Podcast

Episode 569: Being All-In On Your Business With A Full-Time Job

Do you feel like having a full-time job means you can’t be all-in on your business? Or that it means you’re not taking your business ‘seriously’ enough? If that’s you, you want to tune into this episode.

I recently coached a PGSDer who felt like the fact that she needed to get a full-time job to support herself financially meant that she wasn’t being “all-in”. And what I shared with her completely blew her mind and gave her so much relief.

So in today’s episode I’m sharing why having a full-time job is often part of being all-in on your business. I’m also sharing how I personally navigated building my business while working a full-time job and the perspective that allowed me to stop resenting my full-time job (or feeling like a failure at business because I had one).

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.

Sam Laura Brown
So I just want to record something that I talked about on a pgsd coaching call a few weeks ago, and this just the relief I saw in my client’s eyes when I told this to her. Really just made me think in my head at the time, I have to record an episode about this. I have to share this because what I’m going to be sharing in this episode is a little bit different to what a lot of people say about this topic, and just having this perspective be available to you can really help the success of your business, and can really help you feel successful as you are in the process of getting your business succeeding. So what that call was about, we were, this was few weeks ago now, we were talking about the plans for the rest of the year, and what do you want to work on having like a momentum project to support you through to the end of the year. And what would finishing strong look like? Like that could be showing up and getting shit done. That could be just having some really great clean rest. Really depends.

A lot of our PGSDers work full time or part time jobs, and so we’ll work a lot on their business on the holidays, because that’s such a great time for them to have concentrated time for their business. Other pgsd is already full time in their business, or even if they’re not yet making a full time income, which many PGSDers aren’t yet doing, that they have the goal of doing that, that they might be getting supported financially by either a spouse or savings that they have from a job that they left, or things like that, that they are full time hours in their business, even though they’re not making a full time income, and so those people might be deciding to have the holidays off. All of that aside, what we were looking at on that call was okay, let’s support you to finish the year in a way that you love, that you really can finish this year 2025 finish this year out feeling successful and being successful and just acknowledging there are so many ways that looks.

And so one of the PGSDers, she is someone, it’s a lifetime access program. So she is someone who has been in the program for a long time, and she’s great at asking for coaching and putting her hand up and saying, this is this is what I’m thinking. And she’s been able to create incredible results because of that. And I know everyone in the program loves listening to her coaching and hearing her on the replays, and just getting so much value from the questions she asks. If you’re listening to this, you know who you are. So what she asked was what she said, and she looked so in pain, and she said, like, there’s just literally no way for me to finish the year strong. And I asked her why, and she said, because I have realized that I need to get a full time job and that that is something financially that I need to do, and I’m not wanting any coaching on that. I’m not wanting to, like be talked out of that, like that is a decision I’m making to support myself. And I’m really sad about that because, and this is me paraphrasing, I’m really sad about that because I just really wanted to be all in on my business, and me getting a full time job is just me not doing that. And so I want to share with you what I said to her, and the first thing is that I’m always going to and in pgsd, we are always going to support you with decisions that support you.

So if you want to get a full time job, we support you getting a full time job. It’s not like, and is it? This is why I wanted to recall this episode, because it can be like, Oh, you getting a full time job. Is you quitting on your business, or is you not believing in yourself, or like, anything like that, when actually, this is what I shared with her. The second thing that I really wanted to share with you and just do a dedicated episode on this, because it’s so important, and I just don’t hear it being spoken about is that I share with her getting a full time job? Is you being all in on your business, and when our perfectionist brain tells us, like all in would mean, like, I don’t do anything else. It kind of goes in this all or nothing mindset, right? That’s like one of the five perfectionist patterns is the all or nothing mindset. So all in means I do nothing but the business. I’m fully in the business. I’m fully believing in the business. I’m just going to do anything I can to make it work, like, kind of just in this idea that, like, I’m engrossed, I’m obsessed, like I’m not doing anything else. And this is where perfectionists have so many fears.

