So you've officially become torn between getting a job or starting your own business....

....What to do??

I've seen this conundrum play out hundreds of times, and hopefully this experience can help guide your decision.  Read on my friend:

1.) Let's start why it's awesome to own a business:

Running your own business is super glamorized because people see all the good stuff about it.....and to be honest, there ARE a lot of good things about it:

When you're running the show, you get to do ANYYYYTTTHING you want!  Do you want your "global headquarters" (aka you with a laptop) located on a beach in Costa Rica?  Cool.....go!

You get to write off a shit-ton of stuff on your taxes. You even get to save more money by being a business owner (a normal ROTH IRA allows you to sock away $5,500/year in savings tax free, however a business SEP IRA allows you to sock away $53,000/year.  That's 10x more.  Giggity).

You get to be your own boss, call all the shots, decided what you want (and don't want) to do everyday.  It's 100% up to you.

Many first time entrepreneurs go through this short-lived euphoria of setting up their business and it's exciting and fun!

This is known as the "Playing Business" Phase.  It's where you get caught up in making business cards, making overly-complex business plans, thinking of incorporating an LLC, hashing out who's gonna be your C.T.O. and C.F.O. and Chief Whateverthefuckyouwant Officer.

And by all means, you SHOULD enjoy aspects of this!

It's fun!

It's exciting!

It's creative!

But it also doesn't make you ONE GODDAMN DOLLAR.

Soon this "Playing Business" euphoria starts to wear off, and reality starts to set in.  In whatever business you go into, there's going to be a lot more unexpected expenses and hassles than are generally reported.

It kind of goes like this:

With that in mind, let's talk about the BAD parts of owning a business:

2.) The BAD parts about owning a business:

Let's just start with this my friend:

You tend to see the "highlight reel" of someone's life, not the bad sides.

For example, here's two pictures that make running a business seem awesome:

1.) this is a pic of me having fun on a $5,800 gravity flight where a plane flies in parabolas over the ocean and creates a "weightless" environment:

Pretty sweet huh?  That flight wasn't cheap, yet the disposable income from my business allowed me to do it without thinking much of the price.

....and in this picture below I took a two-week-long workcation to Thailand. Here I am working in a hammock on a private beach:

Seems pretty relaxing right??

These two pictures you'll see on my social media accounts make owning a business seems pretty fun!!

But what I don't show you is that for every 1 cool picture like that, there's 5 or more boring pictures like this:

That's a picture I took....

....in a dark-ass office.

....all alone.

....at 1:45am.

....on a Tuesday night.

....and my contacts were dry and hurting from looking at a screen for 12 hours.

....doing work I didn't want to do.

THAT my friend, is the part of owning a business that doesn't get much attention. Because I run my own business, it's 100% up to me to get things done, and sometimes this is what it takes.

Owning a business doesn't seem so great at that moment.

But people cherrypick what they choose to view something as.

It's great working on your passion or working for yourself.....but there WILL ALWAYS be sour patches in the journey.  Lots of them.  The most successful people I know have one thing in common: They simply work a ton.  That's it.

Yet that "boring" part of owning a business is rarely focused on.

I pulled these quotes from some of my notes from interviews where people ask about a work/life balance:

The answers they gave all elicited laughs from the audience, but behind those answers are people who essentially work nearly every waking hour they have.  

When a lot of people think about owning a business they imagine freedom, money & passion.......not 24 hours a day of work.

3.) The GOOD parts about having a job:

This part should more accurately be called "Good parts about having a GOOD job."

If you're working a minimum wage fast food job and you're barely scraping by on that salary.....I'd imagine your job doesn't seem that great.

However if you're highly paid engineer and you're making a great salary.....life probably isn't THAT bad!

A steady job can provide you all sorts of sweet stuff:

• You get a steady Income.
• You learn new Skills.
• It's hard to F-up TOO badly.
• You learn how large companies operate.
• You show up from 9-5 and take home a check.
• You can balance work life and personal life.

I think one of the greatest benefits of having a job is the stable income. Every single month you get a nice check!

Stable income is great in a lot of ways.  You can measure out exactly how much you can spend, therefore you can plan & prepare very well.  You are pretty much guaranteed this income.

You don't have a feast-or-famine mentality like you sometimes get in a business.

It would seem that if you:  Work with people you like + Working on projects you like + Get salary/perks you like = You probably like your job.

I actually don't see the problem with having a job like this.  In fact I know tons of people at great companies who like their job at around an 85% level, and live a great life because of it!

4.) The BAD parts about having a job:

While having a stable income and job can be great, there's some obvious downside of having a job:

• Your schedule always revolves around your job, not your own social activities.
• You're sometimes forced to do things you don't want to do.
• You're sometimes forced to work with people you don't like.
• You're often pigeonholed into the same work everyday.
• You get a stable salary, but the potential for that number skyrocketing higher is very low.

Being forced to interact with people you don't like + Working on a project you don't like = You probably hate your job.

As with anything in life, there's positives and negatives.  And despite all the good things a stable job can bring, it'll also bring some bad things.

5.) Get A Job or Start A Business? It depends on your Risk Tolerance:

A lot of young people working at a company will say this line: "I don't want to be like those old people who've been working there for over 30 years!"

But that's not looking at it correctly.  Those "old people" are in their 50's and 60's and are trying ride out the cushy gig they've got going!  They treat their job as a way to earn money and live a nice life.  What's wrong with that?

