How I Quit My Full-Time Job For Blogging

How I Quit My Full-Time Job For Blogging

Ok, don’t get me wrong – I know I’ve still got a long way to go! But last month I said goodbye the the corporate world so I can pursue blogging. And that to me is fucking amazing.

I don’t want to leave out that I’ve gone back to the part-time reception job from my uni days (because bills) but it’s still a leap of faith. And it’s a leap of faith that, until a couple of months ago, felt wildly out of reach.

So I thought this would be the perfect time to share how it all happened.

I hope you find it helpful. And I hope you see that you don’t need to know where you’re going to get to where you want to be.

PROMOTE YOUR BLOG WORKSHOP

If you came here for blogging inspiration, you’ve found this blog post at the best possible time! I just want to quickly share something that’s going to give you the exact steps get the attention you deserve.

Due to the success of my previous blogging workshops, I’m teaching a two hour live workshop on how to promote your blog including how to overcome the procrastination, fear of judgement and self-doubt that’s been stopping you!

This isn’t one of those fake ‘live’ workshops btw. On 22 July 2018, I’ll be sitting in front of my Macbook and sharing everything you need to know to start getting noticed online. And giving you the motivation, mindset and confidence you’ll need to do it!

You’ll also be able to get my personal coaching and guidance on your blog ideas, a workbook to help you apply everything and you’ll become part of a community of like-minded bloggers.

If you’ve been struggling to get your blog noticed (or you completely abandoned it), now is the time to change that! Blogging isn’t new anymore and the longer you get in your own way, the more competition there will be and the harder it will be to get noticed. You already know you’re more than capable and I’m going to give you the exact steps you need to follow.

To learn my social media secrets and join a like-minded community of up and coming bloggers who finally getting out of their own way, click here to find out more and sign up for my Promote Your Blog Workshop!

 

SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND

Before I get into my story, I just want to say one thing.

It’s so easy to connect the dots looking backwards. To glamorise the struggle, to colour insignificant events with meaning and purpose, to paint every disappointment and setback as though they were meant to be.

But I really want to emphasise that it’s never felt like I had any idea what to do.

I’m not trying to downplay the effort I’ve put into getting here – there have been A LOT of early mornings. But I just want to let you know that this story isn’t as seamless or straight-forward as I will undoubtedly make it sound.

Dispersed between the events below are long stretches of nothing in particular. My life has been filled with frustration, uncertainty and all the usual mundane tasks. And I haven’t been able to make sense of most of it.

All of this to say – I don’t think we really need to ‘know what to do’ with our lives.

I think the key is just to do. To make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time and continuously put one foot in front of the other, regardless of how unsteady we feel. For that is the only way to get anywhere worth going.

HOW I MAKE MONEY

Just one more thing before I go back to the beginning, promise!

I want to tell you how I make money from blogging since that’s the question I always get asked and it might be on your mind.

Basically, I created an online course in September 2016 called Dream Habit: A 28-Day Habit Bootcamp for Perfectionists. I sell it and people buy it. That’s the crux of it. I make money from my online course.

Ok, now let’s go back to the beginning.

How I Quit My Full-Time Job For Blogging

HOW IT ALL STARTED

I’ve always loved reading blogs but I could never find what I wanted most – a blog that talked about the struggle of having no idea what to do with your life.

So I decided to make it myself.

And it wasn’t because I had the confidence to believe I could (I wish!) but because I was talked into it – by the world of business podcasts.

I stumbled upon business podcasts purely because I spent a lot of time in my car and I HATED back-to-back radio ads. Little did I know these podcasts would introduce me to people who believed that there was more to life than paying the bills. People who gave themselves permission to do what they truly wanted to do. And people who were willing to tell me all their best business secrets, for free.

Even though I had no intention of ever starting my own business, I listened to these podcasts every second I could. And when you spend a lot of time surrounded by people telling you that you’re good enough, you kinda can’t help but believe it.

So I decided to start a blog. And that is where this story begins.

On a quick side note – it’s for this reason I recommend podcasts to everyone I possibly can. If you want to know which podcasts I listen to, you can find out here.

THE SELF-DOUBT BEGINS

So it’s August 2013. And I just want to mention that, at the time, there was already a lot of chat about it being ‘too late’ to start blogging. So please, ignore everyone who tells you that you’ve missed the boat – now and forever.

