91. Building a Business Without Quitting Your Job (For Moms Who Want Financial Security)
Starting a business doesn’t have to mean giving up your financial stability or taking risks that keep you up at night. For many moms, the desire for flexibility and fulfillment runs headfirst into a very real need for security, consistency, and income you can count on. If you’ve ever felt torn between wanting more and needing to feel safe, this episode is for you.
In this episode, I talk about what it actually looks like to build a business without quitting your job and why this path is not playing small or delaying your dreams. I unpack the mindset shifts that help financially security-minded moms move forward without forcing themselves into leaps that don’t feel aligned. I also share why trying to rush yourself into full-time entrepreneurship can backfire and how to create momentum without panic.
You’ll hear how to think about income, capacity, and timing in a way that supports both your nervous system and your long-term goals. Whether you’re just starting to explore a business idea or already building on the side, this episode will help you see a safer, steadier path forward that still leads to real growth.
If you're ready to see exactly how to protect your finances AND grow your confidence around starting, join my *FREE* webinar, Start a Business Without Fear of Failure or Financial Risk. It's happening on Friday, February 20th, 2026, at 1 pm ET. Click here to register.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why you don’t need to quit your job to make meaningful progress in your business.
How financial security can actually support faster, more sustainable growth.
What it really means to build momentum without forcing urgency.
How to build confidence and capacity while maintaining a steady income.
What to focus on in the early stages of business when stability matters most.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
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Full Episode Transcript:
This episode is a bit of a curveball. Instead of telling you how to start a business so that you can quit your nine-to-five, I'm going to tell you why to stay in your nine-to-five so you can start a business. I know, blasphemy for a podcast called How to Quit Your Job.
But if you're financially cautious, risk-averse, and secretly worried about what starting a business could mean for your family's financial stability, this episode is a must-listen. I'm going to show you how to build without taking on unnecessary financial risk and how to start taking action in a way that actually feels safe and strategic.
Sticking with your nine-to-five might feel impossible now, but I'm going to show you exactly what you need to do it.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. You're listening to episode 91 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast. And today, I want to throw you off a little bit. Instead of talking about how to start a business so you can leave your nine-to-five, I want to talk about why you might actually want to stay in your nine-to-five so that you can finally start a business. And I know that's not what you expected me to say, and I know that's not what you want to hear. But if you're someone who considers yourself financially cautious and risk-averse, I'm going to talk about why staying at your nine-to-five is best for you and your business.
So all my risk-averse moms, just like me, this episode is for you. This episode is for you to create safety in a process that feels so incredibly risky. I think one of the biggest myths in entrepreneurship is that it's only for the bold people, the ones who are willing to bet the farm. And a lot of you don't identify that way. You're responsible, you're strategic, you care deeply about protecting your family's financial stability. And I love that, partly because that's exactly how I operate.
But somewhere along the way, we've made that personality trait mean that entrepreneurship isn't right for us or that we need to wait until we are ready to take on big risks in order to follow our dreams. And I just don't believe either of those things are true.
When we think starting a business is too risky, it's usually because we're thinking about the process all wrong. We think the only way to do it is to quit, invest a ton of money up front, and hope it works. But I want you to know that you can go all in mentally and physically without needing to go all in financially. You can build slowly and you can mitigate risks. You can maintain your paycheck while you develop the asset that will eventually replace it. You can maintain your paycheck while you develop the asset that will absolutely replace it one day.
Your risk aversion is not the problem. It just needs to influence the strategy. And for so many of you, staying in your job a little longer than you might actually want may be the safest, smartest, and most powerful way to build something sustainable. You do not need to become a different personality to start a business. You just need a strategy that fits your personality, okay?
Staying at our nine-to-five job, it doesn't have to be seen as a weakness. And in this episode, I'm going to explain exactly why it's one of the wisest parts of the strategy and exactly how the moms I work with are able to do both, even though they come to me feeling like they have zero time or energy for life at all.
Now, I want to be really clear. I'm not changing my stance. The nine-to-five was not designed for moms. School ends at 3, the workday ends at 5. The math does not add up for a household with two parents that are working nine-to-five jobs. And yes, in a lot of ways, the nine-to-five can feel insufferable. You probably feel undervalued, underappreciated, absolutely annoyed, and probably like you could do your job with your eyes closed at this point. And starting a business with financial stability is just the safety you might need to actually start taking action.
So then the big question becomes, our job drains the life out of us. It's soul-sucking. I'm underappreciated, and it's a huge chunk of my physical time. How could I possibly also start a business while staying in these conditions? And I have answers for you. One is a reframe that will change everything. And the other is about how to build more capacity in your life right now so that you can do both.
