Leah Gervais: 

Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week’s episode of the Your Biggest Vision Show. I am your host, Leah. Today we are talking all about leaving your nine to five job and working for yourself. So this is for you if you are wanting to make this leap, or if you’re about to, or maybe you already have, but there’s still some things that you’re wishing you kind of ironed out a little bit better when you’re making this adjustment. It is not for the faint of heart, but it is quite amazing to be able to work for yourself, make your own schedule, make your own money, be on no one else’s timeline, be building your own vision. It’s really pretty powerful. So if you’re interested in it at all, then this is for you. We are just going to go ahead and dive in.

I’ve gotten lots of questions on Instagram from you guys over the past few weeks about what you want to know, what you want to know about what I did. If you guys have any questions while you’re watching this, please let me know.Before we go ahead, I’ll just share a little bit of background about my own timeline. It is going to be different for everyone. I want to be really clear about that up front. I don’t think that there’s anything you should or should not do in particular before you leave your nine to five job. I think it’s really important to say that because… so I’ve done this twice technically, and I’ll get to that timeline in a second. But technically I’ve done it twice without having another job to go to. And the first time I did research it quite a bit and I remember thinking reading what the advice was. A lot of it was saying things like, you need to have three to six months of savings. You need to have basically a job lined up in case this doesn’t work out. Lots of precautions. I don’t think that those are necessarily bad things, but I think that there are a little too cut and copy for every single person. Everyone is going to have a different situation in a different reason that they’re wanting to quit. So you need to take that into consideration and we’re going to talk about what your different goals mean to you, but do not think that there’s going to be one rule book or specific thing that you need to have done or specific checkboxes that you need to have ticked off before you make this leap. It’s going to be different for everyone.

So a little bit about my timeline.  I first quit my nine to five job when I was working as a paralegal about, let’s see, it was almost three years ago now and at the time I had started Urban 20 Something like maybe a month or two before. In other words, it was not making me a lot of money. I didn’t have a whole lot of direction for it. I didn’t even really know it was going to turn into a business at the time it was sort of a blog. It was something that I was kind of using to actually document the fact that I was quitting my job. So it was not a safety net. To be clear, I was not leaving my nine to five job at a law firm to be a full time entrepreneur. I was quitting it because I had just decided that I didn’t want to go to law school and I couldn’t find any reason behind why I should still be working at a law firm when I knew that I didn’t want to go to law school anymore.

So I quit and sort of just like jumped off the cliff and you know, figured I’d build a pair a parachute on my way down, and I did. We always do. People always figure things out, but it was not about jumping into full time entrepreneurship and the ladder, that is really what I want to talk more about today is how you do it when you’re transitioning, be your own boss. But the first time around I wasn’t and I was just doing it to go find myself. Ended up traveling a lot. And that is when I started Urban 20 Something and I wanted to have it be sort of a blog to write about finding a career path that I wanted to do. Traveling alone, trying to find myself all these different things that I was going through during a sort of quarter life crisis, if you will, to understand what I should do next.

I had never felt so lost and maybe you can relate to that if you have had a very scripted path thus far in terms of going to high school, going to college, maybe going to graduate school, maybe going into a certain field, you might know what it’s like to for the first time realized that you don’t know what’s next, but you know that the path you’re on is not the path you should be on. That’s really where I was and that’s why I started this. It took about, I would say a year after I started it for me to start seeing relatively decent income from it, like over $1,000 a month. Obviously that’s not enough to live on. But at the time I then did get another nine to five job. And so seeing $1,000 a month from my website around my nine to five job felt like a big deal at the time.

And it was, it was, it was a big accomplishment. So I’d say that it took my website about a year to start being profitable. From there I think it took about eight more months, maybe not quite that long like six more months to start making more than I was at my nine to five job. So that was around $5,000 a month and it was around, it was just over two years into my website when gave my notice and when I was able to pursue my business full term. So that’s, that’s my story. I know people, one of my clients actually has only had her her side hustle for something like six, seven months and she, she already quit her nine to five job. So I’m not saying that it needs to take you two years, like it did mean.

