EP10: Don’t Quit Your Day Job… Yet

Zach: Hello and welcome to the Founder Problems Podcast. Today we’re gonna be talking about not quitting your day job.

I’m Zach Oshinbanjo. My primary role at this point is to make sure that subcontractors are doing the things that they say they’re doing on construction sites.

And I’m joined today by my co-host, Sarah and Lee.

Sarah: I’m Sarah Schumacher, and I run a website agency that is currently in the middle of a rebrand. So I have been thinking about business names and having lots of meetings, and that’s, that’s what I do right now.

Lee Zuvanich: I am Lee Zuvanich, I own a consulting company that helps people quit their day job and go to market.

Zach: Well, thanks for teeing it up for me. Lee, let’s start with what is a day job? A day job? For the context of this conversation and for everyone’s understanding, would be a job that you’re able to do 100% of [00:01:00] the time. It fulfills all your responsibilities and obligations commonly referred to as a W2 .

As someone who’s maintained a day job during the entire duration of time that I’ve tried to unsuccessfully launched my own startup done a lot of 10 99 opportunities. Having that stability, especially if you’re navigating and exploring different ideas.

Those gaps and lulls in between as you figure things out can really add up. That has been one of the biggest positives I’ve given. The freedom and flexibility to explore an opportunity without this whole concept of diving 10 toes in that we’ll get into much later.

That’s my positive. What do you guys think? 

Lee Zuvanich: We’re like the positive of having a job.

Sarah: Yeah.

Is

It’s been like 15 years since I’ve had a JOB.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, let me think. It’s, it’s been I think six years for me.

Zach: My situation, but I guess you [00:02:00] guys would be like outsiders looking in and offering your insight for many moons ago when this was your reality.

Sarah: Well, I think it’s really helpful to, have so much more freedom with how you choose to start and run a side project that can turn into a full-time business if you start from a day job . people that have an idea and they’re like, oh man, the dream is to quit my job and do this full-time, I’m like, hold up.

You got a pretty sweet gig there. ’cause one of the things I would highlight is health insurance. Insurance of any kind. Frankly, if you’ve got a job that provides good health insurance and a consistent paycheck, then that means that when you talk to a new potential client, if they’re a bad fit, you’re not feeling like, well, if I say no, I can’t pay the mortgage this month.

That’s a huge selling point, and I think a lot of people get stuck in this mindset it has to be one or the other. I freelanced and did a business on the side for years, while I was working full-time and it freed me up to get things to a point to where when I did get laid off, I already had [00:03:00] this foundation that I was able to just jump into.

In my opinion, that’s the ideal way to start.

Lee Zuvanich: I daydream about just pulling a salary again, you know? ’cause it really does feel when you’re a small business owner, like if I had a job, wouldn’t be at 1:00 AM trying to figure out balancing payroll and insurance and paying myself and am I gonna keep the office going or shut it down? And all the things that business owners have to do that have nothing to do with why they started the business.

So that little daydream will pop into my mind and then I’ll remember the, stuff that kept me up before was just as stressful, but I was a lot more powerless. Instead of payroll or office rent or figuring out small business insurance or something, it would be well, my boss sent me a really cryptic email and put time on my calendar and didn’t explain it. What is that [00:04:00] about?

There’s only so much that you can do to control the perception that clients and bosses have of you. But when you have a bunch of clients, you fire the bad ones or they fire you, and then you’ve still got other clients.

But if you have one job and since most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, what is it, 60% or more?

That fear is gonna be present either way. I do say don’t just quit everything and go start a business off an idea. But the end of the day, if you’ve gotta choose between, I’ve got a book of business with clients, or I’ve got a W2 position with a job that I hope doesn’t fire me, there’s more security and power in working for yourself.

Sarah: Yeah, I was gonna say like that’s the big, that’s the big thing I’d push back on is the idea that the day job is actually more secure, because in my opinion, it is more secure to bet on yourself. It’s a different way of looking at it, I guess. It’s a different framing. You’re basically saying there’s fewer hats to wear.

I’d kind of forgotten about that. I was wildly efficient as an employee because [00:05:00] I had a notepad that I had this very detailed system for tracking absolutely everything I was working on any point in time, just on it. It is impossible to do that as a business owner.

