How to Start a Business to Replace Your 9-5 Job
Starting a business that can replace your day job is quite a radical idea.
But one that I know a lot of people are excited about and something many people wish they could achieve one day.
In fact, I don't know anyone who works a normal day job right now who would not like the ability to control their own income.
Starting a business is one of the key levers on the way towards financial independence.
It can help to accelerate this journey for you if you focused on it as a possible outcome in your life.
I know a lot about starting a business because I made the full transformation from the idea of starting a side hustle (this blog) with zero income and zero potential initially.
And then put in 2 hours+ per day consistently and took it to something that has given me the ability to actually quit my job and pursue my own dreams.
When I think about my life, on a really personal level and my levels of happiness and joy, I'd say it currently ranks at a level of 9 out of 10.
And when I think about my levels of freedom, that's definitely a 10 out of 10.
All of this has come about because I took that leap into the unknown, and started something small with a desire one day of running it as a business.
If you've got the desire of starting your own businesses (to replace your 9 to 5 job potentially), I've got to be super honest with you – It does not happen very quickly.
It will require a lot of commitment and a lot of determination to make it happen.
For me, I started this journey at point zero in December 2017.
As in the middle of 2020, I was able to take that leap and essentially run a business that's making five figures a month or six figures per year.
So you can see that took two and a half years of sowing those 2 hours per day and creating something that solves problems for others whilst making money.
HOW TO START A BUSINESS FROM SCRATCH (OR ONLINE)
So today, I want to break down this idea of how to start a business that can give you this possibility for real.
These will also appeal to you if you are also learning how to start a business from scratch or even how to start a business online.
I've got five practical steps and will need you to get involved 🧾.
Two of them are aimed at you personally, because this is actually a personal journey initially.
And the three other points I've got are aimed at your future idea.
Let's dive in now and talk about this because I know that this is possible.
It took me a while to actually believe I could have the full transformation.
But being here now in a place where this morning I woke up, I got my kids ready, drove them to school, listening to music in the car, it's really, really lovely.
After that, got home, did a bit of work for about two hours, went out for a walk with my wife.
Came back home, had some lunch, then we chilled out for a while.
I intend to do some more work for a bit and then I'm off very shortly to go and pick my kids up from school.
This lifestyle a big part of what I refer to as a life design.
I've gone from working 12 hours days as a CFO to now working 6 hours a day for more income.
I hope that this blog post will start to sow a seed in your mind as to how you can create a business for yourself that will actually help you create this possibility.
Your own possibility of replacing your job potentially or at least giving you the option to do that.
Writing the quote above inspired the below post on our Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CE6Zwq6J8rX/
1 – VISUALISE YOUR LIFESTYLE BUSINESS
A lot of people don't spend enough time actually visualising what that actually looks like.
I want us to be really practical here.
And if you can grab yourself a sheet of paper, (I tend to use an iPad) and answer these questions for yourself.
Because this will help you with the visualisation, a critical ingredient for creating a business, as well as the idea of self-belief.
These questions will help you get closer to the reality of starting a business becoming real in your life.
If you're one of those people who have Imposter Syndrome (a feeling of inadequacy and self-doubt about your accomplishments and fear of being exposed as a fraud)…
… and can't see a business becoming a reality in your life, these will help you get closer:
ACTION POINT
1 – How much money per month would you realistically like to be making from your lifestyle business? It's really important to be realistic.
2 – How would running a business improve upon your current life right now?
Would it make you more secure?
Or Would it give you more freedom?
Would it give you more happiness?
What would starting the lifestyle business do for your personal life?
3 – What does it mean practically, for you to run a business of your own? This is particularly important if you're somebody who has never actually run a business by themselves.
4 – Who do you know who runs their own business successfully? And what exactly did they do to make that happen?
5 – What do you need to give up in order to be able to create your successful business? Is it giving up your time, your money, your talent, perhaps?
I'd love you to actually ponder upon those questions and write your answers down 🤔.
This is how you start to visualise what that might actually look like in your world.
You're starting to now move beyond theory and get practical.
This is why I love writing things down always, with my iPad or simple notepad and pen.
