How to quit a corporate job to start your own business
Leaving a traditional desk job requires managing financial risk with accumulated savings while breaking the cycle of repetitive corporate employment. This transition allows individuals to take full responsibility for their own success or failure without getting trapped in another standard 9 to 5 position.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Switching between different corporate desk jobs
- 2Considering low-barrier service businesses like pressure washing
- 3Exploring part-time or consulting work to maintain income while testing business ideas
- 4Keeping a day job while trying to build a business on the side
- 5Transitioning into consulting or freelance contracts temporarily to pay the bills while building a scalable product
- 6Build what you want to do in the smallest iteration possible to test if it works
- 7Work your job plus your business until you absolutely cannot do your job any more
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I mentally cannot do another 9–5 desk job. I have $70k saved and need to build something of my own. What can I realistically do?”source ↗
“I’ve tried switching jobs, but everything I’m qualified for ends up being another desk job. And I just can’t do it anymore.”source ↗
“Putting in my two weeks notice on Tuesday. May end up being a bad decision, but I’m ready to either succeed or fail with the only person to blame being myself.”source ↗
“Good luck! I'm about to take the plunge myself, I'm kind of one foot in, one foot out.”source ↗
“I left my high-paying corporate job last week. Announcing my departure, goodbye calls with everyone, and the waiting period was all brutal.”source ↗
“My current career is being automated away and I want to start fresh, do something weird, different, something that makes me uncomfortable even if I lose money in the process.”source ↗
“I've gotten depressed over the last year seeing so much of what I've spent my whole life doing being solved by prompts so I want to make an actual physical product or provide a service.”source ↗
“Anyone make this transition from knowledge work to something straight up being a real, actual physical service / a real product? How was it? What did you learn specifically in this transition?”source ↗
“I come home everyday defeated and drained so I’ve been slowly working on things but half assing everything”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 4How to plan a business from scratch without missing key steps
- 11How to start a business with no industry experience
- 2How to find a new business idea after shutting down a company
- 6Funding my business out of my own pocket
- 2How to avoid buying a 60-hour-a-week job instead of a business
- 4Why am I so terrified to start my own business?