However, I do want to be clear that this was not an overnight success. This was also not something that I just sort of did on a wing and a prayer. This came from a place of me realizing that my business had a lot of potential, I had a lot of potential. My income limit was the sky and I was going to make it happen. That’s where my motivation for quitting my nine to five job came in. So that is the kind of compass I would ask yourself, are you doing this because you want to escape your nine to five job? Are you doing it because you hate your nine to five job? Are you doing it because you love your business and you’ll do whatever you can to make it work? It might be a little bit of both and that’s okay. You might have an element of yourself that feels like I don’t want to work for anyone else. I don’t like my nine to five job and I want to be my own boss and that’s fine. But I really, really encourage you to find a place where you’re more led by your ambition and your motivation about pursuing your business than you are led by fear of having to work at your nine to five job or having to work at a nine to five job or not being able to get out. It’s really important that your led with the motivation and the love of your, because spoiler alert, it is really great to work for yourself, but it is way more work than working at a nine to five job. I work way more than I ever would have in a nine to five job.

You are going to work weekends, you are going to work at night, you are going to work crazy hours. Your friends aren’t going to really understand why you don’t text them as much and things like that. It’s totally worth it if you love your business. So that’s why when you’re making this decision, it’s really important to be honest with yourself and make sure that you’re making it out of a place that’s in favor or your business, not out of fear of your nine to five job. So the first thing I want to touch on when we go into sort of these practical tips here is, is just a little bit more on this here.

So I want to be really clear about what it looks like to work for yourself because it’s a really hard decision to make unless you understand what the actual reality is. So a lot of the things that trip people up… I would categorize them into three main things. What the difference in your time is going to look like, the difference in your finances, and the difference in your path and clarity. So those are the things that are going to be the biggest contrast to what your life was like at your nine to five job. You will, like I said, work way more than you ever worked at a nine to five job, for sure. Way more frequently. You’ll have to put in way more hours. So you need to really accept that within yourself. If you’re looking for more time on your hands, then entrepreneurship probably isn’t for you, at least not at first.

I will say things get a bit easier as you go, but in the beginning they really require you to have all hands on deck. So except that and know that this is going to be, you know, way more time into it then at your nine to five job. You do have more flexibility over when you work, where you work, how you work, and that’s really great, but it doesn’t mean it’s less work. The next thing is finances. So you’ll have to understand that you obviously don’t have a consistent income anymore. Now, this seems to scare people a lot more than anything else and I’m not totally quite sure why. If anyone watching this live has any questions on it or they have a kind of a point of view on this scariness of an inconsistent income, I’d love to hear. But as you can imagine, you don’t get a paycheck every two weeks. You don’t get a paycheck on the 15th or the first or whatever it is that you’re used to.

This really seems to bother people, and I don’t know if it’s just because we’re used to having this paycheck or this consistent income, but when you really step back and think about it, we don’t need to get paid every two weeks, you just don’t. You need to get paid enough to live your life the way you want. That can be meaning that you get paid every day for a week and then you don’t get paid for another three weeks and it’s fine. It also can mean that you like… I don’t know, there are some entrepreneurs out there that make almost all their income in one month of the year. They put all hands on deck. They launch a lot. They get the word out there, the market like crazy. They do something crazy like $10 launches. And then that’s, that’s most of their income for the year.

So obviously not having a consistent income doesn’t mean your income’s going to be lower. You definitely can make more working for yourself. I want to be really clear about that. There is no limit. But you need to let go of the consistency and yeah, again, I’m not sure why this really bothers people quite so much, but it does and you know, so it’s just something to really address in yourself. Is it going to bother you that you don’t have a consistent income? If so, why? How can you address that now and really shine a light on the fact that if you just think about it biologically or how we’re raised, there’s really nothing about knowing when you’re getting paid, that really makes sense. It’s really just a security. So how can you feel secure in your own business without having like that consistent income? That’s the question I’d ask yourself.