Ok, so I was beyond excited about blogging. I’d come up with a name for my blog that wasn’t completely embarrassing and I’d setup my very own self-hosted WordPress site.

And then it came – the crippling self-doubt. So crippling that I didn’t post anything on my blog until December 2013. And when I did, I felt like a complete idiot. What the hell did I know? And why the hell would anyone care?

Fun times.

But I won’t re-hash it all here – I’ve already written a huge blog post about all the fears that came up when I started blogging. Let’s just say the struggle was REAL. I was scared of being rejected, scared of being boring, scared of appearing full of myself, scared of failing, scared of succeeding. Literally just all the fears.

And so began the emotional rollercoaster ride that was, and is, blogging.

I’M TOO SCARED TO TELL ANYONE

Because I was already criticising myself and my blog to a point I could barely handle, I felt like I had no choice but to keep it a secret from everyone I knew.

It took me months to tell my boyfriend Steve about it and years to tell anyone else!

And while I’m embarrassed that I had such little confidence in myself, I think it’s really important to share this. One, because most people appear to be more confident than they actually are (which can make us feel like we’re the only ones who feel scared) and two, because I think it’s ok to keep it a secret.

As embarrassed as I am, I don’t regret my decision – I needed to find my feet in private.

So if there’s something you want to do but you’ve been putting it off because you’re worried about what other people might think, just keep it under wraps. It can be just for you until you’re ready to share it.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO

So I’d started Smart Twenties but (1) I was too scared to share it with my friends and (2) my perfectionism was so crippling that I rarely posted on it.

As you might imagine, it’s quite hard for a blog to gain any sort of momentum when that’s the case. So it didn’t. And it sucked.

I was also about halfway through my dual degree of law and commerce (I majored in finance) and not feeling particularly excited about either. And I was doing diploma of French – because why not add a little more to my overflowing plate.

Honestly, at this point in time I was just trying to tick all the boxes.

I was told I was smart but had no idea what I wanted to do, so I just did what everyone suggested. And I don’t regret this. I learned so much from university about managing myself, my time and my expectations. I learned how to get things done, how I work best and I had heaps of fun too. So no regrets.

I graduated from uni in July 2015 and started working as an accountant (by the way, this process took nearly a year of applications and interviews throughout my last year of study – I wish it was as easy as I just made it sound).

I didn’t study accounting but I didn’t want to be a lawyer and I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the finance world. And one of my friends loved her job at one of the big accounting firms. They were hiring. I applied. I got a grad job. And then I started (as I mentioned, nowhere near that straight forward).

So yeah, that was 2015.

How I Quit My Full-Time Job For blogging

I FINALLY STARTED TRYING

In April 2016, I invested in an online course for bloggers about how to make an online course. I’d been thinking about buying it for months and months but didn’t actually do it until I realised just how much I’d been getting in my own way.

You see, I spent the first few years of blogging wanting everything to feel natural and effortless. Which meant that, while I wanted to be successful, I didn’t want it to look like I was actually trying (in case I failed). Which meant that I didn’t actually try. So I got nowhere.

But when I invested in the online course, I finally decided to stop holding myself back. And I started making the time, instead of trying to ‘find it’. Which meant waking up at 4am to work on my blog before going to my full-time job. And I know – 4am is a little extreme. But I had zero creative energy after a full day at work and a million excuses, so 4am it was.

And it worked!

My blog started to gain momentum and I began the mammoth task of creating and launching on online course while working full-time. And let me just say – I’m so glad I didn’t realise how much work this would be because I would have probably never done it. But more on that in a bit.

I MET JEN

So by mid 2016 I was finally making some progress with my blog and I’d set a date for the launch of my online course.

Then I met another blogger – Jen. She’d reached out on Twitter to ask if I wanted to catch up and chat about blogging, since we were both in Brisbane. I was nervous we wouldn’t have much to talk about but I didn’t have any blogging friends, so I said yes. And I’m SO glad I did.

Jen quickly became the support system I never even knew I needed. Creating an online course, especially while working full-time, was more challenging than I’d ever imagined. Not because of the sheer amount of hard work that was required (though there was A LOT) but because of the emotional rollercoaster that went along with it.

