There was a lot of back and forth in my decision making.

I was wrestling with doubts, facing tons of uncertainties and hearing countless reasons as to why it was a crazy idea.

But despite all of the reasons not to do it, I found that there were five things in particular that I did before I quit that made the decision to quit a whole lot easier.

And hopefully by sharing them with you, it'll help you decide whether or not you want to pursue a similar path, and if so, how to go about it.

The very first thing I did was build a creative thinking fund.

Whenever someone asked me how I mustered up the nerve to walk away from a cushy, well-paying job, I could easily pat myself on the back and say, oh, I'm just a brave person or I'm a huge risk taker.

But the truth is that neither of those are true.

And a big chunk of my courage was backed by something a lot more tangible, a financial safety net.

I had a large amount of money, nine months worth of my living expenses set aside to continue paying for my living expenses, even if I made no money from my side business.

At the end of the day, money affords you the privilege of having a big leap feel like a small hop.

By having some money set aside, it made the risk of walking away from a consistently paying job a lot easier, knowing that I wasn't going to be working from a place of scarcity or a place of desperation, and that I would still have the focus and the freedom to think creatively.

If you have high interest rate debt as well, then you also definitely want to pay that off before thinking about quitting.

And there's an order in which I would recommend, which is build out a small financial safety net first, then pay off your high interest rate debt, then build out your full creative thinking fund.

I have a free cheat sheet that goes into what you should be doing with your money and in what order.

It has all the steps I took in order to set myself up financially, and it's all on one page, completely free to download.

I'll leave the link in the description if you want to check it out.

The second thing to do is to go evenings and weekends first.

It's hard to pursue a side business while you're working full time.

I totally get that.

You're already spending 8, 10, 12 hours a day at the job.

The last thing you have the capacity for is more work.

But if you do want to take this seriously, you've got to make it work with the constraints that you have.

And one of the best things I did was to keep my full time job whilst pursuing my passion projects and my interests on the side, essentially giving up my weekends and my evenings to do it.

And instead of thinking of my job as something that was getting in the way of me working on my side business, I thought of it as something that was funding it.

It was helping me build faster than I could have on my own because I was able to use the cash flow to invest and to scale.

So for instance, when it comes to my YouTube channel, the first thing I invested in was a proper camera.

I upgraded from a day to day iPhone to a 1500 Sony camera.

And if I didn't have a job, spending that amount of money on a side business that I didn't even know would make me any money would have been a lot harder to do.

But knowing that I have the funding coming in made it a lot easier for me to keep reinvesting.

It gave me the freedom to experiment and not worry about any costly mistakes I make.

Very quickly, I then paid for an editor so I could keep focusing on the scripting and the creative side.

This again wouldn't have been something that I did had I quit my job.

I probably would have tried to save money in a lot of ways by doing things myself instead.

And I would recommend to keep your full time job and focus on your side business on evenings and weekends until the income from your business is the same amount as your living expenses or more.

Ideally, you want it to be like this for three months.

Three months means you've cracked a formula and it's not just a one off.

By the way, one of the tools that I've been using from the start is Grammarly, who are very kindly sponsoring today's video.

A huge part of my side business revolves around writing, writing newsletters, writing scripts, writing captions, responding to an email.

And in fact, this is the case for most of us.

By using Grammarly, I save countless hours on proofreading and writing that I would have spent trying to write something perfectly.

And what I love about it is it integrates across your whole laptop so you can use it on every single tool and browser that you open.

It checks my emails as I write them on Gmail, proofreads my scripts as I work on them in Notion, and it provides me ideas for captions before I post on social media.

It will make your writing more compelling while still staying true to your tone and your style within one click.

And the best part is all of the features that I mentioned are completely free, so you may as well give it a go.

You can get access straight away by signing up through my link in the description.

The third thing I did was to reframe the concept of taking a pay cut.

I have a few friends who have moved from banking to working for a startup.

And they've taken a pay cut in the process, but they have equity in the startup.

So they've got a small, small piece of ownership in their new company.

And if it takes off, that small piece of equity will be worth 10 times more than what their previous salary was.

I thought of taking a pay cut to work for myself in a similar way.

So at the time that I quit my job, I was making the equivalent of about $300,000 from my banking job, which was my all-in package.

And then at the time that I quit, I had made $4,000 that month from my YouTube channel.

