How To Transition From Your Day Job To Your Dream Business

Hi! It's Q & A Tuesday time! Q: Today's question is from Marian and Marian writes: "I'm trying to build a bridge from a good job that doesn't feed my soul to a full-time business following my passion. What steps do you recommend I take to start building a bridge while still committed to my full-time job?”

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A: Marian, this is a fantastic question and so many people are in this situation. So, thank you for asking it. Step one is to commit to love the crap out of your job while you're there and here's why I say that. One of the things I've learned in my life is how you do one thing is how you do everything. And, I've seen so many people make a huge mistake where they're trying to transition out of a job into a business that they love and they wind up going to work everyday, and they're miserable.

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They're totally resenting being there. They're like surfing the web, they're complaining and when they get home at night, they have absolutely zero energy to devote to their passion business. Why is that? It's because they're miserable and complaining all day long. So you can't be in that mode for eight hours and then come home and think you're going to be, "Ahh, I'm going to work on my passion business." Ain't going to happen. So commit to really love being there for the time that you're there. As Ms. Oprah says, "Doing the best in this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment." 

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One more reason if you need it to love your job while you're at it is I want you to build a financial cushion. When you start making that transition to your new business, you're going to eventually need some things like a website and some other business stuff. Plus as you're making a transition, it's really important to have a financial cushion to lean on while you're getting things going. 

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So, step two is all about profit clarity. Profit clarity is so important. So we want to know, what exactly is your business? What's your business model? Are you selling goods? Are you selling services? Are they digital? Is it software? Is it a membership site? All kinds of choices to make. We also want to know, who are you serving? So who are your ideal clients and what exact problems are you solving for them? How are you helping them to lead better lives and what exactly are they giving you money for?

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Step number three is you want to take that profit clarity. Take those ideas that you came up with and now we need to go out into the marketplace and validate your ideas. That means talking to some real people. Going out and finding people that are in your target market and talking to them about the exact problems that you want to help them solve. Here's an example, if I was considering starting a personal styling business and my target market was women between their 30's and 50's, and they were entrepreneurial. I would go out and find as many of those women as I possibly could find. 

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Then I would have conversations with them about what frustrates them about their clothes, about their closets, their wardrobes, about getting dressed for speaking engagements; and, all the things that I could possibly come up with that I could help them solve. Then I would ask them, would they actually pay me money for that? You know, really get down to the nitty-gritty and find out, is this a viable service? Would people actually give me money for these ideas? And after I spoke to enough of these ladies, I would know whether or not my idea was on track, and if it was, I would start making these ladies some offers and get my business off the ground.  Now, of course, there's many more steps to crack this nut but these are three that will get you started. 

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Alright, so that was my A for the Q of the day! If you like it, like it and please share it with your friends. I would so appreciate it. Of course, if you're not yet on the newsletter list, come on over to marieforleo.com and jump on it. Thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you next time!