Because your list also includes things like taxes and invoicing and troubleshooting and customer service and all these other things. So yes, so if you don’t like having to deal with a wide spread of issues, then maybe the employee is a better fit free if you just wanna stay in your lane and code all day or something, right?

Maybe it’s better to just be a developer at a big company where you can just put your head down and work.

Zach: My question there from

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: societal perspective would be then why do we have this over glamorization for people who go all in? if somebody is like, well, I’m kind of dabbling. I’m doing farmer’s markets? I sell handmade soap, and they’re like, oh, you didn’t sell the farm and go full time selling soap made out of glycerin and honey. Why aren’t you doing that?

Why do we have that kind of [00:06:00] societal expectation?

How did we get to that place if it’s so difficult and you two coming from that vantage point.

Sarah: I think it’s being stuck in the past where this assumption that you could go work at Ford and retire from there and collect a pension and that was just what you did with your life. I think maybe there’s still some underpinnings of that.

Maybe not for our generation necessarily, but society as a whole. There’s still this thing if you go work at a company for a long time, that’s the goal.

Lee Zuvanich: Zach asked what, why we glamorize startup founders who go all in instead of running their startup as a side hustle.

Sarah: But that’s what I mean, it’s still tied to that. It is still, because we expect no, like it’s.

Lee Zuvanich: glamorize the full-time worker.

Sarah: Well, that’s what it is though. We’re glamorizing the full-time worker so that if you are starting a business, you’re supposed to be a full-time worker. It’s like two sides of the same coins. See what I’m saying?

Lee Zuvanich: Okay.

Sarah: Yeah. So it’s, you glamorize the job. We have this idea that you pick a career, you work it for the rest of your life. Ideally, you go to work for a good company and you like it. So if you’re starting a [00:07:00] company, then you’re also supposed to mirror that. So. Then you would have to turn it into a company that then people can work for you, blah, blah, blah.

Right? It’s all part of the same underlying assumptions about how we work that I think are just not very modern. Like the gig economy, right? Not that that’s a positive necessarily, but it can be if you are fractional consultants, contractors, whatever, I think that’s a fantastic way to control your own schedule.

Where you can split your work between multiple different businesses. So that would be a more modern way of looking at working you are a fractional CMO for like three or four different companies.

There’s not really any framework for that a hundred years ago. That’s just not how people thought about work. So I think a lot of what we need to address is where are these assumptions coming from and are they set in this 19 hundreds era view of careers and jobs? And that also applies to startups.

What do you guys think about this idea? You need to quit to do a full-time thing though.

Lee Zuvanich: I spent [00:08:00] better part of a year planning and saving money before I quit to go be a full-time startup anything. I wasn’t even going back to working for myself. I was just quitting my more secure agency job to go be the COO of a very small tech startup that had just gotten funded had at least a year of runway.

But that still wasn’t enough for me as a single parent with two kids in private school. I was not gonna jump ship on my tech career that I had just really gotten going Just to go see what happened with a startup that could go under. And so I saved a lot of money and worked really crazy hours for about a year to prepare for that. I would never tell anybody to just quit their job and just hope it works out.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: in this economy.

Zach: One of the things I’m curious about is is how do you know when you’ve done enough validation or work within you’re doing on the side [00:09:00] that it can assume more of a in your life?

Lee, you mentioned you saved up money. Was that arbitrary? Did you say six months? Did you say a year’s worth of

how do you determine what that looks like?

Lee Zuvanich: I think I made sure I had six months in savings of worst case scenario i’ve got all this money saved up and then also I had my consulting business making me some money in the background. I had the COO position. I waited until

I the CEO got her funding in the door and I actually helped with that whole process and helped get the funding unlocked so that she could hire me with a guarantee that then I was going to make this money back along with this upgrade.

I was gonna be a C-suite level person for the first time in someone else’s company. so I had all of this of paved out for me. Then after I was with her for two years, full-time, three years total, I think, my side gig, which is now my full-time consulting business really blown up without trying like, [00:10:00] it was almost a weed I had to keep stomping down in the background.