Then finally, the last thing you’re really going to have to embrace is just confusion in general. I came into this having gone from high school to a prestigious college to working as a paralegal to applying to law school, to getting into law school to where I would’ve gone to law school, gone on to be a lawyer and you know, things would have been very clear and cut out for me. So to say that I have no more consistency, especially in contrast to where I was at is an understatement. Every day is a new start and I love that I thrive in it. It’s very exciting to me. This is a big reason I decided not to go to law school, but it’s a big adjustment.For some people I think it kind of comes back to that same concept that having the regular income comes with, which is just security.  It’s very clear of what you’re going to do.

You know, we really, I’ve been learning this as I’ve been planning my wedding. We as humans only have so much capacity every day to make decisions and to decide things and to map out what we’re going to do next. And you have to make a heck of a lot more decisions when you are building your own business and making your own money. Then when someone else is telling you when to be to work, what to do, when your meetings are, who you need to talk to, what your job description is, what your roles are, and what your responsibilities are, you have to execute but you don’t have to decide. And so this whole element of decision, again, it’s exciting, but you don’t really realize how fatiguing it is until you are every day making decisions. And each decision is so intertwined with another decision. Every decision has implications about something else. So it really is exhausting and there’s a whole strategy that I work with my mastermind clients on about how to be more of a planner than a doer to really make sure you’re combating this. But it’s something to consider because you will not have consistency. You will have to make decisions all the time. I use the example of my wedding because when I started planning it, when I got engaged, I never would have imagined that decisions, like what is the font on our wedding pamphlet going to be and why does it matter and does it match other things and what color is it and where do we order it from? Even they all are also disentangled. So that’s a very fun example. I’m trying to complain. I’ve loved wedding planning, but the decision fatigue is real. So take that into consideration as well.

Okay, moving on, but I just want to recap. Those were the three biggest differences that you’re going to deal with when you’re no longer working for someone else, but when you’re working for yourself. Your time is going to be different. Your finances are going to be inconsistent and your career path is going to be more confusing. So you need to decide if all three of those things are worth it. Okay. Now let’s talk about the real stuff, money and thinking about how to financially set yourself up to be in a situation where you leave your nine to five job. So this will, as I mentioned, be different for everyone. I’ve heard a lot of people do a lot of different things, but I do have the complete privilege of working with a lot of clients who either have made this leap or are planning on making the leap and I’ve done it myself. So I feel like I really can share some of the things I’ve seen over and over again that best set you up versus some of the things that might logically seem like they set you up, but not really. So let’s go in the order of the four financial considerations I took and these were the order of priority and I think this might surprise you guys a little bit.

So the number one financial consideration I had was my earning potential. I wanted to get my earning potential up as absolutely high as possible before I left my nine to five job. Note, this does not mean I wanted to save as much as possible. Actually quite the opposite. Before I quit my job, I saved less than usual because I wanted to invest everything that I could from that consistent paycheck into my business. I wanted my business to grow as much as possible. I wanted to spend as much in on ads as I could. I wanted to hire a mentor to help me during this time. I wanted to do everything I could to make sure that my income level could be high, high, high. I got really good branding. I hired someone to help me with my website, so I did not focus on saving. I focused on getting my earning potential really high and that paid off really well. Right when I started shifting on that, that’s when I started seeing $10,000 plus a month. That was crazy to me. I never made that as a paralegal or at a nonprofit, and I wouldn’t have done that if I was so concerned about saving every penny. So get your income potential up high. Get it to the point where you know that if the only thing you had different about your current situation was 40 extra hours a week, you would have no problem hitting over $10,000 a month and that’s exactly the situation I got myself in. I knew that my business was up to par. I knew that I had invested in it in the way that I needed. I knew that my audience was growing the way that I needed it too. The only reason I wasn’t making the absolute most I could was because I was working at my nine to five job. And when you get yourself to that point, it actually becomes financially irresponsible for you to stay at a nine to five job because you are robbing yourself of the potential to be earning so much more than you are at your nine to five job. So focus on getting your income potential as high as possible.