We coach a lot on this inside pgsd, and have tools to support with burnout, and particularly not even burnout, that’s something we definitely help with. But fear of burnout. And the fear of burnout comes from this belief of if I’m all in then I must be all out of everything else in my life, which means I must be if I’m all in on business, then I’m all out of health. If I’m all in on business, then I’m all out of family and spending time with my kids and my spouse. If I’m all in on business, and I’m all out of taking care of my house, any interior design projects I have, like making myself a nice office. Like, I’m all out of that. If I’m all in on business, I’m all out of fitness and health. If I’m all in on business, and then it goes on, the list goes on, we just have if I’m all in on this, and I’m all out of that, and then we’re like, but I want, I want I want to spend time with my family. I want to be able to see my friends. I want to be able to be fit and to be healthy and to feel comfortable in my body, and all these other things that we have too.

I think it’s super healthy to have goals besides your business goal, which can be a different episode. I think actually, even I did one, I will link it up on like separating out your personal needs and your business needs, and making sure you’re getting your personal needs met in your personal life, super important. So it’s really just this idea of, okay, well, if I’m all in on my business, then I would be all out of employment, so I wouldn’t have a full time job. That’s a sign that I’m not all in. And I want to be all in. I want to make this business work. I feel like I can do something meaningful. I feel like I can actually in this pgse, who’s been in pgse for a while, has been doing different things and like, kind of like figuring out, and especially, I think, she signed up before pgsd was even specifically for entrepreneurs. It has been for entrepreneurs now for many years, but she has been through so many iterations, and it’s just like I finally feel like I’m at a place where I can really go all on this business, and then I’m not, because I’m getting this full time job because I need to financially.

So what I shared with her is my experience, and I’ve seen this too with people I know that have businesses as well, and those that have been able to successfully get it off the ground that for me and many others, but I’ll just speak to my own experience. For me, having a job was part of me being all in sorry if you’re not familiar with my background and my professional life before business, I have a law and finance degree, dual degree from a university here in Brisbane, and a diploma in French, just because. And then I worked in insolvency accounting, so when I graduated, I knew I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I don’t like fighting with people on the principle of things, or anything like I just didn’t I was really interested in law, but I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I didn’t see myself practicing law, and like having that be something that would be fulfilling and that I wanted to do, even though I knew I could do it, and so I decided not to pursue any further legal training.

There’s a thing you can do called your PLT, where you like, practically, your training, where you then have to do that to kind of, like, essentially, for lack of better term, solidify your law degree, so you can go and practice and people like, oh my god, isn’t it going to be such a waste that you don’t do that? I was like, but I know I don’t want to be a lawyer. So why would I do why would I continue down a path I know I don’t want to go down, so I then had my finance degree, I was like, I want to go into something finance. And I ended up in insolvency accounting, which is and has been helpful in business, which is doing liquidations, bankruptcies of companies and people who are not solvent anymore, who don’t have the money. And you then need to do certain things to wind up the company and manage the employees and pay the stuff and sell the business. So like having that experience, super helpful.

But for me, when I was in that transition, so I started my business as a blog called smart 20s when I was 22 in 2013 at that time, I was in university, and I had a couple of years left. And really for me, my goal was to be able to have a full time income from my business by the time I graduated, because I already knew that I didn’t really want to work in any of the fields that I was doing more than I wanted to do, like personal development. I’ve been listening to so many podcasts, which is how I found the whole business world podcasts about online business, my eyes had just been opened up to the possibility. I came across Brooke Castillo and realized, like, coaching is a thing, and like and like that started to be actually, maybe that was 2015 when I came across her. All the timelines fuzzy, but I really like through that people was like, Okay, I could actually have a career that isn’t law and isn’t finance and but I also don’t have the confidence to leave university and, like, try and do that, because I’m at the point I’m still too scared to tell anyone in my real life about my business.

So I’m probably not at the point where I feel like I can make a full time income from it, because I didn’t yet even have anything to sell or for sale, because if the perfectionism that was coming up for me when it came to sales, even though I was like marketing, I was like showing up and doing blog posts and like creating spark content, but I didn’t yet have the have my perfectionism hand break off enough when it came to sales, so I wasn’t making any money from my business. And so when I graduated, on my graduation day in July, 2015 I had not made a single cent from my business. In my business at all, not from anything, not from anything. I didn’t have any money coming through my business. And so I definitely was not in a place where I could have my business support me full time and pay my living expenses, not even close, not even close to that, like I had not made a cent, not exaggerating, like $0 I had nothing for sale, so I couldn’t have made a cent.