Needs just popping up from clients that had come and found me. And I had a little dev team running really autonomously. It demanded my attention really. That’s how I made that transition. So it wasn’t so much like a wing and a prayer and I hope I make it and if I don’t, I’m gonna be calling my grandma for a loan. The business almost demanded, can we meet again this weekend? Can you pull another 12 hour Saturday, eight hour Sunday? Then meet with me at least three times in the evenings this week?

I’ve got kids and stuff going on. But she really needed the help and I was doing a lot and so she was like, I’ve got the money. Let’s go. I wanna get this off the ground. We’re ready to launch. I’m getting the funding. And she was gung-ho and there’s a lot of energy there.

And then same with my agency. It was almost noisy and insistent.

My role with the legal tech startup had started to kind of peter out ’cause [00:11:00] once you’re done automating the sales process, you’ve automated yourself out of a job. There wasn’t enough for me to do, and my business at the same time was just blowing up. So that was kind of an easy transition. I don’t say that to brag.

I think that a lot of people listening to this could be kind of annoyed with that. But I think it’s telling, Sarah has the same story, right? We

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lee Zuvanich: go looking for trouble. We didn’t insist that the world show up to our idea and give us money for it. We just cultivated experience in an area that happened to be very high value.

Then we met people who liked and trusted us and wanted to give us work.

Sarah: That’s the value of doing the side project too, is you can validate something before you go full time, because then if that does not happen, then maybe that’s the wrong idea.

I’ve heard the same thing about have six months of expenses saved before anything like that.

So, I do some research on that, but I would say like, that’s minimum. You wanna have a runway.

Lee Zuvanich: Minimum. Totally.

Sarah: [00:12:00] Yeah, see how the market reacts to things. If you can do it on the side before you go full time.

 The week I got laid off, I had so much side work, I had no idea how I was gonna get it all done. And if that were not the case. That would’ve impacted my decision to search for another full-time job, and as it was, I was like, well, let’s find a part-time job because I wanted that steady income. So that’s what I looked into.

There was just nothing at that time that I could find. It was like, well, then I’m just gonna do this full-time. But I only made that decision because I already had work, so I’d already validated the thing.

You could kind of indefinitely keep doing two things on the side. It’s when you can’t do both. When your time starts to feel like you have to make a choice between one or the other, then that’s when you think about it. But if you don’t have to quit your day job, why would you if you can do both.

Zach: Your day job needs to either be one of two things.

If it comes extremely natural to you, you’ve been in the business, you’ve done project management or operations or something, you can just do it on the back of your hand.

That gives you that flexibility where you’re not all consumed. But if it’s something like a quota driven job, [00:13:00] I would imagine it’s incredibly difficult to do anything outside of that. But I

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Zach: I don’t wanna just overate. Yeah. Keep your day job and explore your side dreams. It’s the American way and all this nonsense.

I think it’s really finding that type of alignment, where what you do for the day provides as much stability as possible so that you can afford to do the things that you want to do on the side. That’s the real context for me is how do I reach the true potential and the things that I want to be able to do within my day job? So that I can do other things.

I don’t know if it’s like walking the plank where there’s probably a natural fear, especially if you have a family, you have kids, you got things going on, you got bills to pay. You’re like, I need footing so that I can see what else I’m interested in doing.

But as long as all my core areas are covered, I think that’s a good place to be.

Sarah: I wanna add a note about creatives. It’s really important for creatives to have work that is not tied to money [00:14:00] or tied to the day job. So if you work a creative day job, someone that works Hallmark and then freelance designs on the side, right? Those things cross pollinate each other.

If you work full-time and then you have a side project that’s wildly different, but feeding that creative itch, it’s gonna make you better at the day job and smart employers should recognize that.

And let that be a thing that people do. ’cause if you can do both, both things benefit.

Lee Zuvanich: I offered to bring my clients into the agency I was at. I did not wanna quit and I went to my boss at the time and told him that I wanted to bring all my clients my book of business which was like, I think running me to 20,000 a month in revenue. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just scared.

