When to quit your 9-5 to go full-time in your business

When I quit my content management job in 2020 to start a creative coaching practice, I was flying by the seat of my pants. I knew I would handle it, because I didn’t give myself a choice. I had saved up a nest egg of money to tide me over while I looked for clients and ended up finding a part-time contract role that helped me get by without needing to dip into my savings. And I also, luckily, had a really supportive partner who encouraged me to take care of myself.

I quit “without a plan” because I couldn’t handle one more minute at my full-time job. I was burned out, badly, and when the owners started talking about bringing everyone back into the office as early as May 2020, my entire body balked. No way. You can’t make me go back to a commute.

Some other stuff happened (a story for another time) and I moved up my plan to find a new job and quit, giving myself a deadline to give my notice by June 30, with or without a new job lined up. Despite over 80 applications in a single month, I got nowhere.

So I quit.

Since then, I’ve coached neurodivergent business owners and creatives, discovering a common question: When is it time to go full-time on your dream?

Unfortunately, I can’t consult a crystal ball and tell you the next best step for you, or exactly when your business will replace your full-time income. What I can do is help you answer this quandary for yourself.

How much money should your business make before you quit your 9-5?

The question of quitting your job to go full-time in business has a very obvious financial component, and this is where our journey begins.

What’s your number? Before you even start thinking about quitting, crunch the numbers on how much money you will need to be making consistently to support your lifestyle.

Say you make $50,000 per year at your full-time job, and it also has health insurance, a 401(k) match, and two weeks of PTO.

If you want to take home $50,000 from your business, you’ll need to make that, plus business expenses (like website hosting, paying an assistant, material costs, etc.), plus enough money to cover your health insurance and retirement savings, and enough to pay your self-employment taxes on top of it all.

Realistically, you’d need to be bringing in around $100,000 in gross sales, assuming $25,000 in expenses and $22,500 in taxes. The remaining $52,500 is profit (or your paycheck). Depending on your business, these numbers may change a little or a lot. For the best look at how much you’ll need to bring in to cover your expenses, taxes, and net income, speak with a tax professional who may be able to offer strategies to keep your taxable income as low as possible.

Do you have savings? As a small business owner, your income will fluctuate. You should definitely have some money saved before quitting your full-time job to focus on your business. The more you scale, the more your expenses will grow too, and running out of money is not good for the nervous system.

If you have the cash to cover six months of expenses set aside, you can consider making the leap, but until then I wouldn’t recommend it—unless you have a household/family willing and able to cover you on short months.

What does your business realistically need to scale to your goal? It’s one thing to offer a service or product and sell it, and quite another to have the business running smoothly in the background so you don’t have to labor to bring in every customer.

Think about the help you may hire as you grow—maybe an executive assistant, or a social media marketer. Do you have the physical space needed for your business? Do you have the executive functioning capacity to manage the day-to-day? What do you like and dislike about the work, and how could you outsource the less fun stuff to someone who enjoys it more?

When you’re crunching the numbers, all of these questions inform your next steps.

Not sure what the fuck goes into figuring out these numbers? Book an entrepreneur intensive and we’ll talk it out with you. After this 50-minute session, you’ll come away with clarity on your next steps and 3-5 action items to implement right away.

What are the non-monetary considerations?

Money is a significant driver of the decision to quit your traditional job in favor of your small business, but it’s not just about the money either. Like in my own story, sometimes the burnout or emotional cost of a job is too high to wait for the safest time to jump.

While you’re weighing out your pros and cons, make sure to investigate…

What are your non-financial business goals? What will it mean for you to have all your eggs in the business basket instead of having one foot in the nine-to-five life?

Really think forward five or ten years, imagining this business has grown to its full size. What does it look like? How do you feel? What has changed in your life? Are you fulfilled?

Once you have those answers, ask yourself… does the fulfillment need to come from your business, or could it come from somewhere else? Perhaps a career pivot into a new industry, or moving to part-time employment could meet your needs without putting all the pressure on yourself to make it happen.

The burnout conundrum. Maybe you’re super burned out at work… that doesn’t mean you won’t be burned out running your own business. In fact, many creative entrepreneurs who turn their passion into their full-time gig end up feeling drained and unable to summon the inspiration to keep creating.

As a writing coach, I found myself getting more and more frustrated over the last few years until I took an actual break from working with writers. I found that my own creative writing muscles started to flex again—and I hadn’t even realized I was prioritizing my clients’ writing over my own until I found the silence to explore why I wasn’t writing as much as I used to.

To avoid swapping one kind of burnout for another, take your time to build up your business and get a feel for the emotional, physical, and creative toll it takes on your skills and motivation. Even if you love something with all of your heart, it doesn’t mean turning it into a business will be the most fulfilling way to include that passion in your life.

Is it too risky to start a business?

It’s normal to question yourself when you consider leaving traditional employment. As a society, we believe that “real jobs” are more secure than self-employment, but it’s not that simple. There are so many factors at play that inform the balance between traditional and self-employment.

It’s never black and white. Consider these scenarios:

• You got laid off a few months ago and the job market has been slow. While you search for jobs, you start selling artwork/crafts at a local market to make ends meet. When you do find a job, you keep doing the markets on the side. Eventually, you’re making enough from the markets to pay your mortgage every month from just a few markets per year. Do you want to grow and scale this business, or keep it at this level?

• You have a secure job and you aren’t worried about losing it, but it doesn’t bring you any personal satisfaction. As a creative outlet, you start a blog doing reviews of local restaurants, and one of your reviews goes viral, which leads to several restaurants offering you free meals to be featured on your blog. Over time, you get brand deals from meal services, delivery apps, and other relevant corporations that want a slice of your web traffic pie. Could you realistically turn this foodie passion project into a full-time gig?

• You work part-time at two different local companies doing marketing, and it makes sense to pick up a couple of freelance clients who need similar work. Between the two jobs and freelance work, you’re putting in about 60 hours per week. You start to wonder… how hard would it be to find a few more freelance clients to work for on retainer? What if you dropped one of the part-time jobs and picked up freelance work at a higher hourly rate?

A case could be made in all three of these examples for traditional employment or self-employment. Making the choice to fully enter your self-employed era is not just about pro-con lists, bottom lines, or health insurance. It’s about what you are willing to risk and what it would mean to you to succeed either way.

We’re opening our books for entrepreneur intensive sessions in July, specifically designed to help you build the business strategy that fits your needs. After this 50-minute session, you’ll come away with clarity on your next steps and 3-5 action items to implement right away.