If you're young, hungry and aggressive.....then perhaps that lifestyle isn't for you YET.  But stack on 20 years of life experience, get a spouse, pile on some kids, get roped into a mortgage and maybe the view will change:

It really just depends which stage in your life you're at.  The guy above needs some serious cash flow coming in to support his family, and he probably spends most of his time in one place near his home because of the kids' school, and he probably prioritizes family above work......so maybe he WILL want to ride out a cushy job for all it's worth.  A stable 9-5 job is probably ideal for this guy at this stage.

However if you're freshly out of college and wondering what to do in life, assuming you have low financial burdens, you can pretty much DO ANYTHING YOU WANT for a few years with very low consequence.

6.) What to do if you're curious about starting a business:

Without fail, this is the specific path I've seen for people who've successfully transitioned out of their jobs:

Keep job --> Work on side project in spare time --> If it gains traction, go harder --> Quit job when side income becomes greater than job.

I'd say there's an 80% chance of you actually not enjoying running a business at all, or not willing to push/sell hard enough to make it.  If you can't successfully run a business "on the side" then you probably won't be able to run one full time either.

You have to be CURIOUS and WORK HARD at whatever you do, and expect that you might not make money for a loooonng time.

What if I told you the "marketing blog" you're starting will NEVER make a cent.  Ever.

Would you still do it?  Would you still slave over posts at 3am trying to make them perfect?

A lot of people want to follow their passion, but ALSO expect it to make hella money.  These are conflicting views, as your passion may not always make you a lot of money.

But also without some passion, it's unlikely you'll push hard enough to make a business.

Here's a thought experiment:

There's two YouTube channels started on the same day:

YOUTUBE CHANNEL 1.) A grown man starts a YouTube channel because he saw that some YouTuber's make lots of money.....so he starts doing product review videos and putting a bunch of affiliate links in the description. He hopes his new YouTube channel will make him millions like that famous YouTuber he is copying.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL 2.) A kid in his parents house who is absolutely obsessed with tech gadgets, computers, and programs makes a channel for fun where he reviews tech and does tutorials on hundreds of programs.  He does it for fun and it's his hobby.  Making money from it never entered his mind.

Which of these two YouTube channels will end up succeeding?

Channel 2 is the answer.

Here's a real life example of that:

This is Marques Brownlee.  He's been one of my favorite tech reviewers on YouTube for years.  He produces super high quality gadget reviews, has good opinions about new tech stuff, and gets access to all these gadgets before they come out:

He's super influential with 3.5million+ subscribers. I was surprised to find out that currently he's only 22 years old.  One would surmise that being such an influence in tech AND so young: "This kid came out of nowhere!!!"

However if you look back on his YouTube channel, it goes back over 7+ years to when he was 13 years old.....and he did literally HUNDREDS of tech reviews and how-to videos per year since he was 13!!!!

In our How To Become A Famous YouTuber research we analyzed how long it took Marques to become popular, and the data shows it took him over 4 years of getting no traffic before he started taking off....and in that time he published HUNDREDS of videos just for the love of it!

You can see his oldest videos here and notice he published several times per week for YEARS before gaining a lot of traction:

Seriously, check out his old archives and click "more videos" to see them all.....it's literally HUNDREDS OF VIDEOS PER YEAR.

Clearly this kid had a passion for reviewing and showing off tech, and also one hell of a work ethic to consistently put out this many videos by himself, in his spare time.

So is it really any wonder he's one of the top tech reviewers today?

Is it really any wonder the guy that posts 4 tech reviews and amazon affiliate links gets frustrated "he made zero dollars" and promptly quits?

I can't wait to see Marques' face when someone asks him "How did you get 4.8 Million subscribers so quickly?"

His answer will be: "I consistently filmed, edited, and published over 2,000 videos over the course of 8 years."

By doing something on the side, you will quickly figure out if you love it or hate it.

Many people romanticize the idea of owning their own business.  Many want to "be a blogger" and in their head imagine some nomadic lifestyle with money magically pouring in.

I'll hardcore push these people to START their own blog, even if it's ghetto at first.  Normally at this point they spend 90% of their time doing dumb stuff like picking out a blog theme or obsessing which email service provider to use in the future when they have 800,000,000,000,000 subscribers.

Almost without fail, within a month they've stalled out.

They stop blogging because they quickly realized they hate it.

We're humans and we tend to romanticize what it'll be like "on the other side."  We see only the positive aspects, but until we experience those negatives, it's difficult to realize those negatives even exist.

It's hard to figure out what you like.

It's easier to figure out what you DON'T like.

"Bro....you haven't answered my question. Should I get a job or start a business??"

Here's my ultra-short answer:

If you have job + love it = Stay at job.

If you have job + hate it + curious about business = Milk your job long as you can and start something on the side.

If you don't have a job + don't have a business = Try both.

Try a bunch of things on the side.  Remember, it's easy to find out what you DON'T like.

Job Vs. Business Quotes From People I Respect:

My opinion is just ONE opinion.  Here's a few other viewpoints on keeping a job vs starting a business:

Hope reading this post helped you clarify if you want to go down the path of starting a business or getting a job! You can download this entire post and signup for my email list to get more great info about which way to go:

Here's some related posts to keep reading:

• How I make money (video): How I've managed to make money without ever having a job.
• How to scam someone: Why some people get sucked into thinking "a business" is the only way.
• Consulting as a side job: If you want to "try something on the side" might I suggest starting with consulting?  It's profitable, low risk, and can be done while still working a job.
• How to make your first $100: Here's the exact scripts and steps to make your first $100 on the side.
• Business Idea Generator: This will help you drum up new ideas for a business.

P.S.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE hearing people's stories or opinions on this subject.  Comment below letting me know which you think is better (Starting a biz -or- having a job)?  What did you choose your path, and why??