I was really scared to go out on my own. ’cause I knew it wouldn’t be like that every month or I didn’t think it would be. And that wasn’t all my income. There’s business overhead, there’s tools, there’s other people doing the work that I’m paying. I was just saying, I’ll bring you the business, but I need a raise ’cause obviously I’m making decent money [00:15:00] on the side but you seem to need me more here than I expected.

’cause just quit and I’m doing all his work. the response from that boss was, well you just need to be a team player right now. Which meant do all of the additional work for your manager that just left abruptly without any extra pay, and good luck with that. I did not do that. I think I turned in my notice two weeks later to go be the COO of that startup and let my thing keep running on the background for as long as I could.

Six months runway was what I was saving up for before I was willing to leave and I’d been saving and waiting and still was scared to go do it. In today’s economy I would’ve saved up 12 months of runway. I know people it’s taking them more than a year to find a new tech job because of all the layoffs right now.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: So it’s a scary time to be doing this, but it’s also a scary time to not have something in your back pocket if you have just a full-time job. And Zach, you don’t have just a [00:16:00] full-time job, right?

Zach: I have a full-time job and do three. I almost, I try to air quote with three fingers to represent. do three other things, but I think a small personal disclaimer is there’s some ethical consideration too. It becomes this gray area because of these COVID tech bros really took advantage of a lot of that opportunity.

Everybody moving remote, having three

Lee Zuvanich: it called? Over employed

Sarah: Yeah, the over employed thing. Mm-hmm.

Zach: three different software engineering jobs because you can, you

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: do

Lee Zuvanich: That’s not what we’re talking about.

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: So I wanna stay away from the idea of like, well, how are you managing your time effectively if you have a day job and you’re doing all these other things.

It all winds back to managing your time, making sure that the core responsibilities and the reason that you are employed is being addressed. 

There [00:17:00] are hybrid approaches and there are ways that you can do both.

How do you navigate and balance both?

Is it like, oh, from nine to 12 I’m doing this, and from 12 to four, how do you guys block that time and that schedule?

Sarah: I think Lee and I should be quick on this because Zach has the most experience. It’s been a while since either one of us have done this, right?

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, but I remember pretty vividly what it was like because I was killing myself. It was

Sarah: Oh, okay.

Lee Zuvanich: but

Sarah: think I’ve blocked it from my memory.

Lee Zuvanich: My kids were, I think, seven and nine. they still really needed me to be there from the moment they got home from school. someone had to help them with their schoolwork, give them a snack, just be there, do the laundry. As soon as I started getting consulting work, that is the first thing I hired out. I found someone who made less of a wage than my tech consulting so that I was making a profit per hour on her time, watching my kids and making their snack and picking ’em up from school and helping them with their homework. So [00:18:00] basically my consulting time was not as well paid. ’cause obviously I’m just outsourcing a lot of stuff from my house.

But that’s the only way it worked for me. I might have been breaking even sometimes, but it was worth it because I was getting ahead professionally. That was my goal at the time. I was year four or five in tech and it was defining moment for me. So I outsourced everything I possibly could that was labor based or childcare based work. it sucked and I missed my kids. how I did it.

My work needed me there on site. ’cause this was like 2018 or so, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. So you if you left around three, to be online until nine o’clock at night. I’d get all my work done early. be online and available, but not working in the evening ’cause I didn’t need to be working. So all my shit was done. So then I’d be across town consulting in a meeting with this founder. And then on the weekends we do like a really long day, like a 12 hour day, one day.

Then the other day I’d try to reserve for my [00:19:00] kids. And then about once every three months I’d get sick from overworking myself and just lay in bed for three days. So it was hard and it wasn’t sustainable, but that’s how I did it.

Sarah: Yeah, I was gonna say, I think sometimes there’s phases and stages of life where things are crazier. And if that’s what you have to do for a certain period of time, then okay, but not permanently. I think that’s the key is knowing are the trade offs worth it right now?

And how do I get myself out of working this way?

 I remember having press checks at other printers when I worked full time. So I would probably go do that on a lunch break. Websites were not my main thing at that point.

Then all of my freelance work was done in the evening.

So I would get home from work and I would work more in the evening. I honestly cannot tell you anything about how long I spent or what that looked like at all, because I think I’ve just blocked it all out of my memory.