And not even just so you can do both in terms of your career, when you build capacity, you also have more time and energy for your marriage, for your kids, for yourself. Increasing capacity will be a skill that you practice for your business, but it will sneak into all areas of your life in really amazing ways.
So first, let's talk about the reframe. If we're going to use risk aversion strategically and keep that steady paycheck while you lay the foundations of your business asset, we need a different way to see your job. Most moms I talk to come to me saying some version of, "I want to start a business so I can leave my job. It's not flexible enough. I'm undervalued. I feel like I don't have purpose. I'm not fulfilled.”
And I ultimately celebrate and support this, or I wouldn't have a podcast called How to Quit Your Job. But after I get curious and ask a few questions about finances and risk aversion, the next thing I usually say to these moms is, "Let's figure out first how you can feel better day to day at your job so you have energy to work on the business while maintaining your steady paycheck."
Your job is your ATM. Your nine-to-five is not your enemy. I know you don't want to hear that, but here's why this is so important. When you decide that your job is the enemy, it drains you even more. When you expect your nine-to-five to fulfill you, to validate you, to appreciate you, to inspire you, you're constantly disappointed. And that disappointment turns into resentment, and that resentment turns into exhaustion. And you end up giving all of your emotional autonomy over to your job. Your job then has so much more power over you. We have to take that power back.
So instead, let's decide that our nine-to-five is just our ATM. We release all those other expectations that haven't come to fruition over the last decade or more. And we can just feel really good about the one promise that our job is good at keeping: money showing up into our account regularly. Its job is to deposit money into your account on a regular basis.
Money shows up, benefits are more affordable, you can stay with your in-network providers, that financial stability box is checked. That is the job of your job. It is not responsible for fulfilling you. It is not responsible for making you feel valued. It is not responsible for inspiring you.
Now, don't get me wrong, you deserve to feel valued and appreciated. You deserve to have a job that fulfills you and inspires you, 100%. I believe that. But if that's not happening right now in your nine-to-five, expecting it will continue to create misery for you and drain you.
You can accept the money this company is paying you while you start the process of building financial stability somewhere else. The business that you have ideas for, that's what's going to fulfill you and inspire you. And I promise you, as soon as you get started, it's going to immediately start to fulfill you and inspire you even before your first dollar is made.
When we see our job as an ATM, we stop taking every little transgression at work personally. We stop making every annoying email drain us and get to us. We stop spiraling about whether this is what we're meant to be doing and making comments from our boss or coworkers mean something about our worth. Things at work become transactional. You put in some time, a little bit of effort, and you get money in return. You use that money to fund the new asset you're developing, the business that will eventually replace this ATM.
And if you're risk-averse or financially cautious, the ATM will actually calm your nervous system and create safety for you to take action in your business, knowing that you aren't risking your family's financial stability. It gives you runway, it reduces pressure, it allows you to experiment without panic. You can go all in mentally, learning, and building, and showing up without going all in financially.
And that is such an important distinction because what I see happen all the time is women think they have to prove they're serious or committed by quitting. They think they have to quit to have the time to actually work on the business. But you can be serious and committed without so much financial risk. And you absolutely can start and build a business while you still have a nine-to-five and a family and all the other responsibilities. I've seen it too many times for that not to be true.
Your ATM buys you time to build your business with clarity and creativity instead of desperation. And when you stop expecting your job to be your purpose or validation of worth, amazingly, it drains you less. You become neutral. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't have a client text me about their ATM in the context of something annoying happening at work, but they are able to let it go so much easier because they know it's just their ATM. That ability to shift from anger and resentment and frustration into a neutral place emotionally is so key for increasing your capacity.
So let's talk about that second piece: capacity, because I know that your brain is definitely saying to you right now that you barely have energy in the margins of your life. So doing both feels impossible. And so we want to talk about energy. Most moms I talk to tell me that even though their job drains them, it's a job they could do with their eyes closed. They might feel undervalued and underappreciated and often annoyed and frustrated, but the job itself isn't wildly challenging for them anymore.
So what's actually draining you then is not necessarily the work or the tasks that you're doing on a day-to-day basis. What's draining you is the mental and emotional energy leaks that come with the environment. Now, I've also talked to moms who do have high-stress jobs, jobs in the emergency room, jobs with very high-risk scenarios, jobs with kids that are very high risk and heavy.