It's the start of turning what might be dreaming (in your imagination) into the possibility of action.
The minute you put your thoughts into ink, it starts to take a life of its own.
2 – SIMPLIFY TO MULTIPLY
Let me explain what I mean here.
Assume you're somebody who, for example, spends £3,000 per month, as their monthly recurring expenses per month.
Would you agree with me that it will be a lot easier and a lot more feasible if your monthly expenses were maybe £2,000 per month?
It will be more likely that you might start something, a side business, or a lifestyle business that might actually generate you £2,000 per month.
This is a lot easier than trying to do something that might generate, say, £3,000 or more.
The reason I mentioned this is that this worked for us on our journey. A big part of what we did was to start to simplify our lifestyles.
We asked questions like:
Where can we cut things down?
What was the bare-bones version of our life?
And what would that bare-bones version of our lives cost?
what that does, is that it creates a great deal of motivation
You're able to say:
“Wow, all I need to do is start to find something that might start to create me £2,000 per month.
If I'm able to actually make that happen, I have then given myself an option.
i.e. the possibility of taking that leap and finally doing that thing that I've always wanted to do.
That brings us to the end first two ideas, which are focused on you specifically working on your inner being and on your self-belief.
Okay, we're now going to move on to the remaining three tips I've got, which are focused on the business ideas that you are going to explore for the future.
INTERLUDE:
I want to take a moment to talk to you about what we do at Financial Joy Academy (FJA)
FJA is a platform that we've created to help professionals and families create a life of financial independence this decade.
We help them accelerate that journey by teaching them the various things that have helped us achieve the same goal in our mid-30s.
One thing we help them to do successfully is to start a successful online business to accelerate this journey. We,
- Create Action Plans and Masterclasses each month that have helped many people start blogs, YouTube channels, Service-based businesses, product-based businesses, etc.
- Help them stay accountable each week and month.
- Coach them LIVE each fortnight.
- Provide a supportive community of like-minded individuals.
- Offer them the opportunity to network online and in person.
- Invite experts to offer specific masterclasses in other ways to build wealth such as career maximisation, property investing, etc.
Above all that, they get to work with us on a more personal basis and we build a relationship with them 😊.
If that sounds like something that is interesting to you, then explore our programme at Financial Joy Academy
INTERLUDE OVER
3 – EXPLORE AND SHORTLIST 3 BUSINESS IDEAS
I love this stage because what you're doing here is exploration.
You're out there seeking out what actually works.
There are so many possibilities, which is what brings the beauty to business as a lever towards financial independence.
My belief is that there's something out there for absolutely everybody.
We've created many pieces on business ideas, which I'll put a link to check out:
- 5 Breakthrough Passive Income Ideas
- 21 passive income ideas for a freedom lifestyle.
- 27 Legit Ideas On How To Make Money Online
We've also created videos on high paying side hustle ideas for this year in particular.
But what I'd love for you to do is to engage in this idea of exploration and figure out what works for you.
And more specifically, I want you to think about it from these specific verticals. I'll explain what I mean here.
PASSION – will I get fulfilment doing this?
The first one is passion.
What I mean here is ask yourself these questions as you try to shortlist your three ideas.
Will this business idea give me fulfilment if I went ahead with it?
TALENT – do I have the skill or could I learn it?
Secondly, talent, do I have the skills necessary for me to make this business idea a success?
Or can I learn the skills necessary to make this idea a success?
TIME – do I have enough time to commit to this idea?
Do I have enough time to commit towards making this idea a success?
Or can I outsource some of my tasks in order to expand my time for this idea to become real?
MONEY – can it pay me my desired monthly income?
Will this idea have the potential to generate the sort of income that I'm looking for in my life?
SCALE – does it have the possibility of further growth?
Do any of the three ideas shortlisted, have the possibility of growing and without an income cap?
Typically you find that with online businesses, although there are offline businesses, lots of them that also offer you that possibility of no cap on your income.
So you will assess across those five verticals and use that as the key checks in order for you to shortlist, your top three ideas to explore.
What you want to make sure is that you tick off at least three out of those five things on the checklist.