The second thing that I paid attention to was my earning track record. And this just basically means that I did set a income goal that I wanted to have for a few months before I quit my nine to job. Now again, this wasn’t so much about saving. This was just showing that I wasn’t having kind of one lucky month and then dipping down after that. So I think I had three months of the income being above my nine to five job and where I wanted it to be. Once I had proven that I clearly knew the recipe, you know, it wasn’t just like a fluke or lucky month or something. That made me feel comfortable too. So look at your record, look at your consistency. Do you know what it takes for you to get to the income monthly goal that you require? Even if you necessarily haven’t done it for three months in a row? Are you confident that you know how to, are you confident that you have really taken the time to assess what you’ve done and seen what works and really realize what’s a waste of your time because you don’t have time to be assessing that kind of thing when you are on your own. You need to be executing and really going to the next level.

So be honest with yourself and look at what you’ve done. Do you know what it takes to get to where you need to be? The third financial consideration I really made was really cranking up my retirement fund. So instead of saving my own money, just sitting in my bank account, I went to HR about I’d say six months before I quit and I knew I was going to soon, maybe a little after that, maybe like four months before and I went over the match. So, you know, it’ll be different for every company. But the way my company worked was they matched my retirement fund up to, I think it was 8%, it was a pretty high percent. So up until that point, I had only been, well it was a lot, but I had been contributing the match that they would so that I was getting as much from them as I could and that was what I was doing to my retirement fund.

But I decided that I wanted to put I think something like $10,000 into my retirement fund before I left because I knew that that was a way better use of my savings than having it sitting in my bank account where there’s what like a 0.8% interest, whereas in a retirement fund it’s closer to an 8% interest. That would hugely benefit, you know, me going forward and my retirement savings and it is not something I can touch right now. So if you’re highly concerned about having money that you need to touch when you leave your nine to five job, we’ll talk about that in just one second. But it is money that’s going to benefit me. I also didn’t really, you know, feel like I needed a ton of savings just to sit there because I had really focused on the two things I just discussed, which were making sure my income potential is really high.

I also wanted to do this because I knew when I left and started working for myself, I didn’t have this match situation. I don’t have an employer who’s matching with me. There are ways to do that, which I can brush on in just a second. But the point is I really wanted to take advantage of this. So those were the three things I cranked on at the end. I didn’t not crank on my savings. I want to be really clear all of this talk. I hear about people saying that you need to have three months of savings set aside, you need to have six months. You know, it’s not bad advice, I’m not trying to deter you, but I just want to be honest about what I did and my priorities and what worked really well for me, which was making sure I could earn a ton of money, maxing out my retirement fund, being confident that if I only had that extra time per week to work on my business, then I would be able to get my income up. And that’s exactly what happened.