And even then, it's not so much the actual tasks that are draining us. It really is the mental and emotional energy leaks that come with the environment. So even if you are in a high-pressure, very stressful, heavy role, I want you to still open up and hear this because it will be so valuable because I would argue that if you have a truly objectively stressful and high-pressure job, there are even more energy leaks that you can plug.
So the actual problem is that our time and energy are being mismanaged and often wasted. And in that world, that is our reality. It's our reality where we get home at 5:30, we rush to make dinner, we snap at our kids, we rush through bedtime, we collapse on the couch or in bed for a couple of Netflix episodes, fall asleep, maybe feel groggy the next morning, dreading doing it all again.
So I want to recognize you and say like, in this moment, if that is your reality, you are likely making decisions from that reality and that mindset. And of course, this would feel impossible to do from that mindset, to maintain our full-time job and also start a business.
If we don't start getting really good at managing our energy in our nine-to-five, I promise you that the stress and drama that your brain creates from your nine-to-five will continue into entrepreneurship. That's why so many new entrepreneurs burn out because they haven't learned the skill of managing their mind and down-regulating their emotions to create capacity for more, to create more energy, to create more time.
Your brain doesn't suddenly calm down just because you quit your job. It will then find new things to get worked up over. I go into even more detail about this in episode 79. So if you want to dig deeper on this piece, definitely also check out that episode.
But what we need to do for capacity is we have to plug up those energy leaks, okay? If you don't really know what I mean by our job creating energy leaks, one of my favorite examples of this is one we have all either experienced ourselves or we can imagine. So let's say you're at a dinner party or maybe you're even just having a conversation with your partner or best friend. If you imagine two different conversations, and really imagine them, like feel them.
Imagine in one you're venting about how much you hate your job. You are getting worked up, you're angry, you're frustrated, maybe even depressed and exhausted afterwards. Maybe your partner or your friend is validating you, and it feels good, but it's also like bringing up a lot of frustration about your current situation, okay? That's conversation number one.
And in the other conversation, let's imagine you're talking about this new business that you just started, new business development. You're energized, you're amped up, maybe it even makes it hard to sleep that night because you're excited about business ideas. And this happens all the time to moms that I meet with. Even just at the consultation phase, talking for an hour about their business idea is energizing. I've had people tell me directly like they couldn't sleep because their brain was just so excited.
Now, multiply that conversation where you're venting emotionally tenfold. That's a pretty draining and exhausting reality. But I also want you to imagine multiplying the conversation about your business tenfold. We can exponentially multiply energy by focusing on the excitement of our business in conversations. And that's just one example. And if we're no longer focusing on venting about how much our work sucks, we save so much energy that can be used in more useful ways, like starting a business.
Here's the part we don't always acknowledge. We don't have to complain about work all the time. That's a choice. We don't have to complain about work because it's doing its job. Money is showing up in our account. It's funding our dreams, and we appreciate it for that. And listen, the best part of this piece that I work on with clients is that once we start plugging these energy leaks and we start focusing on things that energize us and light us up and stop focusing so much on how much we hate our job or everything it's lacking, the people in our lives start to notice.
I love when clients tell me that their partner or mom or kids or whoever in their life says that they are a completely different person. They love this version of them. I mean, our partners will always be an open ear to us, but there is a point where they probably are exhausted too of hearing us complain about our work. So I love when clients come to me and they say that people in their lives are noticing a shift in energy.
And it's not because anything about their work environment changed, right? They are still at their jobs, but because they stopped letting work get to them and they started focusing time, energy, and conversations on something that really energizes them and lights them up, that has changed everything. You can maintain your full-time job and start your business, but it requires managing your mind, increasing your capacity, and being honest about where your energy is actually going. If you plug those energy leaks, you can absolutely do both.
Now, I want to talk about what I actually think is risky. When you leave your job and your new business has to pay the bills immediately, everything changes. Things that you loved doing and you were passionate about suddenly become not so fun anymore. You are no longer building from inspiration and excitement. You're creating and building from necessity and pressure.
You never want to depend on your new gig to pay the bills immediately. Even if you had great success really early on in your business, trying to create clients because you need to pay the bills is an energy that drives people away and muddies up the entire process. When you need the next client to cover your mortgage, when you need revenue because there's no steady paycheck coming anymore, and your family's expenses are still high, your nervous system will feel that. And so do other people, the people you're talking to.
Creating a business without financial pressure is the best mental space. Can you do it without that cushion or safety? Yes, people do it. That's how I did it. And I'll be honest, in going that route, I really wish I would have had the tools that I teach now to increase capacity, to do both for longer early on. My husband and I saved up six months of my salary so that I gave myself a six-month runway to start creating revenue.