So what I did is I worked. I, like, continued on that path, while at the same time constantly listening to podcasts, like constantly filling myself with belief and possibility. And so I ended up like going the corporate route, applying for different internships. I did internships, and then I applied for a job that I got at one of the big accounting firms in insolvency accounting. And that job was so important for me to start being all in on my business, because that job was paying me a full time income. And even though it wasn’t that much, it was about, I think, about $50,000 a year. It was enough to cover my rent, my living expenses, Friday night drinks, brunch with friends. I didn’t have any kids yet, like going to the gym, like it covered all of those things. I was able to travel and stuff like that as well. So that meant I didn’t have any financial pressure on my business.

Because I was not at a place where I could handle financial pressure on my business. I was at a place where I was so scared to even sell when there was no pressure, let alone when there was pressure. And it’s really powerful like this is one of the things as a coach. I’m thinking about every client that I coach on where they’re at in terms of safety and discomfort. So we want to feel safe. A really important part that we do in pgsd is creating safety like, for you to feel safe, to show up, to take action like, that’s a really important piece of how we help you to take action is to create that safety emotionally for you to do it, for you to feel safe to try. And what we want to do is have you feel safe and uncomfortable. That’s kind of the sweet spot, safe and uncomfortable when we feel unsafe. As perfectionists, our perfectionism handbrake comes on. That’s like us trying to take control, us trying to slow things down the handbrake comes on for me personally, like that looks like freezing a lot of the time, like, kind of like a functional freeze. I’ll be doing a lot of comfort work, but I won’t be doing the needle movers that perfectionism, handbrake comes on, or like the procrasti-learning, procrasti-research, like, that kind of thing.

And that if I’m not feeling safe, if, if a perfectionist isn’t feeling safe, we bring that handbrake on, which makes it so hard to make money, because when that handbrake is on, and this is what I’ve been doing, so I’m not going to be doing one on one coaching, like having new people sign up for one on one coaching in 2026 but what I’m doing with my current one on ones that will be continuing on into 2026 is teaching them self trust selling and how to release their perfectionism handbrake when it comes to sales. I have plans to have a program about that specifically because it’s so powerful. And if you’ve loved my like, launch debrief episodes and like, all the work that I do. Once you’re showing up and you’re like, able to do marketing and like, put yourself out there, then it comes to, like, actually making sales. So that’s that’s a thing that I definitely want to be helping you with.

So when it comes to to sales as a perfectionist, and just like in general business, as a perfectionist, we want you to feel safe and then uncomfortable. If you feel unsafe, the handbrake comes on, and then you get in your own way. You don’t take the action you need to take, or you just try and do everything. You start going into, like all that comfort work, or like trying to do all the things, make complicated plans and then work extra time to follow through with them. You don’t rest unless everything’s done and everything is done and everything is never done. That is where we go when we feel unsafe. What we want to do is have you feel safe and then a bit uncomfortable, a little bit stretched, but in a supported way, but not feeling unsafe. If you’re like trying to push yourself to do something that’s typically you’re feeling unsafe, and you’re trying to get yourself to do something while feeling unsafe, very ineffective. It creates burnout and doesn’t work long term.

What we want to have you do is feel safe and be supported from yourself and from us in pgsd to do the things we don’t push through, we self support and we get supported. We take sufficient action, we make sufficient decisions. In that sufficiency cycle, I just did an episode on that, take sufficient action, get sufficient results. So for me, bringing this back to the job situation, when I for me to be all in on my business, when I was working in that job, it would have felt unsafe for where I was in my mindset and, like, my money mindset and that work, and we talk about that in pgsd, and with my one on ones, like, very important as well, with my mindset around money, my mindset around business, my mindset around myself, like my perfectionism, basically because all of these things were coming from the perfectionist thoughts, my money mindset issues were coming from perfectionist thoughts, my thoughts about myself that weren’t helpful were coming from that perfectionist thinking. So when all of that was the case, it meant I didn’t feel safe to then have all of my income have to come from my business, and I knew that if I had to rely on my income to be able to have a roof over my head, essentially, that that pressure would have just made me freeze up.