No one had given me permission to create an online course and there was no guarantee anyone would buy it. It was up to me to decide that I was good enough.

And that was not easy to do.

But the fact that Jen was having exactly the same freak outs at exactly the same time helped me stay sane and we both launched our online courses in September. I’ll always be grateful that she came into my life when she did and I truly can’t overstate the importance of finding people who are doing what you want to do!

And I also just want to mention here that all those months of 4am wake up calls and the fact that I was creating and marketing an online course while working full-time, going to the gym everyday, trying to have a social life and not completely neglecting my boyfriend did lead to burnout. Multiple times. But more on that in another post!

How I Quit My Full-Time Job For Blogging

I FINALLY STARTED BELIEVING IN MYSELF

Even though I’d launched my online course and people were actually buying (which was so fucking cool by the way) I still didn’t think I’d ever be able to leave my full-time job to pursue blogging.

It just felt so incredibly out of reach.

But finally, at the end of 2016, I started believing it might actually be possible (mind you, I didn’t believe I’d be able to leave until 30 June 2017 but at least it was a start). Here’s how it happened:

HOW IT HAPPENED

First of all, my personal trainer Jase told me that he was moving to Dubai.

Ok, so I know A LOT of people who’ve moved overseas but for some reason this really hit me – I didn’t have anything exciting to look forward to. And I don’t mean that in a depressing way, there were heaps of stuff I loved about my life. But it was so damn predictable. I was doing exactly the same things, at exactly the same place, with exactly the same people.

I just remember thinking ‘I wish I was doing something exciting like that’ and then realising that I could. And even though I didn’t do anything with this thought straight away, it planted a seed.

I then started reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, which I’d gotten for Christmas from my little brother Alex. I’d already read a lot of books like Tools of Titans (which I highly recommend by the way) but I’d started to notice that I never actually did the things they told me to do. I just read them, got inspired and then moved onto the next one.

So this time, I made the effort to do everything the book told me to do (I’ll be writing a blog post on how I did this – watch this space).

One of the those things was an exercise called fear-setting – an exercise which helps you see that your fear around a certain decision isn’t nearly as bad, as probable or as irreversible as you imagine.

This exercise was AMAZING because it got me to realise that the real reason I was scared of quitting my full-time job wasn’t because I was scared I might fail or because I was scared of what other people might think – which were the vague fears that had haunted me for years. I was scared because I believed that quitting my full-time job would somehow lead to the end of my relationship with Steve (in my mind, my blog failing would lead to financial dependence which would lead to unbearable pressure on our relationship). And once I got clear on this, I could see it for what it truly is – fear.

The second thing I did was to handwrite an affirmation 15 times a day, every day.

I’d never been into affirmations before, but the way they were described in Tools of Titans made me curious – an affirmation wasn’t claiming to be magic. It simply re-focused your brain so you could see opportunities you might otherwise miss.

So, starting Christmas 2016, I wrote this sentence 15 times daily – ‘I will celebrate my last day at my job on 30 June 2017 or sooner’.

I’ll be honest, I felt like an absolute idiot for the first few days. But after a few more days, I started to believe it. And after a few more, I was totally and utterly convinced – I would celebrate my last day at my job on 30 June 2017 or sooner (if you want to find out more about this whole affirmations thing, I highly recommend reading this).

The final piece of the puzzle was a book called You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero (which had been recommended to me in the Smart Twenties Community Facebook group – thank you!).

It was just one, tiny sentence in that book that gave me the epiphany I needed – I could quit my full-time job and I could quit it immediately. I could go back to my old part-time reception job, which I loved, and have SO MUCH TIME for blogging.

As I was saying, it’s so easy to connect the dots looking backwards and to colour potentially insignificant events with meaning and purpose. But I truly don’t believe that I would’ve gotten the idea to quit my job, and then acted on it so quickly, had everything above not happened. I immediately messaged my friend who still worked there and, one week later, the perfect position came up. I still had my doubts but Steve and my friends helped me through it. And for that I am so grateful.

I applied, I interviewed, I got it, I handed in my resignation on 7 February and I celebrated my last day on 10 March 2017 – more than three months earlier than even my most ambitious-self had anticipated.

SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND

It’s been incredibly hard to write this and there are already a million things I already want to add and change (still not over the whole perfectionism thing).

