with your job again.
Sometimes though, the reason why you want to break away is deeper than this. You still have to deal with the niggles described above, and you’re just not fulfilled by the role you’re doing right now.
If you keep going to work and you just don’t care about what you do, that’s a sign that it’s time to strikeout. If you have an idea for a business that could succeed, then that’s another good reason to leave.
Remember, life is too short to do a job that you hate.
If you’re worried about quitting your job and then failing, remember that the 9-5 is always there waiting for you. If things go wrong, you can get another desk job while you plan out your next step.
3. Set Yourself Some Goals
If you’re going to go ahead and become your own boss, you’re going to need to set some goals. These are what you’ll work towards and how you’ll know if you’re succeeding.
To set goals, you’ll need to understand what they are first. Think long and hard about what you want from life.
You’ll have professional goals or things you want to achieve. For example, you may want to make a certain amount of money in a year, become the most successful person in your chosen career, or make a name for yourself.
As well as these goals, think about your personal goals in life. You may want to buy a nice house, go on multiple vacations a year, get married and have kids, and so on.
You need to consider both professional and personal goals when you’re goal setting. After all, your career is what will fund your personal goals.
It’s important to set goals as they help you understand where you are in your journey. If you’re hoping to save a certain amount of money, for example, you can see how well you’re doing by the amount sitting in your savings account.
When setting goals, make sure you’re realistic. If you set the goal post too high, you’ll never reach it, and that’s discouraging.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t aim high. You can’t succeed if you don’t believe you can reach your goals, after all.
Just remember that you’re not going to be a millionaire in a year, and you’ll be able to set goals that work for you.
4. Pick Your Business
Some people want to become their own boss because they know the field they want to work in. Others know they want to work for themselves out of the rat race, but they’re unsure what they could do.
Now’s the time to think about what it is that you could do. If you don’t have an idea, firstly think about what it is you love to do.
In many cases, you may be able to make a career out of it. For example, say you’re an excellent graphic artist and love creating new designs.
You can spin that skill out in several different ways. You could create t-shirt designs, make logos for businesses, make customized artwork, and more.
If that’s something you love, you can pick one or several different avenues to explore. The internet makes it easy for you to make money off several different services or products at once, so you can experiment and see what works for you.
Obviously, you don’t need to work in a creative field to make your dream happen. You could become a dropshipper, design new products, translate documents, become a tutor, or anything else.
If you have a passion for it, you can probably turn it into your career.
What if your passion isn’t something you can turn into a career? Not to worry.
You still will have plenty of skills from your work experience that you can use as your own boss. For example, if you’ve always done well with admin, you could get into being a virtual assistant.
Basically, you want to find a role that adds some value to people’s lives. If you’re doing that, you’re going to find that you’ll love your job.
5. Create A Plan
Ok, you know you want to quit your job, and you know what you want to do. Now you need to know how to make that happen.
The best way to do this is to create a plan. If that sounds overwhelming, don’t worry.
You can approach your plan like a to-do list. You’ll have tasks you need to do every day, and that’s how you’ll get started.
For example, let’s say you want to quit your job and become a full-time copywriter, writing articles like this one.
You’ll need to create a plan that gives you daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks to do.
- Every day, you’ll want to look online to find businesses that are looking for services like you’re offering.
- Each week, you’ll want to have applied for a certain amount of writing jobs or sent samples of your work to a certain amount of people.
- Then, every month, you want to start making a certain amount of money from your work.
- In a year, you want to have enough of an income stream happening that you can quit your job.
That’s quite simplified, but you can see how your plan should be structured. Many like to create a journal and have their plans laid out every day for them.
That helps them get the focus they need to work on what’s important and get their business up and running. With a good plan, you’re ready to get started.
6. Make The Decision
You’ve sat and planned, dreamed, and worked out how you could become your own boss. The final thing to do is decide to take that first step.
That sounds kind of ridiculous. After all, no one’s stopping you from quitting that terrible job and becoming your own boss.
The thing is, though, they are. All your life, you’ve been taught that you have to do things a certain way.
You have to go to college, get a job, and work your way up the ranks. It’s how you’ll have a good life, you’re told.
You do it because you believe the people telling you this, but the fact is it just isn’t true.
People find success in different places all the time. Your co-worker is getting fulfillment out of their role, but you aren’t.
If you want to get out there and start working for yourself, you have to decide to do it. No one else can decide for you.
7. Get Started On Your New Job
Now you’ve put all the plans in place, you’re ready to get started. It’s actually a good idea to do this before you go ahead and quit your job.
Why is that? It’s a great dream, walking into work and quitting, so you can start your dream job the next day. However, it doesn’t quite work like that in real life.
If you want to become your own boss, you’ll need to have some security while setting up your business. In some cases, people like to accrue a good amount of savings before they quit.
That allows them to have some cash behind them, so they don’t need to be profitable right away.
Others will start working on their new career as they’re still working in their current job. This allows you to get a foothold first and start finding work before you bite the bullet and quit.
While it would be nice to just quit tomorrow, it’s probably not going to be how you do it. You’ll have to consider your plan of attack first and make sure you’re set up and ready to go when you do quit.
There’s no denying that this will be hard. You’ll need to work your regular job and then come home and work on your new enterprise.
This is going to be the toughest part of your venture. However, keep your eyes on the future.
When you do this, make sure you’re not putting off quitting your job because you’re worried things may go wrong. Remember that this is only meant to be temporary, so don’t keep working both jobs and running yourself into the ground.
As you’re putting all the hard work in now, it’s going to be worth it in the long run.
8. Quit Your Job
Yes, now, finally, after all that work you put in, you can quit your job.
You’ve probably been dreaming about this for a while, so you’ll know just how to do it. Just hand your resignation letter to your boss, and you’ve made the break.
Remember that you don’t need to give a reason when you quit. However, if you are asked for one, you can say you found a job that’s more closely aligned with your goals. You have, of course, the difference is you did that job yourself.
If you had a bad time at your current job, it’s tempting to be unprofessional. Remember, though, you may want that reference in the future. So be respectful, even if you don’t feel as though they deserve it.
This 8-step plan will help you get all your ducks in a row before you start your new dream job. If you plan everything correctly, it makes the process a lot smoother.
Get started now, and you can escape the 9-5 grind sooner than you think.