And I needed to not have that financial pressure. I needed to feel that support and I love I did an episode on this way back in the day when I was working in I started the podcast in 2017 so that was a year I left my full time job and went part time, which I’ll talk about in a second, to a different part time job. But I did a lot of episodes, like going through those different periods as well. And I began thinking of my business as an angel investor, that it was investing in me so that I could invest in the business. And that’s why, in 20 was it 2016 I invested in my first coach. I put it on my credit card. Best decision to actually, like, not just wait for money to be there, but to actually invest. And it was a little bit uncomfortable, but I felt safe. I knew I had an income coming in. I knew I wasn’t going to be out on the streets. Like it was uncomfortable, but it was still safe. Yes, there was money mindset work to do around credit cards, but like, it was a safe thing to do, but felt a little bit uncomfortable, and that really started to like having that support of the coach really started to allow me to feel safe, to take the action and to put myself out there, and to start making sales and do all the different things that really was so helpful.

So there, then came a time where I felt ready to leave that job. I wanted to have more time for my business, but I still didn’t feel safe enough to have the my personal finances come from the business. I still felt like, if I leave my full time job and I have to go full time in my business straight away, which is how I think so I just want to share this as well. I had been thinking the path to having a full time income from my business is I have to just leave my full time job and go right into full time business. And then what happened is, and I’ve shared this story before, I want to share it again, because it was so powerful. I started priming my brain to see possibility. And the way that I did this was I started writing down a sentence, an affirmation that was, I will celebrate the last day at my full time job on the 30th of June, 2017 or sooner, I’d read about that in a in a Tim Ferriss book that I think is the author of the Dilbert comics. I’m not a reader of those comics, but he mentioned like that was what he did to prime his brain to see opportunity.

And I was like, I’m gonna try that. So I did, and about for about three weeks, felt crazy, like there’s no way of leaving this job, because I’m not even I’ve made like, $3,000 in total from my business. At that point, I’d launched a course, and I had people sign up for that. That was such a massive win, but like, there was no ongoing, consistent income coming in from that. And I was like, there’s just no way. And then once I started priming my brain for that, I was then reading a book called You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. And there was a sentence in that about how an actor can work at a restaurant. I was like, Oh, my God, I could just go and work in the part time job I had as a university student. I could go and do that now, like I’d be leaving the corporate path. I mean, you can go back to it. It’s not an all or nothing thing, but I’m going to be going down a different path, essentially, like leaving my law and my accounting slash finance behind and going into this job where I didn’t need to have any degrees, and I worked this job as a uni student, but the hours were like 3:30pm to 7:30pm in the afternoon.

So that means I get a full day of work, which is when I work best, from like morning to mid afternoon, and then I go to my job, and that pays all the bills. And the hourly rate for that job, even though it didn’t require my degrees, it paid quite a bit more per hour, so it meant overall, I only made a couple of $100 less per week. So pretty ideal. And like, my brain was primed to see that, and so then I then took action to do that, and ended up getting that job and making that transition, but I just knew for me to still be all in on figuring out the business I can’t yet have it support me financially. I need to have I need to be able to feel safe, to make longer term decisions and to have room for trial and error, and I still want to have money to invest in coaching, like I signed up for a coach and had just seen the power of that. I wanted to keep learning, and I wanted to do it not just through free podcasts and things like that. I mean, I obviously believe in the value of a free podcast. That’s exactly what I’m doing right now, but I had just seen the value of when I invested in a mentor and a framework and support with that.

How valuable that was, how much my life and my business changed, and I wanted to be able to keep having money to invest in that. I wanted money to be able to pay for my bills, and to be able to still have the same lifestyle that I had, and I didn’t want to have to make short term decisions in the business that I didn’t like. I wanted to be able to and still do this has been the philosophy I want to be able to build my business in a way that’s in alignment with my values. It’s really important to me that my business isn’t successful just in terms of like, numbers, revenue, profit, number of people helped, number of employees, or any of that. The most important thing to me in my business, for it to feel successful, is that I feel like me, like that my business, I get to be me. I don’t have to be someone better, someone different, and I love learning and I love growing, and I love evolving, but from a place of sufficiency, like in a sufficiency cycle. And so I really when it came to being able to be all in on the business. I really wanted to make sure I preserve the ability to make decisions in alignment with my values, and to make decisions that felt like me. So okay, I’m going to try and figure out how to now do one on one coaching, which is how I started as a coach.