But the point was really just to show you that you don’t need to know where you’re going to get where you want to be. And that it’s never too late to start believing in yourself.

And to thank you for all your support, I appreciate it more than you will ever know.

HOW TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE

Since publishing this blog post, I’ve filmed two Youtube videos to share more of this journey with you! The first is about how I finally figured out what to do with my life and the second is about how to stop putting off your dreams!

Make sure you watch these videos if you haven’t figured out what to do with your life or you know what you want to do, but you feel too scared to do it! They’re not really about blogging – the advice I share can be applied to absolutely any situation!

Don’t forget to subscribe if you like the video, I post a new one every single day!

Sam xx

Thinking of making a career change but don't feel ready? Find out how I took a leap of faith and quit my full-time job before I felt ready!
Find out how I changed careers and quit my full-time job before I felt ready. I share how I got the confidence to do it and how I made my big decision.
I share how I overcame self-doubt, stopped procrastinating on my dream and got the confidence to quit my full-time job for my dream job. Must-read if you're thinking of changing careers!
I share how I overcame self-doubt, stopped procrastinating on my dream and got the confidence to quit my full-time job for my dream job. Must-read if you're thinking of changing careers!
I share how I overcame self-doubt, stopped procrastinating on my dream and got the confidence to quit my full-time job for my dream job. Must-read if you're thinking of changing careers!
Thinking of making a career change but don't feel ready? Find out how I took a leap of faith and quit my full-time job before I felt ready!

You don't have to know what you want to do with your life. Find out how I quit my full-time job for blogging, without having any idea what I was doing with my life.
I never thought I’d be here.

Author: Sam Brown

  • Hi Sam! I just found your blog and can’t believe it has taken me this long to find it! I started blogging a little over a year ago and am just now starting to find my footing. I have dreams of blogging full-time and reading your story has been so inspiring. I am in the fear stage and just need to put my nose to the ground and actually do it! Thanks for putting this all out there. Jessica
    http://www.roomforgelato.com

  • What you described in “Something to keep in mind” sounds just like the path to success! It’s been really interesting to read how you started your blog and how everything developed. And it will be even more interesting to see what the future holds for you! 🙂

    I am really glad that you had the courage to start your blog, since it has helped me a lot with my self development. Which is also the main reason why I chose to start a blog of my own. I want to help people who experience the same feelings as you did in the beginning. To overcome their fear so they can start achieve their full potential!

  • I’m so glad you’re back Sam! I’ve missed your motivating posts 🙂 thank you for sharing this, it’s great to see how you’ve got to where you are today. I would love to quit my job for blogging one day!

    Hannah x
    hannahsophia.co.uk

    • Thanks so much Hannah, that really means a lot! Persistence and effort is everything. Just stick with it and I have no doubt you’ll be able to 🙂

      Sam xx

  • Sam! I’m sooo glad I heard you on Asia’s podcast! You’ve quickly become my favorite blogger! I love how real you are and as a protectionist I relate to you so much! Congrats on leaving your job! Even though I have know idea exactly what I want to do, I know I love blogging and I know I love being creative. Your story gives me hope I’ll figure it out. <3

    -Yvonne
    http://www.TejanaMaluca.com

  • Congrats! I relate to SO many things you say, write about and have gone through… minus the actual moving THROUGH it part of course. I’m still definitely a huge work in progress there! But it’s super awesome and inspiring to hear about how well you’re doing at working through the madness and actively creating the life you’re meant to live and person you’re meant to be. Keep showering us with your down to earth, super relatable advice! 🙂

  • I loved reading this post! It felt as though I had written this myself, pre-quitting my job stage. This gives me motivation to continue on my similar journey, and forgo my perfectionism tendencies (aren’t they tough??). Thanks for sharing your journey!! Not often do I come across such honest and real stories leading to the success of a blogger 🙂

  • Beautiful, beautiful! Can totally relate to everything said as a Blogger.

    Motty Inspires
    mottyinspires.com

  • This is incredible! This is my life! This is what I have been feeling for months now!! I keep saying I need to quit my job because it brings me no joy. I need to start a blog/YouTube channel because it is what would make me happy! But I’m scared. But I will watch your videos and read more of your blogs and I will get there! Thank you!!

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