It worked well enough, but also, I was younger then and I probably worked a lot later. Not that I don’t work late now, but it does a number on me, so I [00:20:00] try not to.

I imagine that’s like back when you pulled all-nighters in college or whatever, and now you think about it, you’re like, oh my God. Wow. How did we do that?

Lee Zuvanich: I started pulling all-nighters again when I got funded for Appsta and it made me feel crazy. I’m too old for that

it. 

Sarah: When the Hobbit movie first came out in theaters, we went to the midnight showing. And I remember we got home and we’re like, we’re too old for this. Never again, never again.

That wasn’t even an all-nighter, it was like a midnight showing of a movie. So yeah, there are times in your life you can do that and that works. And there are times in your life you should work really hard to make sure you don’t have to do that.

Zach: Yeah. The

Lee Zuvanich: Yes, yes.

Zach: not have to do it is its own lesson. Far as like the hybrid and trying to manage and juggle both, I, can’t remember where I was working at the time and I had a pitch competition that was in the middle of the day, but I was also trying to get a new job.

I had to manage to get all the way down go to [00:21:00] the pitch location. I wanted to also stay long enough to shake hands and hang out with people. So I did my pitch and I was able to get back to the office for my regular job. That part worked out, but the job that I was actually interviewing for was actually in attendance.

And I remember at the time I told them I was like i’m just doing this university thing and they’re like, so you don’t do anything else? And I was like, that’s, I’m pretty low key.

I’m 100% available. And they’re like, we just saw you yesterday, man. And I was like, oh, okay, well I’m not getting this one. It was very, it was very awkward ’cause

Lee Zuvanich: now.

Zach: four people on the panel and they were like, yeah, we definitely saw you. we

Lee Zuvanich: Oh my God.

Zach: That

Sarah: If you’re in the startup world though, lots of people do that, that to me is not that big of a deal.

Initiative,

Lee Zuvanich: I was gonna say earlier, you do have to disclose this stuff. Like at the agency I worked at that told me to be a team player, they knew that I [00:22:00] had a side business. When I was interviewed I said, Hey, just so you know, I am a single parent with a side hustle, and I will always have a side hustle and I will not shut it down. For any employer because I need financial security, and I hope you guys respect that. I don’t even know if they asked any questions. They were just like okay, whatever. It’s cool. I got hired months later. I am telling my boss like, listen, these are the numbers.

I hire someone to cook and clean and watch my kids so I can do this consulting. It’s not cutting into my day job. I am not falling behind. In fact, you see me doing my boss’s work and more than most of the other product owners, it seemed like the time, he at that point was like, wait, wait, you’re doing what?

He didn’t say that to me. He told me to be a team player, but then someone else came to me later and was like, yeah, they’re kind of wondering why the guy that interviewed you who had just abruptly left. My boss had not asked more questions and they’re now realizing that actually your little side hustle is a competing [00:23:00] agency. But I disclosed it

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: And I was very open about it and I tried to give them the business and I tried to take my clients to them, but the clients were like, no, we don’t wanna be at some big slimy agency. So I actually had to go to HR and be like, listen, I know that we didn’t explicitly outline in my contract that I have a business on the side, but I did share it and it was approved, so I want that in writing and they worked with me. Then the day after we finalized it and got it signed is when I put in my notice.

I just made sure I had all my ducks in a row and my bases covered and everyone knew everything at all times, and I would never suggest that anyone should do otherwise for so many reasons.

Don’t go be a startup founder, no offense doc, ’cause you didn’t disclose your thing. But like I would say, don’t go be a startup founder that’s out here shaking hands and pitching, not being transparent with your whole community because the basis of [00:24:00] fundraising is I’m an upfront person and you can trust me with your money. So you don’t ever wanna mess with that,

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Zach: That’s super valid. Now, I recognize it and I actually became friends with the guy that had that interview with. He’s great guy. Great guy. 

Lee Zuvanich: Nice.

Zach: I think for my hybrid approach, I live my life largely digital first. So much of what I do and the things that I’m involved in, whether it’s my actual work, W2 or some of the side project and things that I do, do either 72% of it on my phone. And or

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Zach: on a laptop.