And sell that out from the podcast, because I don’t want to do sales calls. That feels scary to me at the time. Now, piece of cake. I love doing a sales call. Love sharing with people how I can help them. But at the time, very different mindset around it. A lot of perfectionism going on. And so I needed time. I needed space, I needed the like to not have any pressure. And so having the full time job. And when I was a student as well, I was working a job basically full time hours. So I had always a job to support me ever since I started. And so it was in 2019 and I was so desperate to leave my full time job, and then my part time job, I was in such a rush because of this kind of thought of like, well, if I’m if I’m really serious, or if I’m really successful, and of course, I wouldn’t be working a job as well, and this job is a sign that I’m not successful. Is how are I thinking instead of when I was able to ground myself to get out of the rush of actually, like, there are so many benefits to having this job.

There’s, like, it’s giving me connection to people. Like, every job I’ve been in, I always have people that I’m friends with. Like, I become friends with from there and like, we like, see each other on weekends and things like that. Like, I was getting so many connection needs met, from going to an in person job, and having colleagues that I love chatting to and like hearing about what they’re up to, and helping people, like in the job that I was in as a receptionist, and then being able to have, like the commute as well, where I could listen to things. And just like there was so many benefits to having that job, getting paid a great hourly rate, I think it was like, I want to say 35 or $40 an hour, whereas my accounting job was like equivalent of $30 an hour. So I was like, I’m getting paid super well, and I now have this time and space to work on my business and to not have pressure. So that allowed me to feel safe, which then meant it was like I could tolerate feeling uncomfortable if we feel unsafe, it’s very intolerable to feel uncomfortable and unsafe, so that’s why creating safety is such a key part of what we do in pgsd.

And any time that I’m coaching you in pgsd, I’m always assessing like, how how you are feeling. Will ask you questions too about it. But how are you feeling when it comes to like, are you feeling panicked? Are you feeling rushed, like they’re signs that you’re feeling unsafe, or are you feeling grounded but uncomfortable and like, just kind of being able to assess okay? Are you needing coaching that supports you to safety, or are you feeling safe and needing coaching that supports you to get into discomfort? So that’s just so you know, for context for my PGSDers and one on ones like, that’s what one of the things I’m unconsciously thinking about as I’m coaching you, if you’re not safe, we coach you into safety, emotional safety. And if you’re then safe, we can support you into discomfort and allowing yourself to do the things you know you need to do. Really important you can’t skip the safety bit. If you have been spinning, if you have been getting your own way, if you’ve been flipping and flopping with your decisions, you are feeling unsafe. So you’ve got to do that, and that’s what we help you within pgsd as well.

So when it comes to being able to be all in on your business and defining what that is, it’s really important to know there are different seasons for that. And so for me, when I was then, I left in 2019 for my part time to went full time in my business, but I felt safe to do that, because I was, at that point, making 150,000 a year from my business, and I had figured out how to create consistent income from my business so I could pay myself and do that repeatedly. And I got to a point once I stopped being in a rush to leave, I then got to a point where I was like, oh, now I’m feeling safe, and I’m I’m not resisting being here anymore. Now I can see how, and this is like, months later. Now I can see how, actually, me not having any financial pressure on the business is like, is becoming a way to enable me to avoid discomfort, because I’m feeling safe and I’m feeling comfortable, and I need a little bit of discomfort now that I’m feeling the safety.

So then that was when I really started, and again, I was working with a coach, and always invested in myself and my business and getting that support and having someone be able to guide me along and to see the thought errors, and to be holding my hand, be there to help me with the fears of the doubts that came up, give me a process to follow, like all of that so helpful, which is why pgsc, that’s what we give you, and plus you get to see other people getting coached and all of that, which is so amazing. So having that, then I was like, hey, this now kind of feels like a security blanket, and I’m ready to feel a bit uncomfortable. And so then there came a time where me being all in looked like leaving the job, but initially me being all in on the business was, I need a job. I want a job so that I don’t have financial pressure on the business, and then that helped me grow the business and feel more and more safe to show up and take action and try stuff, to make sufficient decisions, take sufficient action, create sufficient results, that I then got to a different season.

