Want to be your own boss?
1. Find out what you’re passionate or highly skilled at (and actually enjoy).
2. Find a way to monetize that as a side hustle.
3. Grow that side hustle to match your current income.
4. Quit your job and make your side hustle your main business and continue to grow it.
These are the exact steps I followed when working to launch Ace Studios.
To some, my success seemed to happen all at once in 2018 when I left a good-paying job for Ace Studios, received multiple accolades and media attention for making the jump.
However, I’d honestly been working at this, whether consciously or subconsciously, since high school.
I knew that I loved graphic and website design and that I could make good money doing it – just not where I lived at the time. So I moved to Reno in 2011 after getting my AA degree in web design at a community college.
By this time, I *knew* I wanted to work for myself and be my own boss, but I didn’t know anyone at the time who had done it, as I had always been taught that when you find a stable, good-paying job with benefits, you held onto it for dear life. The typical survivor’s mentality.
However, I was never happy working for someone else, and got bored and frustrated with the sameness of it all. I LOVE variety and getting to do new and challenging things all the time.
So from 2011-2018, I hustled hard to network, teach myself many new marketing skills, surround myself with people smarter than me that could act as mentors, until one day my gut was telling me, quite loudly, that it was now or never – take the risk. Make the leap.
I left my job with no savings, but with fire in my belly, a decent client roster to pay my bills at a minimum, a solid professional network, and the willpower to make it work.
It’s now 2022, our agency is celebrating 6 years in business. We have hit 6-figures and continue to grow. We provide employment to a very talented and diverse group of people and have helped dozens of organizations reach their goals.
If I can do it, so can you. It may take time, but it’s so worth it.