How to Quit Your Job to Start a Business: 13 Untold Tips

Just because your Mum/Brother/Best mate said it’s a great idea, it doesn’t make it a business. 

Find out what’s available. Do your research now to help you determine your products and services, price points, customers, opportunities and threats, and even your brand and marketing.

How you will make yourself available to build a business? Because that ensures its sustainability, too. On average, you want about 25% of your time available to start your own business. 

However you manage your time, you must communicate your decision and ensure those around you adhere to those boundaries. It’s one of the biggest sources of stress in business owners—not making enough time to create the business they want.

People won’t tell you that, at times, you’ll work ridiculously hard and have nothing to show for it. That can be soul-destroying.

To combat this, know why you want to quit your job and go it alone. It’s not enough to say it’s because you want to make money and work when you want. You have to understand what motivates you.

Ideally, create a thorough list of things that will make you motivated no matter what the task—on a dreary Monday when you’ve got a stinky cold and just want to crawl back into bed. This list is crucial.

What values matter to you most? Often, business owners who aren’t satisfied despite making fairly good profits and enjoying most aspects of business because they aren’t running a business aligned to their values.

If you had the perfect business, what would it look like?

When answering this, if you don’t want to work Thursdays because you want to go to an art class, then write it. The big picture needs to address all areas of your life.

There are too many business owners who have cracked excelling at business but failed to grasp how to win at life, too, so they still aren’t happy!

Before you go out looking for your first sale if you were at capacity, would your prices give you the profit you want?

Don’t start with low prices and think you can put them up later. You risk having to find a whole new set of customers if you do this, so get the pricing right at the start. Can you see why confidence is so important?

Goals – What will your business look like in one, five, and ten years?

Action – What actions have you planned to achieve your goals?

“Now” goals – These refer to the short-term things you need and long-term achievements you want.

Strategy – What is the strategy to achieve these goals?

Vision – What’s the vision that your business will fulfill? What you want it to do for you and what you want it to do for your customers. 

Timing – When will you be able to quit that job? How many customers/sales will give you the profit margin you need?  

Of all the things to keep an eye on, few know their numbers as well as they should: What are your basic profit requirements (i.e., what can you survive on?), good level of profit (business is sustainably profitable), and exceptional profit (money is available for investment in the business, rainy days—they do happen—or tax bills)?

It’s a well-trusted strategy to consider your Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats(SWOT). 

In addition, you must review and reflect regularly. It’s the first question I ask clients when we meet in the next session: What have you noticed? What has changed?

Did you know anyone can set up a business that says it can help you grow your business?

They need no qualifications, they can just read some books, google some info, and set up programs and training for business.

Things like Canva and Lumen 5 can make you look sleek and professional online (for free), but it also means you’ve easily duped into believing a pretty sales page or social media account.

To avoid this, ask to speak to customers, not look at reviews. Anyone can write those, and the unscrupulous write them for themselves!

Communication is one of the defining issues for your new business.

• How will you communicate when you are unavailable so you can get on with working on your business?
• What boundaries will you set? If you were with a customer, you wouldn’t answer the phone. People will easily drain your time if you let them, so set boundaries and communicate their existence.  

You need a strong powerful marketing message. Once you know what you are selling, to whom, at what price, and with what desired outcome, then you need to hone your understanding of your perfect customers.

Running a business you want to get to know, like, and trust people can make it awkward to have difficult conversations where you need to tell someone they aren’t delivering as promised or you need to increase your prices.

Learning how to be comfortable with difficult conversations will help.

Ensure you’re not reliant on your mates to spread the word. Define your market—your customers. 

The more you define your customer, the more you know them.

Then, ask what language they use and ensure that features in your marketing strategy. This is essential for the next key strategy.

Social media can be a marketing strategy, but for the person looking to quit their full-time job, it rarely sits alone. Ideally, you will have eight to ten routes to market:

• Hold events.
• Encourage online connection through social media, email campaigns, newsletters, and blogs.
• Networking – definitely network!
• Get in the local newspaper—for free, not paid!
• Get on the local radio or a relevant podcast.
• Google My business – ask every customer to post a review to GMB because it’s great for logistical businesses.
• Publish your articles on relevant sites like Medium or industry-relevant sites

Question your thoughts, actions, and beliefs at all times. It’s often where you may find missed opportunities with clients.

• Are you following up as effectively as you could?
• Are you assuming it’s too early to enter an award? It’s not!
• Are you assuming that person has your best intentions at heart?
• Are you assuming yes is the right answer? Go back to these key strategies and your business plan—does it really fit?

Reading these strategies to quitting your job, it can be all too easy to shut down to the idea—please don’t.

Get the right support around you (not friends and family), get the right business model and marketing strategy, and ask for help.

It’s scary to say “I don’t know the answer to this.” That’s why business (even self-employment) is better together—there are over 400 million small businesses globally, so please do join us.