I’m saying seasons because our perfectionist brains are like, oh, there’s only just one season, which should always just be success in pgsc, we’ve been talking a lot lately about, like, the different seasons in terms of, like, winter, and I’m trying to think of them, winter, spring, summer, autumn or fall, and how, like in nature, nothing is is just like, stagnant. That’s how it always is. There’s the cycles of nature, and like with our vegetable garden that we have, that we had, like, recently, it’s summer here in Brisbane, a couple of months ago now, we pulled up everything in the garden and lay like, put the seeds in the ground for the summer crop, and then it looked like nothing was there, because it was just these tiny seeds. And now couple months later, like, the corn is starting to grow, the tomatoes, the cucumber, like, the cos lettuce we’ve been able to pick. Like, it’s all going through the different seasons. And I say that because it’s very easy to think as a perfectionist, like, oh, there’s only one kind of season which should always be being successful and like and we kind of often, I say almost all the time, don’t recognize like, I will think about, is this person talking to me in the season I’m in, or are they talking about a different season?

Like, if for the garden analogy, if it’s summer, you don’t want to be taking advice for what to do with your garden in the winter, but in business and in anything there’s you’re just like, constantly in contact, if you consume a lot of stuff, and if you tend towards procrasti-learning and just like, kind of like comforting yourself with information because it’s scary to take action, and just trying to get more more and more information to try and make yourself feel safe. More and more information for perfectionist will at a certain point, really just makes it feel harder to feel safe, because the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. And then it’s just like, how long is a piece of string? I just need to keep learning. So we’ve got to do the work to create the safety. Maybe I’ll do a podcast episode on that and what that specifically looks like. But we do that in PGSD. It’s like such a foundation of what we do, and so you don’t want to be following advice for your garden if you’re in winter for summer and what to plant. In summer, you want to you want to follow the summer advice. In winter, you want to follow the winter advice.

The same in business, if you’re in a season where having a job supports you to feel safe and helps to not have pressure on your business so that you can then feel safe to make those sufficient decisions and take sufficient action and create sufficient results. We want to do that, but there’s a certain like other times where actually the thing to do is to not be in the job anymore, because it’s a different season. You’re now in summer instead of winter, or whatever you want to call it, just to call it. Just to continue with the analogy, this is why coaching is so powerful as well, because it’s not just advice or like, Q A and like, here’s what to do. It’s like, oh, let’s specifically talk about you and where you’re specifically at and your thoughts and your feelings and investigate it. It’s not a generic like. This is a like, here’s the answer for everyone. It’s like, okay, let’s connect with what’s going on for you. And when you listen in pgsd to everyone else getting coached, you get to hear all the nuance of like, all the concepts I share here on the podcast. You get to hear it applied in all these different situations. So you get the nuance of it, and can apply it to yourself.

And you can get coached, obviously, too, but you can apply it to yourselves. Is why I love I’ve gotten, like so much of the best coach in my life from listening to someone else being coached, because my brain is relaxed, and then I, like, actually hear what I need to hear, and I’m able to feel safe in that and take the action and to apply it to myself. So it’s, like, such a key part of pgsd. So I just wanted to share what I shared with that PGS here with you that having a job, be it full time, be it part time, can be part of you being all in on your business. You don’t have to burn the boats and cut yourself off from all the support and to prove that you’re all in or to prove that you’re going to be successful, to prove that you’re really committed. Part of commitment is making sure you feel safe to continue and to show up. And having financial support is a piece of that, a very practical piece of that. So you can always as well if you need to, if you’ve left employment, you can always return to employment.

And I was sharing as well. And then I’ll wrap up. I was sharing with that PGSDer, the book Shoe Dog by Phil Knight is about Nike and how he created Nike. And I was saying in that I got this perspective. I’m sharing with you in this episode, really from that book that I was reading, it would have been, I want to say, 2017 I probably did a YouTube video about it back in the day that he shared in that he was getting Nike up and running, and like figuring out where to get shoes and all of that. And he had, he was an accountant, and he had left accounting to be fully in on the on Nike, and then he needed more money, and he needed to have an income, and so he went back to, I believe it wasn’t his accounting job. It might have also been a professor role he had as well. But he returned to employment. I was just like, if the founder of Nike can return to employment and go on to create Nike. It is safe. It’s like, it’s safe, and it’s not a sign that I’m not all in if I have a job, and that gave me such permission. Because part of the reason I stayed at my part time job for as long as I did was because I was in this thought that, like, once I leave, I have to be gone forever, like I can’t return.