We were very intentional about building that safety net, and that runway absolutely mattered for me because it allowed me to experience, build, and learn, test things without panic or ideally without panic, but let's be honest, I'm risk-averse, and so I had to do a lot of mind management to get to a place where I wasn't panicking about money and finances in every single conversation and in every single decision I was making.
Now, in a perfect world, your new business would just immediately become your ATM. And sometimes that does happen. I've had clients, especially those who start consulting in the industry of whatever company they were in. I've had clients who leave the corporate structure with a client lined up because they already have credibility, they have such a strong network, they replace their income or at least meet their financial goals with one or two clients pretty easily.
Honestly, I've had clients who were like, it just felt easy for them to do that. But you do not want to bank on that. Okay? You don't want to go into entrepreneurship with the weight of covering bills and expenses sitting on this brand new idea because when you're building under pressure, your brain gets so much louder.
I want you to think about it like this: your job, your nine-to-five, is not only protecting your income, it's protecting your creativity. All that being said, I do want to make a quick caveat. There is a situation, of course, where under no circumstances do I recommend staying at your job or doing the thought work to reframe it as your ATM. And that's when there are cases where your well-being is at risk or drastically deteriorating.
Now, I'm in the business of empowering people. No matter the environment, there are a lot of situations where we have more power than we think to change the temperature in the room, where we are able to turn something that feels bad and yucky and sticky, and we are able to create a situation where we feel energized and valued and content. But there are certain situations where it's best for us physically, mentally, and emotionally to leave the job.
So if you're in that bucket, we can still do it in a way that creates safety, whether that's saving money like I talked about before in my scenario, creating a new ATM all together that isn't in an abusive environment or toxic environment, or doing a ton of thought work to start your business and create revenue from a place of abundance instead of scarcity, where everything that you do, you are making sure that you're checking your energy and checking yourself to make sure that you're staying in give energy versus get energy.
And if you're intrigued by that concept of staying in give energy instead of get energy, I did a whole episode on the concept, episode 76, Attract Clients Naturally: The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything. Definitely check that one out if you want to dig a little bit deeper into that concept. But all of these things are doable. So there's never going to be an obstacle that we can't overcome, but I also want to honor the risk-averse personality in some of you and really let you know that there are paths and strategies that can honor your risk aversion.
So here's what I want you to take away from all of this. You do not have to burn down the financial stability that you've created in order to start a business. The only thing you need to be able to do both is capacity for it. And increasing capacity is a skill. It includes thinking about your job differently so it doesn't take so much energy. It involves knowing exactly where your energy is leaving on a day-to-day basis and getting better at conserving that energy by doing the mind management work that needs to be done for you to feel energized on a regular basis.
If you're risk-averse, that's not a weakness. It just means your strategy needs to match who you are right now in this moment. Will entrepreneurship change you and probably have you see and feel risk differently? Absolutely. But for now, you can stay in your job, you can see it as your ATM, you can plug the energy leaks, you can manage your mind, you can build slowly, create a runway, and truly mitigate some of the risks that has been holding you back. For many of you, that's the smartest way to do it, and you can do it.
And if this episode resonated, if you are one of my risk-averse mamas out there, if you've been feeling stuck, like you can't take action until you're ready to take on risk, but you are risk-averse and have a lot of fear around financial stability, I'm going to be hosting a webinar, a live webinar on Friday, February 20th, Start a Business Without Fear of Failure or Financial Risk.
We're going to go deeper into exactly what this looks like. So deeper into some of these concepts from this episode, how to protect that steady paycheck while you build, how to increase your capacity so it doesn't feel impossible to do both, and how to create real certainty without putting your family's financial stability on the line. I know that it feels risky to start a business because we don't know if it's going to pan out. And there are elements of certainty that we can create in the process for ourselves.
Will there always be a little bit of uncertainty? Yes, in everything in life. But there's actually little nuggets of certainty that we are not taking into consideration that we can actually build into the process. I'm really excited to talk about creating certainty. And I've actually talked about it before on this podcast. So if you want a sneak peek into that, there's episode 67 for that.
All of these episodes that I've referenced are going to be linked in the show notes. So you can go to jenna.coach/91 and build yourself a little queue for these next episodes that you want to dig into.
If you are risk-averse and also want to be living a bigger and bolder life, please register and come to that training on February 20th. It will change everything about the way that you're approaching this work and thinking about this work in a way that feels motivating.
