5 Questions you need to answer before you quit your job | The Indie Creator

Ayush Chaturvedi

Published in

The Wisdom Project

5 min readSep 16, 2022

🔥 And a new product launch this week

So I’ve been asked this question a lot — “What I should I know before I quit my 9–5 job”

And I’ve given hundreds of answers to this over the last year or so. Today I want to consolidate those answers into a simple 5 point system that anyone can benefit from.

These are the 5 most important question you need to answer before you take the leap.

But before we get into it, I have a quick update for you -

I just released Creator Hot Tips yesterday.

50+ Pro tips on how to use your skills to make a living on the internet.

I think you will love it. You can get it for free from this link 👇

Creator Hot Tips

📢 Shout out of the week

This week I want to give a shout out to a fun newsletter from my friend Victor.

It’s called The Unvalidated Ideas Newsletter.

All businesses are ideas — some resonate, some don’t. Founders and creators are the small group of people who run around with tuning forks looking for resonance.

To succeed as an entrepreneur you basically need ideas and execution.

Victor’s newsletter makes the ideas part easier. You get new Startup/SaaS business ideas every week in your inbox. Do check it out, I’m loving the research behind it.

I especially enjoyed this idea from a recent edition. It captures a fascinating trend that many of us actually don’t even know exists. Sign of the times we live in I guess.

Now…Onto today’s topic -

5 Questions you need to answer before you quit your job

Question 1 — Do you have a monetizable skill?

This is so important and this is where many people falter. Especially if you’ve been working in a corporate structure for many years.

So it’s best to learn or hone a skill you enjoy and for which there is already an existing market.

What you do at your job becomes so specific and complex that it’s hard to define it for the world outside. Let alone trying to make money from it.

But how do you find such skills?

Go to freelance marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork and observe what people are paying money to get done.

For me, 3 years ago that skill was copywriting.

Today it can be NoCode or Video editing or YouTube thumbnail design.

You don’t necessarily have to register on those platforms, just find ways money is changing hands there.

And then try and learn the skill that you enjoy the most.

This is your backup, in case things go wrong, this is what you will turn to.

Like I know if everything goes south, none of my projects make any money and I don’t get any more clients on my own, then I can always write copy for clients on Fiverr and pay my bills.

Question 2 — Have you made your first dollar online?

This gives me immense confidence and peace of mind.

This is important because you need to taste internet money. It’s way more sweeter than salary money, trust me 😅

Haha.. on a serious note, internet money is a mindset shift.

Once you make it you feel invincible, you realize the power of the internet and how you can scale your knowledge and skills infinitely.

Question 3 — What’s your runway?

Online businesses are fundamentally different from physical, brick and mortar businesses. And you realize that when you make your first internet dollar.

How much money do you have saved up? What’s your burn rate?

Ideally you should have 12–24 months of savings before you take the leap. Sure there are people who have done it with less savings, and there are also people who have had more savings and still failed.

Success is a lot about staying in the game long enough to take many shots. If you get lucky, you can win with the first attempt itself, but chances are that it will take you while to get there.

Question 4 — Can you deal with uncertainty? This is a big one.

So arrive at a number that will help you sleep peacefully at night. When I quit last year, for me that number was 24 months.

In the year after I quit my job, I made almost the same money as my corporate salary, but revenue was spiky.

Some months were very good, while others were dry and frustrating.

That’s just how entrepreneurship works. Getting to predictable cash flow is really hard and takes a long time.

You have to be mentally strong to deal with this uncertainty.

The trick is to hack your own psychology by answering the other 4 questions in this list and reduce the risk of uncertainty in your head.

You can’t panic and take decisions in haste, that’s the exact opposite of how you need to act to build a sustainable business.

Otherwise it’s very easy to lose your mind and go crazy!

Question 5 — Do you have a support system?

So prevent that at any cost.

You need family and friends on your side. Plus you need an online peer group around you who you can go for help always.

I was lucky because my family was very empathetic towards my goals. And they had the confidence in me that I will figure out a way somehow. Later if not sooner…

But more importantly, I found a group of like minded people on Twitter and Indie Hackers. People who I could always turn to for advice. I didn’t have to build my business in a secluded room all by myself anymore.

I could actually talk to people every day who were a couple of steps ahead of me and were solving problems I was just about to run into.

That’s powerful. And I will always be grateful for that.

I still haven’t figure this out yet and probably will take me a while to get there, but I’m so glad that I have a strong network around me of like minded people.

Thank you for reading 🙏

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