I’ve Always had 2 Jobs, Now I Feel Naked

Money never comes easy…

I’m writing this article on my first day as an full-time online entrepreneur. This moment of my life just happened last Monday but I couldn’t write the article until the end of the day. On Thursday, May 12th, I quit my job for a 13 month sabbatical to go on a one year road trip across North and Central America. The next Monday, it was my first day as a “free man”. I feel both excited and scared.

I’ve always had two jobs

The reason why I feel scared is because I’ve always had two income sources since I started working at the age of 16. Back then I was working at a Dollar Store (and I ended-up marrying the owner’s daughter!) on Thursday and Friday nights and delivered bread on Saturday mornings. Let’s say the night was short between my Friday night shift (getting home by 10pm) and my Saturday shift (waking up at 2am). But the money was good and I like my independence.

Since that very moment, I’ve always held two jobs. When I did my bachelor’s degree, I was working 30 hours a week in a small repair shop selling computers, a company I created with one of my friends while still delivering bread 3 times a week. Then, I started working in the financial industry and kept driving a truck over the weekends. When I finally got tired of waking up in the middle of the night, I created my online company.

The idea of having 2 independent sources of income at the same time opens the door to saying no whenever you want. You don’t have to bend over to keep one job as you already have something else to rely on if your “plan A” doesn’t work out. I can say that some of my employers didn’t like this since they lost all power over me the minute they realized I could still make money without working for them.

Now I feel naked

In order to leave on my road trip, it was impossible to keep my day job. I was able to combine my 4 weeks of vacation and a 12 month sabbatical for my project. Therefore, I haven’t “lost” my job, I just lost my first source of income. For the next 13 months, I will rely solely on my online income to live and support my family. I guess this is why I feel naked. For the very first time of my life I don’t have a plan B. In fact, my plan “B” is my only plan!

Since I started to work extra hours on my sites a while ago, I feel more confident in my ability to leave my retirement funds in place over the next 13 months. Still…. There is an additional risk factor. Because I feel this way, I’m going to work even harder to make sure I have a good cushion in case anything bad happens.

It’s a dangerous thing to work on your own

The first day in my home office went well. I started my day with a 6 km run and I was fully energized for the rest of the day. The advantage to work from home is that I didn’t have to wake up at 6am to run, I woke up later, spent some time with my kids and left for my run once they were gone to school. I then started to work around 9am.

As the day progressed, I realized there were three things I will have to be very cautious about if I want to successfully work from home.

#1 Getting a plan is everything. When I opened my computer, I felt I had all the time in the world to do all the projects I wanted. However, I realized I could easily get lost among the things I want to do. It was a good thing I made a schedule during the weekend with clear tasks to be completed. I tried to combine different activities such as;

Commenting on other blogs,

Writing a blog post,

Writing a newsletter,

Doing stock research,

Improve website monetization on 2 of my properties,

Answering emails,

Work on an affiliate deal.

#2 Do not get distracted. A difficulty I’ll be facing while at home for the first month of my sabbatical is not to be distracted by other tasks. I obviously have a big to do list in regards to my road trip. It’s easy to spend too much time on these tasks and not get my online tasks done or vice-versa. I also have my toddler (Caleb, 4 yr old) who’s running around the house. While he is able to play by himself, he still requires that my wife and I take care of him while our other children are at school.

#3 Do not overwork. The thing when you work for yourself is that there are no “closing bell”. You can basically work whenever you want and for the numbers of hours you want. This is what I’m experiencing as it is now 6pm while I’m finishing this post. It’s so easy to stick to my computer or come back to it to see if I’ve receive a new email or answer. It will be important to not only establish a list of tasks but also a schedule to make sure I don’t spend all my life in front of my computer!

I can’t wait to see what is coming!

I’m feeling very excited about this whole project and while it is scary sometimes, I’m pretty sure it will be an amazing adventure!

 

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