Ever feel like your brain is lying to you about your future possibilities and capabilities? Well, maybe it's time to call BS on that five-year plan and consider taking your side hustle full time! And I'm actually sharing the five key signs that it's time to transform your side hustle into a thriving full-time business.

Hey, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and this is my podcast "The Weeniecast!"

Pssssst! Throughout May I'm running a one-month challenge to ramp up your social media client-attraction results. Don't miss out! Book in here - https://weeniecast.com/challenge

Now, back to the episode!

Throughout this episode, we'll cover real-life examples, financial benchmarks, and essential mindsets that will help you make that big leap.

For instance, did you know that if you're making between 50% to 70% of your full-time job salary through your side hustle, it might be a sign you're ready to go full time?

I'll also share stories about my clients like Lauren Lefkowitz, who initially planned for a five-year transition but found herself leaving her full-time job in just five months.

Your brain might be lying to you about how long things take, but by recognizing the right signals, you can make better, faster decisions.

Once you've listened to this episode, you'll be better at recognizing the financial and emotional readiness required to switch from a side hustle to a full-time endeavor.

You'll also become adept at assessing your risk tolerance, ensuring you have a nest egg for those tight months, and knowing when you’ve crossed that line of "I'm done" with your 9-to-5 J-O-B.

All these insights will empower you to make well-informed, confident decisions about your business's future.

Timestamped summary

00:00 Benefits, vacation, side hustle, freedom, passion, signs.

04:24 Transition your side hustle into full-time job.

09:20 Maintain job while starting business for success.

12:33 Clients chose full-time passion-based work over security.

16:26 Consider sales volume, closing rate, and timing.

18:24 Archetypes don't affect basic financial needs.

22:58 ADHD struggles with one-size-fits-all.

If you're struggling to figure out if you should take the plunge and make your side hustle your main gig, this episode is your guide.

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I can't wait to help you launch into new heights.

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In this episode, let's talk about the

five signs. It's time to turn your side hustle into a full time

business. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money

mindset coach, and welcome to the Weeniecast.

Your brain is lying to you.

It's lying to you about what you think is possible for you. It's lying to

you about how much time things are going to take to take off. It's lying

to you about what you are capable of. Case in

point, over three years ago, I got on the phone with a woman

named Lauren Lefkowitz. She'd booked a sales call with me. She wanted to start a

coaching business, and in her intake form, she had

been very specific that she had a five year plan. She

worked full time doing HR and a whole bunch of other stuff for

a company, and she had this passion for coaching.

Coaching had recently changed her life, taken her back from

the beyond the brink of burnout, and

shown her exactly how she could show up better at work and in her

life. And through going through this journey, she'd realized

that she wanted to become a coach herself. But she didn't believe that she could

do it full time yet. So as she

was booking the call with me, she listed off her five year plan.

She was going to start a side hustle coaching business that she would

run for five years until it got to the point that she could take it

full time. And I remember this as a viewer

yesterday, getting on the phone with her and hearing her explain to me

exactly how this would work out as a five year plan.

And I remember smiling because I could

see this woman doing things so much faster.

She had drive, she had ambition. She had a

deep desire to change lives. On top of all of that, she

had this beautiful charisma and way of

speaking that I could just see her on stages and writing books and putting

herself out there in really brave ways. So towards the end of the call

where we were deciding if we would work together, I remember kind of agreeing

to, sure. Like, this can be a five year plan. Yeah.

Okay, fast forward five months. We celebrated her leaving

her job. Just like Lauren. Your brain is lying to you about

how long it's going to take for you to start a side hustle

and take that side hustle full time and be able to

leave your nine to five job.

Now, I've had clients who have started side hustles and

grown those side hustles to well over six figures a year

and are so happy just keeping it a side hustle in addition to their nine

to five job. And of course, there's immense benefits to doing that. You

have a secure income that you don't have to worry about.

You have benefits, you have vacation time. And then, of course, anything

that you make in your side hustle is just the cherry on top,

and it allows you to live a much bigger life because you have more money.

And when you have more money, you have more freedom and you have more choice.

And in addition to that, if you're multi passionate and you're really passionate about

what you do in your day job, and you're really passionate about what you do

in your side hustle, you have your passions covered. There's nothing wrong

with building a business that just stays a side hustle. But there is

a point where you're going to see the signs

that this side hustle is ready to become your full time gig. And in this

episode, I'm going to be running through what those signs are. So when they happen

to you, you're able to identify them and make a choice. Do

you want to take this full time, or does this business need

to stay a side hustle because you love your nine to five? I'm going to

be talking about this blanks, right? Because

people have varying degrees of risk tolerance.

I personally am very risk tolerant. If you were to

look at my sacred money archetypes, results. I am a

maverick, which the maverick is the

archetype that is most comfortable with, like, gambling and risk

and putting all the chips on the table and just kind of like taking what

their winnings are. The way mavericks operate when it comes to business

and life, and especially money, scares the crap out of an

archetype that we like to call the accumulator. Accumulators

do not like to risk things. They want to make sure that things are

guaranteed, they're not going to have to touch their savings. And

how the two make decisions, especially when it comes to growing a business, are going

to be very different. So I'm going to be going through these two veins

because it's going to be different for each one of these archetypes. If you're

really risk averse, then we'll talk through what your signs

are going to be. And if you're really risk tolerant like me, the signs

may be a little different.