You can register by going to mom.jenna.coach/risk or just go to the show notes, jenna.coach/91, and everything you need to know and the link to register will be in there. It's going to be a mind-blowing conversation, and we're going to shift everyone in the room from scarcity to abundance in one hour. If you are risk-averse, you are also probably more regularly operating from a scarcity mindset.
So I'm going to show you exactly how we can move into the abundance so that we can be making decisions from what we want, not from fear, okay? I want to move everyone from playing not to lose to playing to win. I think so many of us are operating from, how do I make decisions to play not to lose? And we just want to be going for the win, 100%.
Until then, be sure to follow the podcast. You can keep getting these tidbits of coaching in your ear each week, which is so powerful in building and maintaining momentum. Let these episodes inspire you to move forward and take action and grow into this bigger, bolder life of entrepreneurship. I'm here to support you along the way. Okay, I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
But if you're financially cautious, risk-averse, and secretly worried about what starting a business could mean for your family's financial stability, this episode is a must-listen. I'm going to show you how to build without taking on unnecessary financial risk and how to start taking action in a way that actually feels safe and strategic.
Sticking with your nine-to-five might feel impossible now, but I'm going to show you exactly what you need to do it.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. You're listening to episode 91 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast. And today, I want to throw you off a little bit. Instead of talking about how to start a business so you can leave your nine-to-five, I want to talk about why you might actually want to stay in your nine-to-five so that you can finally start a business. And I know that's not what you expected me to say, and I know that's not what you want to hear. But if you're someone who considers yourself financially cautious and risk-averse, I'm going to talk about why staying at your nine-to-five is best for you and your business.
So all my risk-averse moms, just like me, this episode is for you. This episode is for you to create safety in a process that feels so incredibly risky. I think one of the biggest myths in entrepreneurship is that it's only for the bold people, the ones who are willing to bet the farm. And a lot of you don't identify that way. You're responsible, you're strategic, you care deeply about protecting your family's financial stability. And I love that, partly because that's exactly how I operate.
But somewhere along the way, we've made that personality trait mean that entrepreneurship isn't right for us or that we need to wait until we are ready to take on big risks in order to follow our dreams. And I just don't believe either of those things are true.
When we think starting a business is too risky, it's usually because we're thinking about the process all wrong. We think the only way to do it is to quit, invest a ton of money up front, and hope it works. But I want you to know that you can go all in mentally and physically without needing to go all in financially. You can build slowly and you can mitigate risks. You can maintain your paycheck while you develop the asset that will eventually replace it. You can maintain your paycheck while you develop the asset that will absolutely replace it one day.
Your risk aversion is not the problem. It just needs to influence the strategy. And for so many of you, staying in your job a little longer than you might actually want may be the safest, smartest, and most powerful way to build something sustainable. You do not need to become a different personality to start a business. You just need a strategy that fits your personality, okay?
Staying at our nine-to-five job, it doesn't have to be seen as a weakness. And in this episode, I'm going to explain exactly why it's one of the wisest parts of the strategy and exactly how the moms I work with are able to do both, even though they come to me feeling like they have zero time or energy for life at all.
Now, I want to be really clear. I'm not changing my stance. The nine-to-five was not designed for moms. School ends at 3, the workday ends at 5. The math does not add up for a household with two parents that are working nine-to-five jobs. And yes, in a lot of ways, the nine-to-five can feel insufferable. You probably feel undervalued, underappreciated, absolutely annoyed, and probably like you could do your job with your eyes closed at this point. And starting a business with financial stability is just the safety you might need to actually start taking action.
So then the big question becomes, our job drains the life out of us. It's soul-sucking. I'm underappreciated, and it's a huge chunk of my physical time. How could I possibly also start a business while staying in these conditions? And I have answers for you. One is a reframe that will change everything. And the other is about how to build more capacity in your life right now so that you can do both.
And not even just so you can do both in terms of your career, when you build capacity, you also have more time and energy for your marriage, for your kids, for yourself. Increasing capacity will be a skill that you practice for your business, but it will sneak into all areas of your life in really amazing ways.
So first, let's talk about the reframe. If we're going to use risk aversion strategically and keep that steady paycheck while you lay the foundations of your business asset, we need a different way to see your job. Most moms I talk to come to me saying some version of, "I want to start a business so I can leave my job. It's not flexible enough. I'm undervalued. I feel like I don't have purpose. I'm not fulfilled.”
