How To Quit Your Job And Work From Home

Today I’m going to talk about how to quit your job and work from home.

First I’m going to share with you how I left a high salary job to work from home. Next I’m going to share why now is a better time than ever to consider working from home. Lastly, I’m going to give you some very practical tips that I’ve learned over the last 16 years of working from home on how you can make it work for you.

I am not a job basher.

Before we get into today’s topic…just know that I’m not a job basher. I know that there are some people out there that bash jobs and say you have to work for yourself. Honestly, if you love your job then awesome, right? The world needs more people in love with what they’re doing so even though this title is how to quit your job, this doesn’t mean that I’m a job basher. If you love it, awesome. If you don’t love it, then remember life is not a dress rehearsal….why don’t you do something about it? That’s what this post is all about, helping you change that situation.

How was I able to leave my job?

How did I leave a high paying salary job? Here’s the story, I had worked my way up over the span of six or seven years in the IT industry. I had gone from help desk, worked my way up one organization, jumped into another organization, worked my way up to database administrator.

My last job, I started in April (I believe) of 2004 and I left in April 2005. I was there one year and I was a database administrator for an insurance company making right around $80,000 a year. Not bad, right? Not the biggest, most amazing job but a pretty decent salary for someone who never finished college and didn’t finish high school on time. I was my senior superlative in high school, “party animal” and I really held true to that by failing my senior year.

Back to the job….Yes, mom was so proud. This was a pretty good job for someone with that educational background. Well one day I realized that I really didn’t like it and I was sick of asking for permission to take time off. I was sick of scheduling a family trip and then having to cancel it. I was sick of leaving my house before my kids were awake and coming back when they were back asleep. I looked at my boss and then his boss and then her boss….and they were all making more money than me but they were also more miserable. They were also having challenges at home and I didn’t want that for me.

Here’s what I did. I started really analyzing my time. I decided that I was going to leave and go into real estate. There were a few changes that I made.

Number one, driving into work, I stopped listening to music.

I started listening to helpful audio books, same with the ride home. I’m going to drive anyway, why not work on myself so I can get better and make my side hustle my main hustle.

Number two, I stopped hanging out in the break room.

I used to just hang out there. “Yeah, project sucks”….. “yeah did you see what she did?” The water cooler, just waste of time. Instead, I would either read at my desk (a helpful book) to help me get better or I would go downstairs and make calls. I would actually be calling on real estate kind of things.

Number three, I stopped eating out with my co-workers.

Now maybe you hear this and you’re thinking “oh my god, I could never do that….we have a really good time.” Well I’m thinking about my family. My family is not being served by me spending money eating out and hanging out with co-workers. That wasn’t going to change my life. I stopped and instead I started bringing in a lean cuisine, one minute and twenty seconds in the microwave, (not the greatest thing) but knock it out. Then I would work the rest of the lunch hour on my side business.

Doing that, it took me about three months, maybe four months to have the confidence. Now I hadn’t replaced my income so that’s kind of up to you. If you’re asking if it is the right time for me to quit then it probably isn’t. You kind of have to feel that for yourself. I felt confident enough to make the move. I jumped, went into real estate full-time long story short did really well there for a while. Then when the market crashed….I did not go crawling back to my job. I started a totally different career in the network marketing space and have done well ever since.

Stop looking for “new” time. Most people are so addicted to their routine, they’re like well….I hang out in the break room and I eat with my co-workers and I listen to music. They don’t change anything, they look for “new” time and that is actually difficult. Look at your existing time. What can you alter to start working on your side hustle more.

I would also stay up late, I’d get up early. I was putting in as many hours as I could outside of my job to work on my side hustle to make it successful. I left 16 years ago and have been happier, made a lot of money and had a lot of fun too.

Why is it a great time to work from home?

For many reasons, I believe that right now is a great time to consider working from home.

Number one, technology. Not everyone had access to a Zoom type thing where you could get on camera, we didn’t have Facetime. There’s a lot of technology we didn’t have when I left that job. Yes, we had the internet but we didn’t have a lot of the connection tools that we have now so that’s one….one reason technology has really, really caught up and made it a lot easier. I can build my business from anywhere.