Now for savings, you can save, you should save, I still save a little bit every week. You know, it’s not like I stopped saving altogether, but I wasn’t going to be one of those people that needed like $50,000 sitting in savings just to have sit there because here’s what I see all the time from entrepreneurs that do quit their jobs and they have all this savings. They are terrified of spending that savings. Like they will freeze up if someone tells them to touch that savings. Because to them, they’ve put so much emotional investment in the fact that that savings is their lifeline or it’s like the only way that they can function. So if they have to dip into it, then they totally freak out and they don’t know how they’re going to, you know, make it back. They don’t know if they should go get another job. It’s like not good mentally. And I believe that this happens for a couple of reasons. Number one, they were probably so focused on building up that savings before they left their nine to five job that they didn’t focus on using their money to build their business and to increase their income potential. So now they’re in a situation where yes, they have savings, but they have to live off and deplete that savings because they didn’t actually focus on building their business with their money in the meantime. Number two, I think it’s mostly a mindset thing, but if they’ve come to a place where they feel like they have lots of security, you know, for a lot of people that might be the most savings they’ve ever had because they saved it up to quit their jobs. So they have a lot of pride in it and security in it and they’re really proud of it. There’s nothing wrong with that until it doesn’t allow you to actually touch it because you have so much emotion wrapped around it and you have so much meaning toward it. You think that if you touch it, it means that you maybe should have another nine to five job or that you’re not cut out to do this. These lies that people tell themselves. And that’s only emotionally draining. You don’t have time to self doubt when you’re going through something like this. So, that’s my experience. That’s what I’ve seen. Take with that what you will. But I think that there’s something to be said for focusing on earning potential and then saving for retirement. Another reason I really wanted to crank on my retirement beforehand was because I knew I just wouldn’t have the chance to save as much for retirement now. I don’t have a 401k, I know you can as a self employed person, but for many people that make the leap, the only way that you’re going to be able to save for retirement in the meantime while you’re still hiring and everything is to save with your Roth IRA. I do that, but you can only put $5,500 a year into your Roth IRA. So I wanted to make sure that I had sort of cued up my retirement contributions. Years before, you know, when you’re employed and it’s a 401K, you have an $18,000 limit. But if you’re just working with your Roth IRA, then you have a $5,500 limit, quite a bit less. So I wanted to sort of up it during the last year so that this year I didn’t have all this pressure on myself somehow contribute over $5,500. That’s a lot of stress to set up at 401K as a self employed person. It’s also a lot of money when you are trying to get your business off the ground. Long story short, max it out with your company and then when you’re on your own, just do the best you can, knowing that you kind of overachieved the year before.

Okay, we are moving on from finances, but I hope you guys found that helpful and heard me loud and clear about the way I did it and how I think it is not talked about enough that your income potential is more important than savings. Now let’s talk about the thing that I think is way more important than finances and definitely not talked about enough and that is considering your mindset. So just bear with me guys. You might think it sounds kind of fluffy, but the truth is no two people have the same quitting stories, right? No two people are in the same situation when they leave their nine to five jobs, you’ll hear things all over the place. You’ll hear people that had lots of savings or no savings, people that had lots of income, people that didn’t even have a business yet. You’ll hear about people that got investors for their business. You’ll hear about people that went into credit card debt to fund their business. It’s all over the place, and that’s okay. It’s actually a good thing. It means that there’s no right or wrong answer for how you’re supposed to do this. So let go of having everything perfect financially or comparing yourself to how other people did this financially. You know, it’s great to read books about entrepreneurs and listen to podcasts like this one about entrepreneurs who quit. It’s good to be inspired, but comparing yourself to others is a losing game and really robs yourself of your experience of it. So let go of thinking that your financial situation needs to be X, Y, or Z. You know, in your heart what’s going to be right for you to do financially and working on your mindset. The stuff we’re going to talk about here is where you’re going to be able to make much bigger moves despite maybe not as much quote financial security. You know, I’ve never had an investor for my business. I have put things on credit cards. I have done a lot to make sure that my business got off the ground. The reason I was able to do that and the reason I’ve been able to really succeed, even though I have done risky things financially, quote risky. I mean it’s not like I was out just splurging on things I didn’t need, it was building a business.

But the reason I’ve been able to make it work is because of these mindset things. So I invite you to take it seriously because you’ll see that you have a lot more freedom over your choices and when you leave your nine to five job based on the way that you think. And the way that you address it. So here’s some things that we can think about. How do I even begin with this? So no matter how much preparation you do before you leave your nine to five job, no matter how much you have in savings, no matter how good your income potential is, no matter how big your business is, no matter how much you have from investors, whatever the situation is, there’s always going to be risk involved. It’s part of entrepreneurship and it’s part of building a business and frankly, it’s exciting. So embrace that and see it as a good thing. See it as an invitation for you to do something more exciting for you to do things at a deeper level, for you to be more driven.When you can see it that way, you’re going to realize that the risk never ends. And in fact, the bigger you grow your business, the more people you need to hire, the more livelihood you have in your hand, the more money you need to bring in, the more risks there’s going to be in other words. So this never goes away. So how can you be one of the people that is so sure about their decision to leave their nine to five job, you’re not even phased by the risk, uncertainty, lack of security, all these other things that freak people out so much that they don’t even go for something?