And I ultimately celebrate and support this, or I wouldn't have a podcast called How to Quit Your Job. But after I get curious and ask a few questions about finances and risk aversion, the next thing I usually say to these moms is, "Let's figure out first how you can feel better day to day at your job so you have energy to work on the business while maintaining your steady paycheck."
Your job is your ATM. Your nine-to-five is not your enemy. I know you don't want to hear that, but here's why this is so important. When you decide that your job is the enemy, it drains you even more. When you expect your nine-to-five to fulfill you, to validate you, to appreciate you, to inspire you, you're constantly disappointed. And that disappointment turns into resentment, and that resentment turns into exhaustion. And you end up giving all of your emotional autonomy over to your job. Your job then has so much more power over you. We have to take that power back.
So instead, let's decide that our nine-to-five is just our ATM. We release all those other expectations that haven't come to fruition over the last decade or more. And we can just feel really good about the one promise that our job is good at keeping: money showing up into our account regularly. Its job is to deposit money into your account on a regular basis.
Money shows up, benefits are more affordable, you can stay with your in-network providers, that financial stability box is checked. That is the job of your job. It is not responsible for fulfilling you. It is not responsible for making you feel valued. It is not responsible for inspiring you.
Now, don't get me wrong, you deserve to feel valued and appreciated. You deserve to have a job that fulfills you and inspires you, 100%. I believe that. But if that's not happening right now in your nine-to-five, expecting it will continue to create misery for you and drain you.
You can accept the money this company is paying you while you start the process of building financial stability somewhere else. The business that you have ideas for, that's what's going to fulfill you and inspire you. And I promise you, as soon as you get started, it's going to immediately start to fulfill you and inspire you even before your first dollar is made.
When we see our job as an ATM, we stop taking every little transgression at work personally. We stop making every annoying email drain us and get to us. We stop spiraling about whether this is what we're meant to be doing and making comments from our boss or coworkers mean something about our worth. Things at work become transactional. You put in some time, a little bit of effort, and you get money in return. You use that money to fund the new asset you're developing, the business that will eventually replace this ATM.
And if you're risk-averse or financially cautious, the ATM will actually calm your nervous system and create safety for you to take action in your business, knowing that you aren't risking your family's financial stability. It gives you runway, it reduces pressure, it allows you to experiment without panic. You can go all in mentally, learning, and building, and showing up without going all in financially.
And that is such an important distinction because what I see happen all the time is women think they have to prove they're serious or committed by quitting. They think they have to quit to have the time to actually work on the business. But you can be serious and committed without so much financial risk. And you absolutely can start and build a business while you still have a nine-to-five and a family and all the other responsibilities. I've seen it too many times for that not to be true.
Your ATM buys you time to build your business with clarity and creativity instead of desperation. And when you stop expecting your job to be your purpose or validation of worth, amazingly, it drains you less. You become neutral. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't have a client text me about their ATM in the context of something annoying happening at work, but they are able to let it go so much easier because they know it's just their ATM. That ability to shift from anger and resentment and frustration into a neutral place emotionally is so key for increasing your capacity.
So let's talk about that second piece: capacity, because I know that your brain is definitely saying to you right now that you barely have energy in the margins of your life. So doing both feels impossible. And so we want to talk about energy. Most moms I talk to tell me that even though their job drains them, it's a job they could do with their eyes closed. They might feel undervalued and underappreciated and often annoyed and frustrated, but the job itself isn't wildly challenging for them anymore.
So what's actually draining you then is not necessarily the work or the tasks that you're doing on a day-to-day basis. What's draining you is the mental and emotional energy leaks that come with the environment. Now, I've also talked to moms who do have high-stress jobs, jobs in the emergency room, jobs with very high-risk scenarios, jobs with kids that are very high risk and heavy.
And even then, it's not so much the actual tasks that are draining us. It really is the mental and emotional energy leaks that come with the environment. So even if you are in a high-pressure, very stressful, heavy role, I want you to still open up and hear this because it will be so valuable because I would argue that if you have a truly objectively stressful and high-pressure job, there are even more energy leaks that you can plug.
So the actual problem is that our time and energy are being mismanaged and often wasted. And in that world, that is our reality. It's our reality where we get home at 5:30, we rush to make dinner, we snap at our kids, we rush through bedtime, we collapse on the couch or in bed for a couple of Netflix episodes, fall asleep, maybe feel groggy the next morning, dreading doing it all again.
So I want to recognize you and say like, in this moment, if that is your reality, you are likely making decisions from that reality and that mindset. And of course, this would feel impossible to do from that mindset, to maintain our full-time job and also start a business.