My wife the other day, she says, “hey, let’s go up to our cabin in North Carolina and spend a week.” I’m a mobile business. I can be anywhere and do what I do. I can shoot videos from wherever, I can hold meetings, I can do it from wherever she wants really and so I said “no problem.” “Sure, let’s do it!” That’s really powerful that technology has caught up and you have access to that, because that wasn’t the case in the past.

Number two… I know a lot of people have concerns around COVID and different things like that…..If you have concerns then you’re going to be able to spend less time around people that might get you sick and if that’s important to you then that’s important. If it’s not then it’s not…..that that’s up to you.

Number three… a bunch of things that I really liked about working from home.

Not having to be in rush hour traffic, that was a punch in the face to me. I hated it.

Not to be at the beck and call of someone else’s schedule.…I had to be at my desk from “these hours” to “these hours.” I love the idea of “hey if I get up early and I knock out a couple hours then yeah, take the rest of the day off. I like that idea, that flexibility, that freedom.

I’m a huge fan of freedom. I love the idea of making my own choices….not based around someone else’s schedule.

You have to figure out…..is that something that you want? Because with freedom, there always comes a little bit of danger.

What would be the danger of working from home? You not being motivated and you not doing the work. So you have to hold yourself accountable…..especially if you’re building a business from home.

Do you know someone who wants to quit their job?

Before I get to my last point, do you know someone who is considering quitting their job? Feel free to share this with them. Share this post, we give (at least I think) some very practical tips. I have more to come…..so feel free to share this with them. It just might help them out. I’m sharing with you my real world experience of leaving a high salary job to a life where I get to spend more time with my kids and family and I absolutely love it.

I want to give you some practical tips.

Instead of time management, I would suggest that you become activity management.

Have metrics and numbers that you want to do on a daily basis…specifically, activity wise, not result wise. If you’re trying to sell your amazing cookies from home, instead of “I want to sell 20 cookies a day,” have an activity that would increase your chances of selling those 20 cookies.

I’m going to make 10 phone calls, I’m going to reach out to 10 restaurants, I’m going to reach out to 20 of my friends. Become more addicted to your activity than their response and if you do that, you’re going to hit your results. You’re going to sell those cookies or whatever it is that you’re trying to sell.

Speaking of sales…….if you don’t have a great idea or a great invention or you couldn’t see yourself on Shark Tank or something like that, if you don’t have any idea of what to sell or how to generate money working from home, you may consider network marketing. Network marketing is something that really helped me. That’s where I made my first million dollars working from home and it may help you.

What I like about it for someone that doesn’t have that big brand or big idea or big invention is they’ve done a lot of the hard work for you. You don’t have to figure out trademarks, patents, supply chain management, human resources or compensation. All you have to do is snap into an existing company with a product and a service and tell other people about that product or service. You get to learn marketing, promotion, prospecting, recruiting, closing, all those things you would need to know to start any other kind of business anyway but you’re doing it more at their dime.

Now, I know that you’re paying a little bit of money. But some of these companies have cost them 10 million dollars to create…..their formulation, do the research, have the bottling company, the packaging company, the shipping company and the logistics and everything. So, you get to really pay a little bit to take advantage of their money that they spent on the research and work.

If you have an amazing idea, definitely run with it. I’m talking to the person that doesn’t have a great idea. If you don’t have a great idea, you may want to consider network marketing.

How can you learn more?

If you’d like to learn more of my story and more of these strategies that I’ve used over the last 16 years of working from home and making money from home (building an INC 5000 company, having a great relationship with my kids and my family) you may want to check out our book called Time, Money, Freedom. It’s published by Hay House and it is a best-selling book. It’s available on amazon, audible, we have it on kindle, we have it in every place you can possibly imagine.

It shares “the 10 radical rules to reshape your life.” It shares how my wife left the makeup counter and how I left that last job…..but in a little bit more detail than this post. If you would like to check it out, feel free to grab it. Here is the the link, Higdongroup.com/time-money-freedom.