Starting a business can get you fired.
If your focus goes away from the job then your boss can get angry. No one talks about that … but it’s true.
The point of starting a one-person business is to:
- Explore your untapped potential
- See if you can find a customer base
- Find a type of work that doesn’t feel like work
- Re-sell your 9–5 skills to more than one customer
Here’s the quiet approach I used to slowly transition out of corporate life and into a successful one-person business.
Bragging to people about your dreams is a disease.
There’s no reason to make an announcement. Colleagues don’t need to know. Friends and family don’t need to know either.
I found the more people you tell the more they try and talk you out of it. “You’re wasting your time Timbo. It’ll never work. Stay with us.”
Just because those around you are too scared to try it, doesn’t mean the goal is silly or likely to fail. Keep quiet about your business. Don’t let your ego force you to post it on social and talk about it at dinner parties.
Shutting up = Step 1
Monks are worth studying.
What they have mastered is focus, and focus is crucial to any big goal. Monks can sit for hours at a time and meditate. They move through the world differently and have a sense of Zen that’s hard to describe. Their goal is to find enlightenment and the process never ends.
Monk mode is an early 2000s idea that says to choose a big goal and focus on it with unusual intensity for a length of time.
No alcohol. No video games. No Netflix. No time-wasting. No binging on junk food that robs you of energy that could be used to start a one-person business. Just focus and flow states for, say, 6–12 months.
In that time you’ll see what’s possible.