How I leaped from a safe full-time job into being a content-obsessed, self-employed marketer

(I have a suffocating urge to say this first: this is not a blog post about making an insane amount of money online. That’s not my story, and that’s not what this is about. I am about pursuing what you want to do all day, every day. If you’re into that, stick around.)

Just over two months ago, I walked into a meeting room with my manager to tell him I will be leaving my job in four weeks’ time.

I was at this job for just under a year and a half. And while everyone then asked me (and lots of people still do) about the company that I was going to, my answer was: me. I was about to become an independent, self-employed content writer. This decision didn’t come naturally to me, which is exactly what I wanted to quickly address in this post.

The fact that people didn’t really get it definitely didn’t help, but I didn’t even blame them. For the majority, leaving the safety of a 9–5 to wake up to the uncertainties of solopreneurship is unnatural and far outside one’s comfort zone.

And while I’d love to say I always knew I was born to be my own boss (heck, I still don’t know if I am) and that this is all I’ve ever wanted, it’s far from the truth. For the longest time, I was quite okay with my predictive nine-to-fiveness, working a job that extremely partially lets me fulfill what I think I’m capable and talented to do. I thought this was my reach, and there’s no way I can aim any further.

And before that, I was stuck in mindless jobs in retail and calling centers. I wasn’t looking long-term, ever. I wasn’t thinking about who will I become in 5 or 10 or 35 years if I keep putting myself through this. With my MA in journalism, a quite high improbability to ever get a job in journalism, and a level of creativity and ambition that was slowly getting lower day after day, I just thought this was simply the way it has to be — average and uninspiring — forever.

I’ve known I wanted to write for a living since I was very little. I knew at a very young age that I wanted to make an impact with my writing. So when I got to the age when I had to decide how will I do that, I was stuck.

And I’m not sure which words to use to give a big enough credit to my husband. I remember the exact moment, location, and a screwed up mindset I was in when he told me a couple of very simple words in a phone call: “You need to get into a creative job.” This was happening as I was walking out of a telesales job that I had just lost. I was miserable, and I didn’t know where I’ll go from there.

With this pursue of a creative job (that I was yet to even discover and understand), I ended up in another sales job to be able to pay the bills. However, this time I was surrounded with marketers and I was listening to conversations that were so far outside my knowledge or expertise, and I loved it. It was teasing my curiosity and my drive to learn. It made me completely shift my focus, and I started independently learning about marketing.

Months later, I wasn’t in this job any longer, and I got to work with my first client ever (while still chasing that creative job); they saw on Twitter that I was a journalist, and gave me a decent amount of writing jobs for their blog. I didn’t know it at the time, but this has practically kicked off my journey to today. This was just under two years ago.

In the meantime, I got a job that enabled me to build courses in digital marketing with the help from some of the brilliant people in the industry, and this kept fueling my desire to grow within digital marketing to a content marketer and strategist. This is the job from the initial paragraph of this post. I grew a lot, but it took me a while to realize I want to DO content marketing — not just help to teach about it.

I’m not really able to pinpoint the time when I knew I needed to get out of this job. In a way, this job has taken a lot away from me and caused a mental imbalance that enforced me to truly rethink my goals, my purpose, and simply who I am. Sounds incredibly cheesy, I know, but this was the case for a while. I found myself in a place that made me feel suffocated and exhausted. A place that didn’t let me grow and learn and thrive.

I didn’t know what to do if and when I exit this job. I didn’t know where to go to grow, and for the longest time, I was on the lookout for that perfect content marketing job. It never came along.

I wasn’t sure how I wanted my professional life to shape up, but because of so many past experiences, times I felt lost, places that didn’t allow me to be my creative self, and people who didn’t let me nurture my drive to grow and learn, I knew I needed a tremendous change. I knew I needed more power over what I do and how I do it, and I didn’t know where to look for a solution.

And most importantly:

I knew I wanted a life that allows me to pursue things that I so passionately want to do, become and grow into, without restrictions, fears of being misunderstood and having my hard work diminished. I also wanted the power to walk away from anything that isn’t nurturing my brain, heart and soul.

The path I’m on right now has shaped up from the goals I wanted to accomplish and actions I knew I needed to take in order to make it happen. It didn’t happen by accident. There were days when I worked from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to bed, for 17 hours a day, many days in a row, and so many weekends. That is what building a side hustle looked like for me. If I had given myself more time to leave my full time job, maybe I would have worked less, but I needed this — badly.

So I networked, wrote, connected with those that were ahead of me, wrote some more, wrote A LOT more, and found the right people who valued my work and whom I’m incredibly fortunate to be working with right now. And when this shaped up to make me comfortable enough to leap to full-time solopreneurship — I did.

It’s only so new, and I’m only just starting my journey. I’m hoping to return to this post many years from now and see how far I’ve come. It’s going to be a wild ride; if you’re on a similar path, let me know — I’d love to hear your leap story and exchange thoughts with fellow dream chasers! :)