If we don't start getting really good at managing our energy in our nine-to-five, I promise you that the stress and drama that your brain creates from your nine-to-five will continue into entrepreneurship. That's why so many new entrepreneurs burn out because they haven't learned the skill of managing their mind and down-regulating their emotions to create capacity for more, to create more energy, to create more time.
Your brain doesn't suddenly calm down just because you quit your job. It will then find new things to get worked up over. I go into even more detail about this in episode 79. So if you want to dig deeper on this piece, definitely also check out that episode.
But what we need to do for capacity is we have to plug up those energy leaks, okay? If you don't really know what I mean by our job creating energy leaks, one of my favorite examples of this is one we have all either experienced ourselves or we can imagine. So let's say you're at a dinner party or maybe you're even just having a conversation with your partner or best friend. If you imagine two different conversations, and really imagine them, like feel them.
Imagine in one you're venting about how much you hate your job. You are getting worked up, you're angry, you're frustrated, maybe even depressed and exhausted afterwards. Maybe your partner or your friend is validating you, and it feels good, but it's also like bringing up a lot of frustration about your current situation, okay? That's conversation number one.
And in the other conversation, let's imagine you're talking about this new business that you just started, new business development. You're energized, you're amped up, maybe it even makes it hard to sleep that night because you're excited about business ideas. And this happens all the time to moms that I meet with. Even just at the consultation phase, talking for an hour about their business idea is energizing. I've had people tell me directly like they couldn't sleep because their brain was just so excited.
Now, multiply that conversation where you're venting emotionally tenfold. That's a pretty draining and exhausting reality. But I also want you to imagine multiplying the conversation about your business tenfold. We can exponentially multiply energy by focusing on the excitement of our business in conversations. And that's just one example. And if we're no longer focusing on venting about how much our work sucks, we save so much energy that can be used in more useful ways, like starting a business.
Here's the part we don't always acknowledge. We don't have to complain about work all the time. That's a choice. We don't have to complain about work because it's doing its job. Money is showing up in our account. It's funding our dreams, and we appreciate it for that. And listen, the best part of this piece that I work on with clients is that once we start plugging these energy leaks and we start focusing on things that energize us and light us up and stop focusing so much on how much we hate our job or everything it's lacking, the people in our lives start to notice.
I love when clients tell me that their partner or mom or kids or whoever in their life says that they are a completely different person. They love this version of them. I mean, our partners will always be an open ear to us, but there is a point where they probably are exhausted too of hearing us complain about our work. So I love when clients come to me and they say that people in their lives are noticing a shift in energy.
And it's not because anything about their work environment changed, right? They are still at their jobs, but because they stopped letting work get to them and they started focusing time, energy, and conversations on something that really energizes them and lights them up, that has changed everything. You can maintain your full-time job and start your business, but it requires managing your mind, increasing your capacity, and being honest about where your energy is actually going. If you plug those energy leaks, you can absolutely do both.
Now, I want to talk about what I actually think is risky. When you leave your job and your new business has to pay the bills immediately, everything changes. Things that you loved doing and you were passionate about suddenly become not so fun anymore. You are no longer building from inspiration and excitement. You're creating and building from necessity and pressure.
You never want to depend on your new gig to pay the bills immediately. Even if you had great success really early on in your business, trying to create clients because you need to pay the bills is an energy that drives people away and muddies up the entire process. When you need the next client to cover your mortgage, when you need revenue because there's no steady paycheck coming anymore, and your family's expenses are still high, your nervous system will feel that. And so do other people, the people you're talking to.
Creating a business without financial pressure is the best mental space. Can you do it without that cushion or safety? Yes, people do it. That's how I did it. And I'll be honest, in going that route, I really wish I would have had the tools that I teach now to increase capacity, to do both for longer early on. My husband and I saved up six months of my salary so that I gave myself a six-month runway to start creating revenue.
We were very intentional about building that safety net, and that runway absolutely mattered for me because it allowed me to experience, build, and learn, test things without panic or ideally without panic, but let's be honest, I'm risk-averse, and so I had to do a lot of mind management to get to a place where I wasn't panicking about money and finances in every single conversation and in every single decision I was making.
Now, in a perfect world, your new business would just immediately become your ATM. And sometimes that does happen. I've had clients, especially those who start consulting in the industry of whatever company they were in. I've had clients who leave the corporate structure with a client lined up because they already have credibility, they have such a strong network, they replace their income or at least meet their financial goals with one or two clients pretty easily.