I don't know at the time if that was sustainable, but I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations.

And assuming I was going to make the same every month going forward, I was taking an 84% pay cut.

Gross.

But I didn't think of it as a pay cut.

I thought of it as this is the equity that I'm building.

Me going all-in and focusing on this thing that I'm doing for me is building equity in my startup.

And so that was a mindset shift for me that helped me let go of a big paycheck.

And another way to think of it is you are paying for learning.

So say I was making $300,000 from my banking job and I quit.

I spent six months on my YouTube channel and then I realized it wasn't going to work.

I could probably go back into banking and get another job.

Sure, it might not pay me the same amount.

It might be paying me $250,000.

If you look at it like that, I wasn't then taking a 100% pay cut.

I was taking around 15% pay cut to learn a whole load of business skills.

And that is totally justifiable if it means giving a shot at something that you've always wanted to do.

The fourth thing I did was test my commitment.

For nine years, I was told what I need to do, what I need to work on, what I was aiming for.

I had this template that guided me essentially on my career trajectory.

Meet these KPIs, get promoted.

Bring in this much revenue, get a bigger bonus.

There was such a clear plan that when the idea of working for myself came around, I questioned how I was going to be near as disciplined or motivated without having all of these structures in place and someone to report to.

The entrepreneurial world is not for everyone.

And a large part of it is because a lot of people do thrive off having this template for their careers.

And what was for me a good measure of my commitment and discipline was how I treated my side business while I had a full-time job.

So when you have a full-time job and you're trying to build something on the side, things are going to have to give.

I had to say no to a lot of social plans, travel plans to really be able to commit to this thing.

And that was a really good indicator or a self-realization for myself that I don't need external factors to stay motivated.

If I did constantly find myself coming up with excuses as to why I shouldn't work on my side business and said, go for this dinner or go out for these travel plans, that's fine.

But then equally, I know my priorities wouldn't change if I quit my job.

The same temptations and the distractions will always be there.

One of my friends took a sabbatical to work on her side business.

And instead, in that time period, she ended up just going traveling for two out of the three months and didn't actually work on her side business at all.

She came back and then realized that she's not someone who can work for herself.

She needs to be told what to do to be disciplined and productive.

And this was a really good way for her to test her commitment before quitting and going all in.

And number five, reframe, I don't know if it will work.

I was speaking to one of my close friends the other day.

She works for a big four accountancy firm in London, and she's been doing it for nearly 10 years.

And she's got to a place where she feels hugely misaligned.

She doesn't want to continue going down this big four corporate route, but she feels stuck and she feels like she's burnt out and she doesn't really know where to go from here.

She said she's always wanted to start her own podcast.

She's been thinking about it for the past year, but she's been putting it off because there are so many podcasts out there already.

And she doesn't know if she could bring anything unique or fresh to the table.

The way I see this personally is that the goal isn't about winning or starting a side business solely to quit your job.

Instead, it's about making sure that you won't look back in 10 years, regretting not taking a chance to do something that you truly wanted to do.

Because the fear of regret is far bigger than the fear of failure.

If you keep walking down the same path, sticking to a job that you know doesn't fulfill you, you'll only feel more and more out of sync with your true self.

Imagine yourself in a year, three years, or even a decade from now, feeling increasingly regretful that you could have been doing something that you genuinely love.

Now, imagine on the other hand, you gave your podcast or whatever your side business is a shot.

You wholeheartedly pursued it only to find out that it wasn't actually your thing after all, and it didn't work out for you.

You won't then have to spend the rest of your life haunted by this what-if ghost.

You can return to your job and confidently say, Hey, I chased my dream.

I listened to my heart and tried out that podcast thing.

Turns out it wasn't for me.

And actually my day job doesn't seem so bad now that I know that I'm not missing out on my dream.

At the end of the day, it's great to think about starting a side business.

It's great to think about starting a podcast.

It's great to think about starting a YouTube channel and investing for the future.

But the only thing that's going to matter 10 years from now is whether or not you actually did that thing.

And that was the last kind of mindset shift that really made me think, well, I've got everything else in check.

I may as well give this a go.

So those were five things I did before I quit.

If you enjoyed this video and you're really taking this side business thing seriously, then you'll enjoy this video that I have right here, which goes into the pros and cons of being an entrepreneur versus an employee.

Thank you for watching.

And I hope to see you there.