← Build with Leila Hormozi
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The Internet wants you to quit your job. And I actually would ask you to think first. I have built companies worth hundreds of millions, and I have watched people with twice the talent that I have blow up their lives by quitting at the wrong time. Here's how you can actually prepare. Get one paying client or project in your target market before you quit. If you can do that and get 25 to 50% of your salary, then you have a really good buffer. And if you can't even get a dollar, then that's really good advice too, which is like, maybe you're not ready to quit. You should get a different job or continue to level up your skills. There's nothing wrong with that. If you're not ready to quit or at least to leave employment, start a business. Maybe you should quit into a better job. Quit into a job that builds the skills you're missing. Ask if there's opportunity to build the skills you're missing in the job you have now. I did that so many times. I did it way more times than I did quit to build a business. I did that once. I did this probably seven times. Number three, you have a financial free floor, not just like a dream in the skies. Okay. When we launched our supplement company, which was the second company I launched, based off my first one, I let my leaders staff up based on projections from our previous business. So I said, okay, based on my other business. This sounds dumb now that I say it, based on a business that's completely different. Build a staffing model based on that business for this business, and I will provide you with people. So then we hired like 35 or 40 people before the launch. And. And then I actually had one of the customer support reps reach out to me, and they were like, hey, can you hop on a call? I was like, yeah, I can hop on a call. What's up? I hop on. I was like, oh, interesting. Why is Sally reaching out to me? And she was like, hey, I can't accept a paycheck from you. And I was like, why? She was like, I'm only answering one, maybe two emails a day, and I know like eight other people with no work in this company. Like, I just. I can't ethically take your money. And I was like, is this a joke? So we had used the completely wrong model because I was ignorant. And I let them do that. Because of that, I had to lay off. Like, I don't remember. It was between 15 and 25 people, and my glass door went from like a 5 to like a 2.2 in, like, 5 seconds. And now, here's the part that's interesting. I had a business with revenue, and I still made the mistake of spending money based on what I thought would happen instead of what actually happened. This is exactly what people do when they quit their jobs. They calculate their Runway, how much they're going to need based on what they spend right now, not on what they're actually going to spend. When they're on their own starting a business, investing in it, they forget about, like, insurance, taxes, software, contractors, you know, all the things that you're going to have to pay for. And what's terrible about this is that if you look at a study done by the Federal Reserve, about 40% of Americans can't even cover an unexpected $400 expense. So when people give you the advice, like, just take the leap, it's bull. Here's how you can prepare the right way. Calculate your true monthly number. Like, how much are you gonna need to spend to start your business? This is gonna be completely different. If you're starting, you know, a trucking business and you need to buy semi trucks, that's a big investment versus if you're gonna start, you know, an online marketing agency, that is obviously a very low investment. However, what you wanna do is calculate on average, how much you're gonna need to spend each month. And then what does that look like in terms of liquid savings that you need before you're gonna quit? That's it. And the thing is, is if you can't save that in your current job, that is either a skills problem or a spending problem. And I would solve that first before I start a business, which is like, do I not have the skills to make enough money to save money, or do I make enough money and I'm just spending it improperly? I would solve that first because, like, a business is not going to help either of those things. I would solve that before I started a business and quit my job. Number four, you want to have emotional reps in uncertainty. Okay, let's say that you have done a lot of work and you just are like, no, this Layla, I still want out. This is. It's not enough. This is the number one reason why people who quit their jobs within the first year often go back to them. In the beginning of starting my business, I had hired six friends to work at my company gym launch. And one of them, he quit his job. He joined because I recruited him. He believed in me. And then he went, like, 0 for 30 sales in the first month. It Was really bad, and I had to fire him. And I remember sitting in the car after I fired him, crying, thinking, like, this is terrible. But I remember also thinking, I have to bounce back from this. And it was the first time I remember thinking, this is my first floppy pancake. I made this analogy in my head. You know, when you make a batch of pancakes, at least for me, you put the butter on the pan and there's the first one you put on. It absorbs all the butter. And then you have to make it because you've got to get it out of the way. So the rest of the batch is to going, they don't have too much butter, but they have just enough. That was my first floppy pancake. And I remember thinking that to myself, like, I'm just doing my first sloppy pancake. It sucks and it hurts, but it's my first sloppy pancake. Now, why am I telling you this? If you have never had a first pancake fired, someone lost money on a bet, made a bad decision that cost you money, you really have to ask yourself, do I have the emotional fortitude that entrepreneurship demands? And if you don't, be honest with yourself, like, you can take on hard projects, have difficult conversations, volunteer for things that nobody wants. Think about it as like your own growth journey, that you can just continue volunteering for things and asking to help with things. I mean, that's what I did to learn. I was just like, I wanna help with everything so I can learn and acquire all these skills. And somebody else is dying. In entrepreneurship, the average time to profitability is two to three years. And so if you haven't practiced uncertainty while you're employed and have a safety net, it's gonna be really tough if suddenly you go into this place where it's just all this uncertainty. And I will say, like, I have seen the emotional weight of, of starting a business break people more than the strategy, the market, the product, the client, like 10 times over. So what I would say is take on a project with unclear