Honestly, I've had clients who were like, it just felt easy for them to do that. But you do not want to bank on that. Okay? You don't want to go into entrepreneurship with the weight of covering bills and expenses sitting on this brand new idea because when you're building under pressure, your brain gets so much louder.
I want you to think about it like this: your job, your nine-to-five, is not only protecting your income, it's protecting your creativity. All that being said, I do want to make a quick caveat. There is a situation, of course, where under no circumstances do I recommend staying at your job or doing the thought work to reframe it as your ATM. And that's when there are cases where your well-being is at risk or drastically deteriorating.
Now, I'm in the business of empowering people. No matter the environment, there are a lot of situations where we have more power than we think to change the temperature in the room, where we are able to turn something that feels bad and yucky and sticky, and we are able to create a situation where we feel energized and valued and content. But there are certain situations where it's best for us physically, mentally, and emotionally to leave the job.
So if you're in that bucket, we can still do it in a way that creates safety, whether that's saving money like I talked about before in my scenario, creating a new ATM all together that isn't in an abusive environment or toxic environment, or doing a ton of thought work to start your business and create revenue from a place of abundance instead of scarcity, where everything that you do, you are making sure that you're checking your energy and checking yourself to make sure that you're staying in give energy versus get energy.
And if you're intrigued by that concept of staying in give energy instead of get energy, I did a whole episode on the concept, episode 76, Attract Clients Naturally: The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything. Definitely check that one out if you want to dig a little bit deeper into that concept. But all of these things are doable. So there's never going to be an obstacle that we can't overcome, but I also want to honor the risk-averse personality in some of you and really let you know that there are paths and strategies that can honor your risk aversion.
So here's what I want you to take away from all of this. You do not have to burn down the financial stability that you've created in order to start a business. The only thing you need to be able to do both is capacity for it. And increasing capacity is a skill. It includes thinking about your job differently so it doesn't take so much energy. It involves knowing exactly where your energy is leaving on a day-to-day basis and getting better at conserving that energy by doing the mind management work that needs to be done for you to feel energized on a regular basis.
If you're risk-averse, that's not a weakness. It just means your strategy needs to match who you are right now in this moment. Will entrepreneurship change you and probably have you see and feel risk differently? Absolutely. But for now, you can stay in your job, you can see it as your ATM, you can plug the energy leaks, you can manage your mind, you can build slowly, create a runway, and truly mitigate some of the risks that has been holding you back. For many of you, that's the smartest way to do it, and you can do it.
And if this episode resonated, if you are one of my risk-averse mamas out there, if you've been feeling stuck, like you can't take action until you're ready to take on risk, but you are risk-averse and have a lot of fear around financial stability, I'm going to be hosting a webinar, a live webinar on Friday, February 20th, Start a Business Without Fear of Failure or Financial Risk.
We're going to go deeper into exactly what this looks like. So deeper into some of these concepts from this episode, how to protect that steady paycheck while you build, how to increase your capacity so it doesn't feel impossible to do both, and how to create real certainty without putting your family's financial stability on the line. I know that it feels risky to start a business because we don't know if it's going to pan out. And there are elements of certainty that we can create in the process for ourselves.
Will there always be a little bit of uncertainty? Yes, in everything in life. But there's actually little nuggets of certainty that we are not taking into consideration that we can actually build into the process. I'm really excited to talk about creating certainty. And I've actually talked about it before on this podcast. So if you want a sneak peek into that, there's episode 67 for that.
All of these episodes that I've referenced are going to be linked in the show notes. So you can go to jenna.coach/91 and build yourself a little queue for these next episodes that you want to dig into.
If you are risk-averse and also want to be living a bigger and bolder life, please register and come to that training on February 20th. It will change everything about the way that you're approaching this work and thinking about this work in a way that feels motivating.
You can register by going to mom.jenna.coach/risk or just go to the show notes, jenna.coach/91, and everything you need to know and the link to register will be in there. It's going to be a mind-blowing conversation, and we're going to shift everyone in the room from scarcity to abundance in one hour. If you are risk-averse, you are also probably more regularly operating from a scarcity mindset.
So I'm going to show you exactly how we can move into the abundance so that we can be making decisions from what we want, not from fear, okay? I want to move everyone from playing not to lose to playing to win. I think so many of us are operating from, how do I make decisions to play not to lose? And we just want to be going for the win, 100%.
Until then, be sure to follow the podcast. You can keep getting these tidbits of coaching in your ear each week, which is so powerful in building and maintaining momentum. Let these episodes inspire you to move forward and take action and grow into this bigger, bolder life of entrepreneurship. I'm here to support you along the way. Okay, I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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