Why you shouldn’t leave your 9-5

Hey guys, today we’ll talk about a subject that will probably sound a little odd coming from money Twitter: why you shouldn’t leave your 9 to 5 job.

I know, it’s practically taboo for me even to say these words out loud (which I am saying out loud because I’m using voice text dictation 😁). There is so much emphasis in the money Twitter community on ditching your 9-5, going all in, balls to the walls, in your own thing, but it’s easy to get lost in all the noise that maybe, just maybe, leaving your 9 to 5 isn’t the best thing to do for everyone.

Reason 1: Stability

Now, I’ve been there. I left my 9-5 in April 2021, and I’ve been doing this full-time ever since. But let me tell you something; it wasn’t really all that easy it was a lot of work, and for the first six months, I really didn’t think it was going to take off. I was prepared at any given time to re-enter the workforce because things are looking really bleak.

I’m not saying this to dissuade you, but at the end of the day, doing your own freelancing thing more or less ends up kind of being like a regular job. You’re going to need to be structured to pull it off. Time management is critical. And you have to be good at working with people. Plus, you must be absolutely driven. You cannot be a person who asked me hounded to get things turned in on time and succeed on your own.

Most regular jobs are pretty lenient. You show up when they tell you to, follow their basic rules, collect a check and go home, rinse and repeat.

Reason 2: Community

I see the Twitter money gurus always talking about community. Yeah, that’s great when you have 60,000 followers, and people are banging at your DM‘s, trying to get at you for a second.

But that’s the vast minority of online Freelancers. Most of you will struggle ever to break 1000 followers on Twitter. Most of you will give up after a couple hundred because it’s painstakingly slow. And you’re going to find that the ones that explode? Yeah, many of those guys just paid for follows, not all, but a lot.

But that’s not the real world. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram are not the real world. They are not the real world where you will meet up with a friend over coffee. And all of your Normie friends are still working regular jobs, so they have no idea what you’re doing. They are pretty sure that you’re selling dope.

When you work your regular job, you have instant community. You don’t have to work at it all; it’s just there by design (barring the workplace zoom retardation of the Covid – 19 scam). But companies soon found that they couldn’t just let people work at home, so while there are still high numbers of people working remotely, many businesses made their entire workforce come back to work so you don’t even have to work in the community anymore.

I’ve had friends say that just hop on a call if you’re lonely. It’s not the same as sitting down with a friend and just bullshitting at work; it never will be.

Reason 3: It’s Hard

The third reason isn’t rocket science. It’s really hard. It’s really risky. It is extremely hard to confidently walk out of your 95 and rely on the fact that you’ll be able to drum up enough business to cover your bills.

I did it, and thankfully, I had a very supportive wife. In fact, it was mostly her that pushed me to do it, but along the way, it could’ve all come crashing down anytime, and I don’t fool myself: it still can, of course, regular jobs lay people off or fire them all the time I’m under no false illusions, that it’s a total easy button.

What should you do?

OK, so what should you do then? I can’t answer that for you; it’s your life, but I can assure you there are a couple of things you need to start doing right now.

Build secondary streams of income.

Everyone can see that our country is a shit show. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight, but real estate prices are out of control, cost-of-living is high, and we’ve been printing money that we can never cover.

It’s a huge, high-level problem that you cannot change. But what you can change is adding money to your bank account. Yes, I understand that inflation devalues savings, and this is not financial advice, but money can still buy physical assets even though it’s devalued.

So start up secondary income streams now, and put a lot of energy into those to start stacking physical assets or putting in the savings so you can gobble those up when there’s a fire sale in the stock market.

Start skill stacking complementary skills

I preach this one all the time. Start skill stacking complementary skills. You should do this, even if you have no intention of ever leaving your 9-to-5 job. The only thing you’ll do is make yourself a more valuable asset to your business or give you more skills to hop to a different job and negotiate for a pay raise.

And it is never been any easier.

Nobody is looking for a certificate that you got from the local university that says you’re good at computer science or something. All the stuff that you need to learn? You can find it at Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, or about a dozen other reputable sources.

I’ve talked about this a lot, but LinkedIn learning is paid for free through my public library, and I’ll bet it is probably free through yours or some other similar service.

There is no excuse not to better yourself and make yourself more valuable.

Parting thoughts

It will be much easier to make the jump from a 9 to 5 job to full-time freelancing. Once you have already established a flow of clients through side hustling, and you’ll be more valuable if you have a stack of skills to offer rather than just one. I know this from personal experience because my two largest clients, which are significant, have morphed into a wide variety of roles because I have learned those roles and just made myself adaptable and available.

As always, I suggest getting on up work, even if you don’t ever intend to work with the program, and look through their lists and read their blog about the hot skills. They usually have a quarterly release of the highest trending skills on their marketplace regarding demand. If you don’t already have a skill, list your top two or three skills that look interesting on there, and then go to you to me, or LinkedIn, learning or YouTube, and start learning them.

That’s it. It really is that simple. From there, you’ll just need to build a simple portfolio that can be free and start pitching to clients even though they take a cut; Upwork does make this a lot easier.

SEO Stuff

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