And so what actually helped me be able to leave was once I started to understand I can return. That helped me feel safe. And then when I was feeling safe and not feeling panicked and not feeling rushed. So if we think about, if you’re like, What do you mean feeling safe? If we just think about what’s the opposite of feeling safe? Big signs, as I said, feeling panicked, feeling rushed, spiraling, freezing. These are things we do when we feel unsafe. So for me, that really helped me to just hear that like, oh, so if I, if I went to employment, whether it was to a reception job to an accounting job to I mean, I feel like I have always had the belief I’m very employable and I can work for someone else. I know so many entrepreneurs like I could never work for someone else. I was happy enough working for someone else. I there’s a lot of it that I really liked, but I love coaching, and I love business and figuring that out I’m not in business because I can’t have a job. I can have a job. And I want to be in business super powerful to be in that, in that mindset.

And so just having that as an option of like, Oh, I could actually return to a job, get a job if I ever needed to. And also, there’s so many ways to make money online, besides through my own business. Like, I could be a freelancer, I could get jobs on Upwork. Like, there’s just so many things, so many other skills I have to sell, besides my coaching that I could sell. And just really being able to be like, Oh, if he could return, if he could go back, and that was fine. Well, then it could be fine for me, like that just created like, oh, actually for him, part of being all in on Nike was making sure his personal financial needs were met. And if that wasn’t going to be able to happen through Nike, then he had that through elsewhere. And so he just made sure his personal needs were taken care of. It’s not this, like, big moral judgment kind of thing. It’s just like, okay, if I’m all in, that doesn’t mean I’m all out of everything else. If I’m all in on the business, and you can think about like anything else, say, for example, I’m all in on being a mom and having kids, and my four kids, that doesn’t mean I’m with them every second of the day. It doesn’t mean I neglect everything else.

It means I’m committed to that and I can be committed to other things as well. It’s not this like I have to be all in on all out on something else to be all in on that. Actually, I’m the most all in mom I can be when I have other stuff in my life as well. That supports me to be all in with my kids when I’m also feeling fulfilled and satisfied professionally, when I’m also taking care of my health and fitness, when I’m also seeing friends and seeing family, I’m more all in as a mom, when I’m also all in on supporting myself and taking care of myself. So we want to have that mentality as well when it comes to your business and being all in and just not seeing having a job as a threat to you. Being all in, you don’t have to prove to anyone that you’re all in. And I know we just like as perfectionists, are always just trying to prove it to ourselves, because we don’t believe and so we’re trying to prove like, Yes, I am all in I’m going to leave this job or not have a job, instead of like, well, actually, I just want to do what’s most supportive. And what’s most supportive in this season is I’m going to work a job, and then at some point it will become obvious that this isn’t the fit for me anymore.

This isn’t the season I will leave the job. Or go to a different job, like I did, and something with that as well. And then I will wrap this up. Is that so Liam’s six and a half months, nearly seven months. Actually, in a week, he will be seven months old. And so typically around six months, depending what kind of philosophies you follow around parenting and sleep. Typically, a baby will transition to their own room in a cot, again, depending what you feel like. And so that’s what we’ve done for our other kids, and that was a plan. And I feel like previously, in past times, I’ve been like, hey, what age? What’s the best age to do it? And trying to think about, like, what’s the right decision? I talked about this in the most recent episode of like, trying to make the right decision, the optimal decision, the perfect decision, and instead just making a sufficient decision. And I just want to share this, because it was so powerful and such a shift like I can compare it to how I was before that. This time around, I was just like, I didn’t think about it at all. And I was just like, one day it will just be obvious that today’s the day would move him to the cot.

And even during that time, as well, like, as of a few weeks ago, we’ve just been trying to figure out the twins sleep, because they’re now uncontained in their room. And just like, love playing with each other and winding each other up, and like having all the fun. And so I’ve been putting Jack like, saying, Hey, do you want to sleep in Liam’s cot? Because Liam was in the bassinet. Hey, do you want to sleep in Liam’s cot? And be like, Oh, that’s, like, that’s really exciting. So he’d go and sleep in Liam’s cot. James would sleep in their bedroom, and they’d be separate, and then they would get their sleep, especially during the day. And so even, like, instead of, okay, well, but Jack’s sleeping in Liam’s cot. So where will Liam go. Because soon he’s going to transition into like all of that. It was just Oh, I know that when that day comes that we are going to move Liam to the cot, we will also be able to figure out a plan for Jack, because a few weeks from now, he might not even be going into the cot at all.