You can do things like mantras, you can do things like meditate, you can do things like read certain books that really help you. Everything will work different for everyone and it’s worth figuring out the jam that works best for you. But the sooner you can become the person that ignores the rollercoaster, you know, you see all these memes on social media about how entrepreneurship is like riding a bike up and down the hill and every day you’re like, oh, this is so great, oh this is terrible, I feel on top of the world, I have no clue what I’m doing. I don’t buy it. I do not buy it. I am not there for a minute. Before I quit my nine to five job, I had a sticky note right on my desk right below here for months that said, don’t indulge in the rollercoaster. That worked for me. So do something that works for you. When you catch yourself going through this up and down thing where you can snap right out of it and just own the decision you’ve made. Own your greatness, own your potential and keep frickin moving. You are not going to know, be knocked out by this. You are not going to call your mom crying about the decision you made. You’re not going to go to your spouse or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or whatever and wonder if you should go get another nine to five job. You are not going to go to anyone and be uncertain about a decision because you own it and you are beyond this fear based action. So that is really what’s the key here you guys, it’s not about saving $10,000 it’s not about saving for retirement. It’s about being more efficient with your time because you don’t let the doubts or the insecurities that plague people in your situation actually bring you down.

That’s what’s going to get you ahead. How can you believe in yourself? How can you bet on yourself? How can you remind yourself every frickin minute that this is the only life you’ve got? This is the only shot you do not have time to sit around and wonder if things are working. Wonder if you’re going to make money. Wonder if you are doing the right thing. Wonder if you should get a nine to five job. You truly cannot afford to think like that. That’s where your riches will come from. It will come from you owning your decision, believing that you can do it, believing in yourself, believing that things are able to work out for you because they always have. This is another thing I do often is write a list of everything I’ve already manifested. You know, we all talk about like manifesting things and making our dreams come true and it all can seem so vague and abstract. Well, look at the dreams you’ve already made come true. Look at the things you’ve already done in life that you wanted so badly at some point, whether that’s a job that you at one point got, meeting the love of your life, getting into really good shape, getting healthier, making good friends, moving to a new city, getting into a school that you really liked, saving $1,000. I don’t care. I know that you have goals and dreams that you’ve already made happen. So stop wondering how you’re going to make the next thing happen because you’ve already done it. You know you can do this, you know you can do this and it’s up to you to remind yourself of that. That is what’s going to make or break this. This leap is just really owning it.

Okay. I obviously could go on and on about that for forever, but let’s move into some of the practical questions I’ve got. Alrighty. Practical question number one, what do I do about healthcare? So I went to… I’m looking at your question. Facebook ads really boost my brand. Awesome. Yeah, Facebook ads are super helpful. They’re really powerful. For healthcare, I went to NewYorkcity.gov or whatever it is, and just looked at what was in the healthcare market on the public healthcare market. There’s lots of options. I pay something like $450 a month for it. You know, it’s obviously not as inexpensive as it was when my company was helping me pay for it. But, I think it’s one of those things that really freaks people out they’re, wondering how they’re going to pay for health care, where they’re going to get healthcare from. Is it going to be good healthcare? Now, I will say I do have a benefit of being young. I don’t really have any health issues. I think that this would be a lot more expensive and maybe a different consideration if I was a bit older and, or had some sort of health issue that required me to go to specialty doctors or doctors very frequently. Because I do think in New York anyway, the doctors that are with the corporate plans are a bit better than with the plan I’m on right now. But I’m in a situation where I don’t need to go to the doctor all that much, thank God. So I just sort of got the minimum level and yeah, it’s about $450 a month.

I just pay it, call it a day, move on, and don’t think about it. So just take the action, go ahead and Google, you know, what’s the public health care market, where is it in my state? What level do I need? I think there’s like gold, silver or bronze or platinum or something. I’m on bronze because it’s the lowest monthly payment, but the highest deductible, I think, I don’t know much about healthcare lingo, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it works. So that’s what worked for me. That’s the end of it.