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: as long as I have either of

Lee Zuvanich: Yep.

Zach: with me, I don’t need to be like a dog in a yard and a tether. I can go and do whatever I

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Zach: allowed me a great deal of flexibility where I can work on site, I can get all my work done in coffee shops, there’s secure access for any [00:25:00] files that I need to access.

So that has ultimately been the biggest game changer is that I’ve try to make sure whether I’m carrying my remarkable around so I can digitize any notes that I have in perpetuity or my phone or my laptops. Both of them with me. I think it’s just allowed me to manage and juggle both of them at the same time.

But that being said, one of the hindsight things I can say about having a W2 is that it has put me in a position where I feel like that security or that feeling of not needing to off the plank could make you just feel so safe where you don’t need to try.

You’re like, well, I’m tired of eating ramen and spam. It’s gonna make my spleen explode or something. So you’re tired of eating it, so you have to succeed at that point.

So it encourages you so you can be playing it too safe. And I think maybe in some of the things that I’ve done, maybe that was the reality. I played it entirely too safe. I never felt threatened. I’m comfortable. I don’t need [00:26:00] to succeed. It’d be nice to, but I didn’t need to. You know, so I think that could be a significant factor deciding, you know, role the W2 and your other projects play in your life. I don’t know if you guys have had those types of experiences.

Sarah: I think that’s a really great point. We should have also started with the caveat that all three of us do things that just require an internet connection and a device. So this advice doesn’t necessarily apply if you have to be on a job site or something.

So I I’m glad that you highlighted that. ’cause Yeah, we’re approaching this from a perspective of a knowledge worker who works on a computer all the time. So keep that in context. But yeah, as far as being comfortable yeah, that’s a huge thing I think is absolutely accurate.

My goal has never been like to make a bunch of money, I’m not financially motivated or I was not originally financially motivated. So I wasn’t super great about that in the beginning. After my kid was born, I had to be, because the pressure was, well, now I have to pay someone to watch him so that I can work, [00:27:00] right?

So if I am paying, I better be making enough money to cover that, and then some, because otherwise, why am I even doing this? And yeah, I love what I do, but that’s not a good enough reason to be like, well, I’m gonna pay someone to watch my kid so I can work.

To make the money to pay someone to watch my kid. Why would you do that? Right. So I had to get better about the finances after he was born. And the other thing I would say with that is I think an ideal scenario for a lot of entrepreneurs is if your partner is not entrepreneurial, one of you has a day job and one of you is the entrepreneur.

I know that there are couples that they both run businesses. That’s wild to me. ’cause there’s just so much extra chaos. My husband and I are very much opposites in a lot of ways. So he works a full-time job and so there’s that consistency of what he does. Mine is also fairly consistent. I would say. I’ve been deliberate about how I’ve grown things.

With that, not being challenged or feeling too comfortable, I think a lot of whether or not that’s going to work for you is dependent on the type of personality that you have. So if you’re the type of person that [00:28:00] likes pushing the envelope and you like the risk and maybe you need that swift kick to the pants to get you moving, maybe that would work out well for you.

I’m very risk averse, that just sounds stressful to me. There’s a reason that I have never taken funding. I don’t ever plan to take funding. I bootstrap what I do and my growth trajectory is very lifestyle growth biz. I’m not going for hockey stick because that doesn’t sound fun to me.

That sounds terrible. So I know my personality, I know it works for me. But if you know that about yourself and that you know that you show up to the challenge when you are forced to deal with it, then maybe you factor that in. If you know I have my six months runway, like do I quit?

Whatever.

Lee Zuvanich: I was thinking about that the other day actually. Because I’m currently in a coding bootcamp that is full-time and very intense, and I’m doing it because was a hobbyist coder for years and years, and I want to be able to do full stack development at an enterprise level. I’ve been a systems architect. I’m not a [00:29:00] else, I threw myself into something where I think I’m on the older end of the class. I mean, it is people who are. Like nontraditional learners. ’cause it’s a bootcamp of course. So a lot of them are in their late twenties to mid thirties. I’m 39.