So there’s no point me trying to think about it right now. And so when the day came, which was maybe, like, three days ago now, four days ago, I was like, oh, today’s the day. Like, it feels like today’s the day to move him and Jack was still having naps in there during the day. I was like, oh, we’ll just figure out what to do. Let’s try this. Let’s try that. So the same kind of thing when it comes to the job, you don’t have to think about, what’s the perfect time to leave the job, what’s the right time to leave knowing you can always be employed again. It’s not like, Okay, well, they’ve left the corporate path, or they have left the employment world, and now they shall never return. Like, you can always just get a job, and that’s been such a supportive belief for me. I can. I believe I can just get a job. Doesn’t mean I won’t have to work hard for it or apply or anything. But like, I believe in my ability to get a job and my employability.

So instead of like, what’s the perfect time to leave, and how do I make sure once I leave, I’ve left forever and any of that, it’s just like, I trust that once the day comes where I’m like, Oh, I’m now in a different season, and leaving this job is like, that’s the supportive thing to do. I can just take the action to do that, and then at that time, I’ll know what circumstances I’m contending with, and I can, I can do it. I don’t have to, like, pre prepare, of, like, Okay, well, if I’m in this situation, in that situation and that, and, like, any of that, of just like, I trust that future me can figure it out. The same with the cod example, which I share because it’s just like, a random, not business related example. It’s often easy to see it more clearly when it’s a different example like that, there’s like, oh, I don’t need to think about it or fret about it or worry about it or plan about it. I know the general philosophy that we follow. I know that, like roughly what happened with our kids before, though it’s hard to remember it in all the fog, but I know roughly what we did before. It was different each time, roughly what we did and why.

And I just trust that, like on the day that it needs to happen, or we want it to happen, it will just be obvious. And so the same with your job, it will be obvious the day that it’s time for me to think about leaving, or to think about moving to a different kind of job, or if I’m working, like in an office, that it’s now the time for me to think about a like, virtual job, for example. So I just want to offer that, or not offer all of that to you. If you are feeling like you having a business and having a full time job, and having a part time job means that you’re not all in on your business or and this would be a separate episode, but if you’re thinking like, oh, I have kids, so I’m not all in, and I can’t be all in. Our perfectionist brains love to tie our hands behind our back, or I can’t be all in instead of like, oh, how might it be true that being a parent makes me even more all in on my business? Like, for me, me being a parent. Like, there’s so many great analogies that in parenting and things I’ve had to learn as a parent that are directly applicable in business, emotional regulation, being one of them directly applicable. I’m more constrained with my time. I have a really, really compelling reason to finish on time.

There’s so many ways being a parent supports me to be all in rather than telling me that I can’t be. The same with a job, I had to find how it was true, how having a job supported me to be all in which allowed me to be more relaxed, make those sufficient decisions, take sufficient action, create sufficient results. When I was tense and I was trying to get it right, when I was in a rush to leave because me being there was a sign that I was failing at business. I then was trying to make the right strategic decisions in my business. From that, I then took insufficient action because of the spinning, the overwhelm, the doubt, the toing and fro ing, and then I created insufficient results. So it wasn’t like, I just was like, Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna feel like, hey being here and figure out that out, and do like I new like I had, I realized I had to figure that out because maybe in a rush to leave was only making me stay longer. So with that said, I hope that’s been helpful. If you have a full time job, a part time job, or your parenting, or both, or anything else that is part of you being all in. It’s not something that’s stopping you from being all in. I want to also invite you into pgsd, so our next open enrollment is in January 2026, so let me flick to my notebook so I get the date right.

The date is that we will open enrollment is the 30th of January 2026, to the sixth of Feb. So for one week only, we will be open for enrollment. So you can go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to find out more about the program. Sign up for the wait list. I’m going to be sharing things with you via that wait list that is going to be really helpful for you, getting out of your own way in your business, and doing all the things that we talk about on the podcast, if you listen to all my episodes in full, if you resonate with what I’m sharing, if you feel like I’m inside your head, those are all such incredible signs that pgsd is going to be the best money ever spent on yourself and your business. So I want to invite you to join the waitlist and get ready to get yourself insight. If you have any questions about it, support@samlaurabrown.com is where you go to answer those questions, and we’ll get right back to you with an answer. But I hope this episode has been super helpful, super supportive, and I will talk to you in the next one.

Author: Sam Brown