Okay, next question. Retirement, Roth IRA, and then eventually contributing to both. How do you contribute to your retirement fund? Okay, so I talked a little bit about this, but here’s my understanding of retirement savings one on one. As people under 56 you have two ways to save for your retirement. You have your 401k or 403B, if you work at a nonprofit. In other words, you have the account that is joined with your company and then you have your Roth IRA, which is independent of your company. Your 401K/ 403B is pre-tax money. So you contribute to it before you get your paycheck. Your paycheck will be lower if you contribute highly to it because you’re putting the money away. Now when you retire and when you’re 50 whatever, 60 whatever, I don’t know the retirement age, then you will get taxed on that savings. So that’s area one. Area number two, the Roth IRA is separate from your company. It’s your own account and it is money that you just contribute as you want. So since it’s money you have usually from a paycheck, you’ve already paid taxes on it so you do not get taxed when you take it out of your retirement fund, when you actually retire.

Now I’ve always contributed to a little bit of both because I like having not all my eggs in one basket. I guess you could say for your 401K/ 403B, your company plan, the limit that you have is $18,000 per year. And for your Roth IRA, the limit you have is $5,500 per year. Now with your 401k or 403B, oftentimes companies have some sort of retirement incentive where they either pay a percentage of your salary toward your retirement or they match what you put in whatever the case may be. I think oftentimes the average is something like they will match up to 5% of your salary toward your retirement fund. So that would mean that you are paying a couple hundred a month and that they’re matching it. If you want to really Max out the $18,000, then you just divide that by how many paychecks you have and that’s what you put aside beforehand. But they usually won’t match up to $18,000, I think. I guess it depends on where you work.

Now your Roth Roth IRA is $5,500 that you need to pay before April 15th for it to be counted with the previous tax year. They’re separate accounts, but you can just send it to wherever you have your account with and you never have the chance again to contribute for that year, which is why it’s so valuable to contribute at least a little to it every year because you’re taking advantage of that compound interest as early on as possible. So like I said, for, for the last few years, I contributed to a little bit of both. Now I only contribute to my Roth IRA right now. So if I were you about to quit your nine to five job, I would probably, I am not a financial advisor. I want to be really clear about that. I would probably try to put more into 403B/ 401K account, especially if you’re not maxing it out yet. If you are not maxing it out to the point where you’re reaching the $18,000 and or to the point where you’re getting all the match that you can from your employer. That’s definitely what I would do because not getting your contribution matched basically means you’re leaving free money on the table that your employer pretty much owes you because it is part of your compensation package to be clear. They’re not doing that out of the goodness of their heart. That is like part of what you get paid, so you don’t want to just like leave that there for them. You’re not donating back to your company so that it would be my priority if I were you about to quit my nine to five job. Then as you leave, I would just put a little bit aside every month and at the end of the year, put as much as you can of that into your Roth IRA account and hopefully it’s $5,500 if not, that’s okay. But just do what you can. I will say that from your Roth IRA, you don’t actually have to wait till retirement to take money out. You can take it out and you won’t be taxed because you’ve already paid tax on that money remember, but you will never be able to put it back in again and take advantage of that compound interest. So it’s obviously not something you want to do. It’s not something I’ve ever done, but it is an option if you’re thinking that you just want to be able to take money out, should you have like an emergency or something like that, you are able to do that and you won’t be taxed. So that is kind of a good thing to know.