And I was up till four in the morning last weekend because a fund reached out and once an updated version of my deck and says that I’ve made it through a bunch of rounds and they wanna gimme funding for my startup just kinda outta nowhere. this would close the pre-seed I’ve been working on for a year in a very half-assed kinda way. So I’m realizing, I’ve thrown myself in yet again to a situation where got a nonprofit that I work on very part-time that seems to be gaining traction without me even realizing it. I just keep finding the website and finding the GoFundMe and wanting to help donate.

People found somehow my startup information and came and said they want to me funding [00:30:00] again, which is how the, my first round of funding got started. And unlike Sarah, I did want that. I dove in head first and was like, let’s go. I wanna scale.

Found the bootcamp opportunity and I signed up knowing that I was probably gonna be in the middle of trying to move across the country or whatever I’m doing with my location and getting my kids into college, running the startup, the nonprofit, my consulting business, which is landing another client right now slowly, big enterprise client. So I have all these balls in the air. And I used to do disaster relief, and it was similar. It’s like I love a challenge, I love the chaos, it doesn’t stress me out.

If I see a little glimmer, like a little sliver of a window where I can cram another thing in where I get to learn and grow and change and give something back to the world, I’m gonna. that again, which I think I need more therapy for. I’m learning if I see a sliver of free time, don’t sign up for another [00:31:00] thing that’s resting time or family time.

Like let’s claws some of that back. ’cause I will get myself into a situation where I’m overwhelmed all the time,

Sarah: Sounds like an extrovert problem.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, I thrive. Well, I think I’m an ambi. I’m like you, Sarah. I, it wears me out really. But I started gravitating back towards coding and got into the bootcamp actually, because I realized through 2020 and not going into an office, I’m actually happier when I can hide from people

Sarah: Oh,

Lee Zuvanich: do

Sarah: interesting.

Lee Zuvanich: work and bury myself in it. And you know, how they say to do the work that makes time disappear. For me, that’s coding and design. Systems design. If you put me into Figma or VS code just give me a problem to solve, like a business system problem, I could spend 18 hours on it or a spreadsheet, really complicated spreadsheet without barely looking up from the computer or remembering to eat.

And I just love it. Supposedly that’s what you’re supposed to do. It scares me actually how [00:32:00] fast I can just go blow through a day. But I enjoy it. So I’m trying to grab those opportunities while I can, while I’m young and healthy, and still just barely agile enough that I can stay up late and to work on a pitch deck.

I won’t be doing this in five or 10 years for sure. I’m gonna be done. I hope.

So yeah, I am throwing myself in, like you said, Zach.

Zach: You’re the example of the guy throwing himself in. I looked at throwing myself into the abyss and I decided not to Sarah’s not interested in the abyss. So I think

Sarah: Nope.

Zach: that’s the distinction between all of us.

Sarah: There you go.

Lee Zuvanich: in the.

Zach: Yeah, I guess it ultimately decides more to one of Sarah’s original points is you have to decide what’s the end state that you’re seeking out? Because if you’re doing the, the W2 just for enough security to provide support for the other opportunities, then you’ll keep doing that. But I think if you’re doing enough of your primary role, just a career trajectory, you’re trying to get VP or [00:33:00] whatever, some sort of executive role, you’re gonna keep going and going and going into that until it makes sense. And I think there’s a certain point when that convergence of opportunity just becomes just murky. , Might be where I’m at, I’ve reached a point where I get almost like these cluster headaches where I’m thinking about all the code switching and context switching that I have to do like, oh, let me talk about this.

Let me talk about this. The systems exist, and that was one of our previous episodes of having systems in place so that you can juggle different things at the same time. But I think there’s still an opportunity loss there that I’m starting to get to the point where I’m like, okay, what I do is my primary role, my day job. I want to jump into that and go 100% and just live in that zone rather than some of these other things that haven’t necessarily panned out or worked out. At a certain point, it becomes a distraction and it’s as much as everyone wants to believe it, doing that for 4, 5, 6, 8, whatever, 10 years, [00:34:00] ineffective.