If you're able to do that, then you've without a doubt got yourself potentially winning ideas to explore for the future.
4 – CHOOSE ONE BUSINESS IDEA
This is the hardest of the stages because you're essentially now funnelling further and moving from three ideas down to just one.
What I'd love you to do here is to focus specifically on strengths and opportunities.
By strengths, I mean, ask yourself this question:
Why must I do this idea? What are the strengths of each one of those three ideas?
And by opportunities, I mean:
What is the best-case scenario for each one of those ideas in your wildest dreams?
Where could these ideas possibly go from a business perspective?
What could the possibilities of each one of those three ideas potentially be over a set period of time? E.g. say over the next two years or three years.
What that does is it gives you a richer data set, so it's best to look at it from the lens of strengths and opportunities.
That then offers an additional layer on top of what we did before when spoke above about talents, passions, time, money, and scale.
5 – FIGHT THE FEAR AND TEST THE IDEA
This is where the real work actually begins.
A lot of people out there actually have great ideas, but most of them are afraid.
They've got fear…
Fear of failing, fear of the unknown and fear of being judged.
Sound familiar? So many people face fear.
And the fear essentially, over time almost drowns the idea that they've got.
Most people, therefore give up and don't take their ideas forward.
Those areas of fear that I mentioned are bits that I refer to as your red flags.
And my solution to that is for you to create white flags in your life.
Create white flags because they are necessary for you to take the radical step forward and I keep using that word deliberately.
It's absolutely radical to move from finding something that has no potential to creating something, make it a success and have it replace your normal day job.
The white flags I recommend are:
1 – You need to create accountability in your life i.e. you need to hang around like-minded individuals in your life.
2 – You need ongoing coaching and mentoring in your life from other people who've been on the journey themselves.
3 – You need to learn new skills in your life because what you find when you assess these various ideas, you will likely find skills shortages
The right attitude is to consider these as inputs into an experiment and expect particular outputs.
These white flags are necessary for you to fight the fear.
The key goal here is to start to ask yourself:
How do I bring those white flags into the picture in order to push to the side the red flags of fear that I might have in my life ordinarily?
- So how can you get some practical accountability?
- How could you hang around with like-minded individuals who are doing some of the things that you want to do?
- And how could you get ongoing coaching and mentoring from people who've been there before?
You need these in order for you to move beyond just the ideation phase, to actually begin the journey of taking action.
Once in place, it can take between a few months and a couple of years for you to then create something that has the potential to truly replace your day job on a sustainable basis.
If your idea really catches on, you want to go from testing to actually gradually building up to the stage where you then start to scale this idea or business that you've created.
And there's a big gap in between those two stages of testing and scaling.
That gap is real.
In my case, that gap was two and a half years from point zero where we had the idea to start The Humble Penny.
Two and a half years later, we'd created something that allowed me to take a leap from my day job as well as my wife.
That gap is an important gap because that gap is where you are going to become somebody else.
A transformation happens in that gap because you'll be learning, you'll be hanging around with people who are doing what you want to do.
You'd be fighting the fear because the fear is real, and you will be kept accountable on that journey towards your success 😀.
Okay, I hope that's been super useful.
As I mentioned earlier, we created an environment for those specific white flags with what we do at Financial Joy Academy.
Check it out if you're interested in starting a side hustle or business that can actually replace your day job one day (if that's what you desire).
We'd be more than happy to get to know you more personally on the journey.
What To Read Next>>
More content below on how to start a business or profitable side hustle…
- 15 Creative Ways To Make Money On The Side
- 12 Best Side Hustles To Make Extra Money
- 8 Online Business Models To Explore For Your Side Hustle
- 7 Habits For Highly Successful Side Hustling
- 12 Reasons Why You Must Start An Online Business Today
What To Watch Next>>
We made a video on this very topic of how to start a business to replace your 9-5 job. Watch it here:
Interested in how to start a business one day that can truly replace your normal day to day job?
What's the number one thing that is stopping you from making that dream a reality?
Do please share this article if you found it useful, and remember, in all things be thankful and Seek Joy.
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