So yeah, eventually you can get to a place I think with an LLC, I don’t know all the details on this, but if you are self employed you are able to set up a situation where you contribute to your retirement fund both as an employer and an employee where you’re basically able to over-max it, which is super cool, but that’s when you’re probably a little bit further down the road in business. Okay and then the final question I got was about scheduling, how to schedule my days. So I am going to take this and run with it. My next podcast episode next week will be all about how I schedule out my days and what it’s looked like as it’s progressed. It does look different I think as you get to different levels, but you do want to be stricter scheduling. I remember when I quit my quit my nine to five job, the number one thing I would start with is everyday I’d start with a workout class and then I’d build my schedule around that. And the reason I did that was just because that’s kind of all I knew up to that point. It was, I knew how to have something I had to show up for, my nine to five job and then schedule everything else around that. So that’s exactly what I did with workout classes. I would just pick one each day I wanted to go to. And then around that I’d say, okay, here’s what I’ll answer emails. Here’s when I will record a podcast episode. Here’s when I will work on my sales strategy. Here’s when I will work on my social media. You know, whatever it is that you need to make your business happen, that is kind of where I’d go.

So the simple answer is do schedule things out at the beginning. It tastes a little bit of getting used to. It took me a little bit of getting used to, but don’t get in a situation where you don’t have a schedule because this is the number one thing I hear from clients is they’ll come to me and they’ll be like, I have somehow spent an hour and a half answering DM’s on Instagram and my email is taking up a lot of my time and how do you get so much done? You have to be strict about your timing and your scheduling. You can not just sit on your computer and be in like the reactive mode and answer every email as it comes in beyond Instagram, answering every DM, you’ll never get anything done. You can block yourself from Instagram if you need.

You also can block yourself or pause your emails temporarily if you need. Whatever it takes for you. Be strict about your schedule and give yourself the grace of knowing that there will be an adjustment to it and you will find the exact thing that works perfectly for you. All right, you guys, this was a lot of information. I hope that this was helpful for you in thinking about leaving your nine to five job. Maybe you’ve already left, maybe you are just considering it. Let me know. I’d love to hear from you so you can always leave a comment below on Facebook and on Instagram, just send me a DM and during the time each day that I answer DM’s, I would love to chat with you about this. If you are thinking of either starting or building a profitable side hustle because you dream of leaving your nine to five job and getting your income potential up where you want it to be, I highly encourage you to join my self study program, Start a side hustle. It is about building a profitable side hustle, you guys. We do not want you in a situation where you are not making money around your nine to five.

Let me just pause really quick. This live will be on my podcast tomorrow. So if you want to listen to it, it’s the Your Biggest Vision Show. I’ll go ahead and actually write it in here. That is where you’ll be able to find it. But my program Start Your Side Hustle is based on everything I did when things really started taking off for me. So it’s only four modules and it’s just really clear and to the point. So you will learn things like finding your mission of your side hustle, learning the mindset of the most successful, how to build an audience and an email list, how to set up social media so that it’s working actually for you and not sucking up your time and day. And then how to start selling products and services. And the program is on my website. I’ll also go ahead and put it right below this video. But if you are wanting to start a side hustle that’s actually profitable, I cannot recommend this enough. I have had lots of successful people go through this program. Many of them have gone on to quit their nine to five jobs, make thousands of dollars around their, nine to five jobs with their side hustle.

One of my former clients just last year, she started her side hustle with me and now she’s traveling full time around South America working for herself. She’s absolutely incredible. So this stuff happens you guys, this is possible for you and if it’s something that’s exciting to you, then this is where you should start because I know what it’s like to be on Pinterest, on Instagram, wondering why things aren’t working for me. Wondering when I’m going to start making the money I want, like I mentioned to you, it took me a year to get to the profitability that I really wanted. Even then it was only a thousand dollars a month. It does not need to take you this long and that’s why I put this together. So it’s called Start Your Side Hustle. It is on my website. If you guys have any questions about it, feel free to reach out to us at help@urban20something.com.

If you sign up for it based on this podcast episode, just leave us a little message or leave us a little email. And we have a special opportunity for you where you can hop on a direct call with me, which is usually reserved for my one on one clients who paid thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to work with me. This is really special, but I want to offer to you guys because you obviously can tell how much I care about your side hustle success. So just let us know that you heard it on this podcast, that you want to quit your nine to five job and that you are going to start your side hustle profitably with our program and we will set up a time to chat. No matter what, I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope you have an amazing week and here is to your biggest vision.