And I think that’s kind of the breaking point. So I had to make a decision. Do I want to keep trying to do all the things or what does my life look like? It’s a very pivotal moment of me trying to determine that. I wish it, I wish something like that could happen much sooner, it took four years of just insanity to get to the point where I’m like, oh yeah, do something else.

Lee Zuvanich: I think that’s the synopsis of this episode really is you can try a lot of different tactics and then at the end of the day, once you’ve tried. things alongside a W2 job. See who you really are and what it feels like. Do you want to live this way? Do you wanna juggle multiple things?

Do you wanna just stick with your W2 and say, I tried it, but side hustle that I thought could turn into a full-time thing is actually pretty much a grind and is exhausting. It take off and you love it and it frees you [00:35:00] and you don’t know what will happen? You have to just go do it and, and it will tell you, experience will tell you.

Sarah: I’ve never experienced this myself, but I know that some people actually have great full-time jobs or work for really great companies or work for really great people. I hear there are unicorn positions like that, right? I haven’t either, but I know people that, that have been in that position and it’s like, well, why would you quit that?

Just because like everyone says that you should start your side business? On the flip side of that, I’ve known people that had their own business. And had a contract client that hired them full-time to go in-house, which is kind of the ideal way to find a full-time job, to be honest.

I know two different people that have done that. ‘Cause you already work with them. You know you like the team, you know you like the company. And if you aren’t in love with the running of the business part of it and finding clients, then why not take that full-time job offer?

At the end of the day, you need to decide what’s right for you and where you’re at, at that point in time. And not just do something because you think you’re supposed to, or everyone tells you you should. I think there’s a lot of mistakes that happen [00:36:00] when people don’t seriously think about what works for them individually and not just use these expectations of whatever everybody else says they should do.

Zach: I think as a primary takeaway for myself. I’d say don’t quit your day job. As evidenced by my own lived experience, I’m very very happy that I didn’t try to Silicon Valley Tech bro it, and just say, yeah, this is gonna work a hundred miles per hour, unvalidated idea, no product market fit.

That logic would’ve been unsound for me with a family and trying to do life. So yeah it’s been there. It’s allowed me to explore an idea, multiple ideas cradle to grave. And I think you have that opportunity, if you slide into a full-time position by some of your work and it allows you to still explore your interests, I’d say go for it.

Do not prematurely quit your day job.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, I would say you just have [00:37:00] to take stock of what your values are. Then remember to keep those in sight as you’re doing this experiment because the sexiness of having a startup, especially a funded startup, get in the way for a while and make you forget, I also value sleep and time with my kids, and do I really wanna do this idea that I had overnight, that I went and did a pitch competition and I got some money, but do I have it in me to do it for 10 years at a grind like this?

Does it really serve me and my family really? or was it just a cool thing that I tried and maybe I’ll try another thing someday that will be less exhausting and painful. I actually just decided to shut down the Airbnb that I worked for a year on. I bought a house and it and put it on Airbnb and made some money at it. Got a property manager and it was just up and down and overall [00:38:00] not as profitable as I expected. And just yesterday, the property manager was saying, are you sure you wanna sell the house? You could make so much money if you just kept it going.

I’ll pay for half and we’ll split everything and let’s do it together. I really wanna see this happen. And I said, no, it’s not in me. I’ve got too many other things that are distracting me right now that are bigger opportunity, bigger risk, bigger reward. I’ve gotta do the coding bootcamp and I’ve also gotta get funding for the startup and go get it launched.

And Airbnb was supposed to be a low key background thing that just made some passive income. And it turned into, not that it turned into like every week there was another issue. So. I’m so sorry, but no, I will rent it to you or sell it to you long term and that’s it. And you can do whatever you want with it.

And she’s like, nah. Once you try it and you realize, oh, this pipe dream. It was a pipe dream. So assessing that. then looking back at your values and what was the real goal here will help you this experiment. Maybe [00:39:00] the day job is really where it’s at. often daydream of being Zach, so there’s that. 

Zach: So that was founder problems. Today we were talking about not quitting your day job. please like, subscribe, tune in on your favorite podcasting application. Download it. Leave some comments, message us directly, preferably Sarah or Lee, not me. You can message me if you want to, but this has been founder problems. Everyone have a good day.