Introduction:
In my last post I talked about how the day of reckoning was coming soon. I was finally going to quit my 9 to 5 (more like 6:00 to 5:30 with commute).
January 23rd 2017 was the chosen day of offering my 2 weeks notice to my job and there would be no turning back after that.
Well I am happy to report that despite being very extremely nervous I did in fact successfully give my notice!
There were all kinds of thoughts going through my head as the time for meeting with my boss and letting him know approached.
I was getting nostalgic already and thinking about how this was the best job I’ve ever had and maybe I could never get another one quite like it if the Internet Marketing does not workout.
Proud to say those negative voices were pushed out and I did what needed to be done. In today’s post I am going to talk about some tactics I came up with that helped me get over this nervousness and follow through.
I am also going to lay out the plans for what comes next for me as I start my new path as an Internet Business owner.
Preparing For Quitting
So as I have mentioned a hundred times already I was very nervous leading up to giving my 2 weeks notice. Not only did I not want to disappoint my bosses but the fear of leaving once and for all was creeping in and trying to paralyze me into inaction.
Here are some methods I used that helped me deal with the fear.
Public Accountability
The first thing I did was hold myself publicly accountable. I made a post on Facebook publicly declaring my plans so that I would be forced to explain if I didn’t follow through when the time came.
At first I was going to post this message on my Facebook profile so all my family and friends could see. But after thinking about it I realized that cant be done because I have some friends on Facebook that I currently work with at my company.
Instead I decided to post on an SEO/Marketing group that I am a part of on Facebook.
Here are screenshots of what I posted.
Now originally the post was just intended to hold myself accountable. But it also had another added benefit from the encouragement I got from other group members as you can see by the likes and comments below.
This was awesome! Sometimes when you tell family and friends your quitting such a great job they do not really understand. Normally they try to be supportive anyway but you can sense they think it might be a little crazy for you to just up and quit a job that pays well and is very secure.
But by letting people know your plans that think like you and know what is possible with an Internet business, they are almost always encouraging because they have went through the same thing or plan on it soon.
So your takeaways from this is.
Hold yourself accountable by posting your plans somewhere publicly.
Try to find a group of like minded people so that you can get some encouragement from people who understand.
Acting Like Its Already Happened
One of the first things I did was to send a meeting request to my boss for Monday morning. This meeting was to let him know that I was moving on and to give him the official 2 weeks notice.
Here is my resignation letter which I wrote the week before the notice date:
So now I had a meeting set with my Boss (which he probably assumes is just a touch base) and I have already written my resignation letter.
This helped me tremendously because the wheels were put in motion and now I just needed to follow through.
I also came in to work during the weekend and cleared out all the personal stuff from my desk. This helped give that feeling of finality and also when I came in Monday I already felt a little more detached with just the bare minimum at my desk.
How Quitting Went
So the resignation itself went pretty well. I met with my direct boss and just let him know right away and handed him the letter.
We spoke for about a 1/2 hour and I had to convince him that I was not leaving for another company but going out on my own for at least a year.
He is a pretty cool guy and was nice about everything. Also one of the reasons I did not leave in the beginning of January was because I was the architect for a very complex project and I did not want to leave them hanging. So he appreciated that I finished that project first before turning in my notice.
Kind of a funny/awkward thing did happen though. After telling my direct supervisor about my notice he told me that he was going to let the head of our IT Department know (the top guy who manages about 300+ high level engineers).
Now even though he is my bosses, bosses, boss and the head of the whole department we actually talk often because he really likes me a lot and loves to give me shit.
He is from New England so of course an obnoxious Patriots fan (is there any other kind). I on the other hand, was raised in beautiful Seattle, WA and I’m a die hard fan of the NFL greatest team the Seahawks (#gohawks).
So in the spirit of teasing me as he likes to do he sends the email below to our entire group.
Nice timed shot at my Seahawks right? So I go down to grab a doughnut and he of course comes over and jokes around with me. At this point I realize my Supervisor probably has not said anything to him yet.
Well not 15 minutes later at my desk he gives me a call and asks me to come down to speak to him. I go to his office and he lets me know that he heard I was leaving.
I proceed to tell him the story about why Im leaving and he says, “Thank God. I thought it was because you took my Patriots email to seriously!” LOL
So pretty weird timing. He finds out Im quitting 5 minutes after sending an email to everyone calling me out in a joke.
Anyway he is an amazing boss. He asked if there was anything he could do to make me stay, more money, different position, remote work etc… I politely declined but you can see why quitting this job has been such a struggle for me.
At my previous job the person in his same position never even said Hello to me once in 2 years! This guy who is responsible for so many people would always go out of his way to see how Im doing, joke around and be encouraging.
But all good things must come to an end to make room for even better things.
This was by far the best job I have ever had. But at the end of the day its a job.
And where I’m going we don’t need no stinking jobs.
Whats Next?
So now I am out in the Ocean with out a boat and its time to swim! I am going to work especially hard the first few months with a real tight focus on what is already making me money.
Now that I have so much more time the first thing I’m going to do is try to optimize even more what is already working so far in my Internet business. Once I have those things maxed out than I will move on to other ways to make money.
Since I have had such limited time with my job I’ve only been able to get a few clients. My best client makes me consistently between $6,000 – $8,000 a month. This is a percentage deal I have. The more money I make them, the more money I get.
So my first order of business is to get this client bringing me in at least $10k every month. This should definitely be doable as I am almost there with the very limited time I have had to dedicate to this. Not only that but there is clear massive opportunities I have already seen to scale this.
Now that the bandwidth is actually there to implement these things it should take off pretty quickly.
After reaching closer to full potential with my few existing clients I will then start to work on getting a few more and figuring out how to scale my services and business.
Well now there one important chapter in this book that is closed. From my very first post I said that I wanted to share with you from the very start, my entire personal process of quitting my job and going out on my own to build an Internet Lifestyle business.
There are tons of great blogs out there on this type of stuff but I always found it annoying that they started writing after they were already having a ton of success. I wanted to see the struggles on the way up the ladder as they were happening and how they dealt with them at that time.
That is why I will continue writing on this blog.
My mission is to help other people who want to quit their job and have the time to live the life of their dreams .
I think its best if you can see from the very start step by step and realize that everyone has struggles to reach their ultimate goal.
The key is to define what you want, figure out the process to get there and don’t quit trying until you do.