outcomes and high visibility, build your reps doing things within a place of uncertainty, and then make financial bets where losing is possible. And you get used to the feeling of losing, because I can't even tell you how many millions of dollars I've lost. Tens of millions. And if not hundreds of millions in opportunity loss. If you're the type of person who spirals, probably need to work on those skills before you start a business. Now, you could argue that, well, what's a better place to start? But if you don't Change anything aside from going from a job to a business, you don't get new skills, you don't invest in those interpersonal skills. It's unlikely anything's going to change. So I would suggest working on those skills while you have a safety net. Now, the fifth thing is that you've built assets, not just plans and more plans. I think this is the difference between people who really want it and people who can actually do it. I had somebody at my last company who was very smart, coachable, constantly talked about growth, wanted to be the head of our marketing department, and he really wanted to be on the executive team. But he avoided conflict, delayed people holding people accountable. He escalated every hard decision to me, and I eventually realized that I mistook his desire for ambition. So ambition shows up in what are you willing to carry? Like, what feelings are you willing to endure? What work are you willing to do? What hardship are you willing to get through? This person wanted visibility without consequence. They wanted the credit without having to hold people accountable. And so unfortunately, like, I had to let them go and spent like a year and a half undoing all of the cultural damage that had been done because this person wanted the responsibility and the glamour of the role, but they didn't want the downside. You know, every person who wants to quit and, like, be their own boss, but hasn't built the capabilities to deliver on that, it's like they have the desire, but they don't have the asset. If you can't list the qualities of yourself that you're going to bring with you when you leave, the skills that you're going to bring with you when you leave, you might not be ready to. Reid Hoffman's the Startup of youf makes the same point in a different way, which he talks about how your career is a series of strategic investments, and your job is one of the best vehicles for compounding them. A lot of people want to be great, but they don't want to go through the part of becoming great. And becoming great usually means that you suck at first. And in order to become great, you have to acquire a lot of skills, but you have to suck before you have those skills. So just like, what are you willing to endure to get there? Here's what I would say. Write down your top three monetizable skills. And if you can't do that, then keep working in your job and working your way up and trying to acquire skills. Because if your current job isn't building transferable skills, maybe it just means that you need to transfer into one that does, maybe it doesn't mean you need to start your own business yet. And number six, you have a plan that survives contact with reality. Most people who nail the the first five signs still blow it because they skipped this one. And I think this is the one that turns everything else into something very real. When I had my first business, I had customers, but I didn't actually have any infrastructure. So I ended up hiring about 30 people in the first six months. And I didn't have any experience evaluating or managing talent. Like none. I posted everywhere and I, you know, anyone who like, said words on the screen to me through zoom seemed like they had a pulse. I hired, and the thing is, like, deep down I knew that they weren't the right fit for the business, but I hired them anyways because I just didn't have faith that I could figure it out, which is kind of crazy to say now. And then 12 months later, I had to replace my entire leadership team. And what I realized, like, every one of them had patched problems instead of fixing them and they had normalized mediocrity. And I remember my mentor said to me when I was complaining, my life sucks and I don't want to deal with this. She said, you're not stuck. You just don't want to do what you know you have to do. And that was the truth. Like, I had demand, resources, drive, but like, I had no plan for how I would figure it out. I had built my business up to that point, kind of just winging it, and I didn't really have a plan to survive the hardship that we were going through. And I think the thing is that the point of planning isn't to predict the future. It's to build the thinking muscle that helps you adapt when things go sideways. Like, 42% of startups fail because there's no market need. So they build something that nobody wants. And that's just bad planning. I don't think that's luck. What also would be bad planning is not planning for that to possibly happen to you. It's like, well, let's plan for the fact that we might fail. And so what I think about is, if you're starting a business, here's how you do it. Who am I selling to? What am I selling to who? At what price? How do I get my first five customers? What if I make no money? What if it doesn't work? What will I do? And you can pressure test it with somebody who's done it, probably not somebody who's like your supportive friend. Or mom who's excited for you. But I think that mapping these things out and thinking about them ahead of time is very important for, one, giving your brain some certainty, two, deciding ahead of time when you're in a neutral state, what you're going to do when shit hits the fan. And three, I think that it's a muscle you have to continue to use in business. So here's what nobody online will tell you. Staying in your job can actually be one of the most strategic, ambitious things that you can actually do right now. You know, I didn't have like a cinematic story where I, like, quit my job and the next day became an entrepreneur. Like, I had a messy string of jobs that all, like, worked together in this very weird potluck, boil, whatever the you want to call it. And I didn't quit any one of them to start a business. I quit them for other jobs, for better jobs, for more skills. And then those built and compounded upon each other until one day the final leap just made more sense. And it's not because I was brave. It was because I was like, I have proof. It makes sense. I'm ready now. And so if you watch this and you realize, like, you don't have the skills, good, that's being intelligent. Like, go find a better job. Build the skill that you're missing on. And when you finally do want to leave and take the leap, you're not doing it in the dark. You're actually stepping into something that you already built by having all the past jobs that accumulate those skills.