The number one sign that you're ready to take your side hustle to full time

and leave your nine to five job is that you are making anywhere from

50% to 70% of what your full time job

salary is. And of course, on the spectrum

of risk tolerance and intolerance, we can kind

of make a direct correlation. You know, if you're maverick

ish and very risk tolerant, you can probably withstand

making a little less because you're not going to be crushed by the

anxiety of needing to make up the difference really

fast if you really struggle with risk, and risk just

does not feel good to you and it adds unnecessary pressure that

doesn't make you more productive, then you want to be making more

per month in your side hustle, and that'll make you feel more secure

in leaving your nine to five. I will also say that leading up to

this point, as you're building your side hustle and as you're kind of plotting

your escape from corporate life, every single dollar

or euro or pound, whatever currency you're working in that

you can save, I would save if I were you. It's really tempting as

you make more money to be like, cool, I have more money. I'm going to

go and spend it. I'm going to go invest in this and I'm going to

invest in this and I'm going to invest in this. Sure, there are investments that

are going to help you make more money in your business. For instance,

investing in a training course that's going to show you how to do

it, or working with a coach or maybe hiring a copywriter.

But that's not to say that you need to go and hire all these things.

As much money as you can save, I want you to save because

that is going to be your nest egg, your Runway for when

you go full time. Because let's look at the worst case

scenario. Say you are an executive leadership

coach and you started a leadership coaching business

on the side of your nine to five. And let's say you make

$10,000 a month from your nine to 570 percent of

that would be 7000. Let's say that's seven clients. And let's

say, you know, you quit your job and two months afterwards,

after you've had no salary and you're just making money from your business,

two of your clients end, you know, so now you're down

to half of your normal salary. That's really scary,

especially if that does not cover your base necessities for your

life. And it's that much scarier if you

do not have money socked away to backfill it as

you need. But I want you to imagine if in your first year of business,

of running this side hustle, you're able to save

$60,000. Right. $60,000 is nowhere

near your full time salary. However, for those first,

like, three to five months where you're still ramping up to full time, it's

enough to bridge the gap so that you don't feel like you're about

to end up in the poor house, which, I mean, what an antiquated term.

Do they still have those? I don't know. I feel like in the states,

if we actually did have a poor house, it would get attacked by people on

the right is socialism. We can't take care of the poor. They need to fend

for themselves. They're not strong enough. I feel like here I should bring up that

I actually registered as a Republican so that I could go and vote for someone

else other than Trump in their primaries.

And I want to acknowledge there are a ton of hustle bros out there who

are like, no, burn your ships. Quit everything. Go

and start your business and put everything into it. That's a very

privileged position to come from. That assumes

that you have no responsibilities. That assumes that you do not have a spouse

who may or may not be able to carry the load

financially for your household. That assumes that you don't have

dependents. You don't have children or pets that are relying on you to keep them

alive. And it goes along with this mentality that

we have to make ourselves suffer and work from a place of

fear to make our dreams come true. And that is

absolutely not true. In fact, when you're in

fear mode, you're actually in survival mode. If

you're afraid that you're not going to be able to eat, your brain is seeing

that as life or death. When you're in a life or death

situation, do you have access to your creativity? Are you

going to be able to stand firm on your pricing, on a sales call? Are

you going to be able to say no to the clients who are not going

to be a good fit for you and who may actually end up making your

life miserable? Probably not. You know, we're not

starting businesses to make our lives harder. Yes, starting a business is probably going

to be one of the hardest things you ever do. And also, you get

to choose your hard. You get to choose how hard it's

going to be. I'm a big believer that one of the best

ways you can set yourself up for success when starting a business is

by keeping your nine to five job for as long, long as possible. In fact,

one of my favorite times to start working with clients is

when they're actually starting a new job, because when you're starting a new job,

you are going in fresh. You can set boundaries around your time in

a way that that's just kind of the expected way to deal with you, with

new people versus if you've always worked a little later or

you've always taken on an extra project here or there. If you're starting

a side hustle business while working a job you've been in forever, you're gonna have

to retrain a whole bunch of people as to how they get to deal with

you and what they can expect from you time wise. It takes

balance and it takes being really impeccable with how

you manage your time, which I know for those of us with

ADHD is really scary. You have to be very intentional about

taking time off. What's that Kim Kardashian quote that was

going viral about a year ago? People don't wanna work anymore. Like, you

just gotta work. I can tell you my clients do not have

a problem working hard. They have a problem taking time

off. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had this week

alone where I have had to walk clients through exactly

what they need to do to step away from work and recharge.

So as you're starting your side hustle and as you are setting boundaries

around your work, you also have to set boundaries with yourself. You cannot expect

yourself to work every waking hour that you're not at your nine to five. That

is a recipe for burnout and exhaustion and

ruined relationships, for expanding waistlines

and for falling behind on all your Netflix shows, which, I mean,

the new Bridgerton season is about to come out. Season three, Penelope

and Colin are supposed to get it together. It's gonna be rad.

You don't want to miss out on that. So long story short, you need to

be making between 50 and 70% of what you're taking

home from your nine to five before you take your

side hustle business full time. Okay, that's part one. Part

two is you have to. What am I going to say next? Well, you'll have

to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel.

Part two is you have to check in with yourself. There's going to be a

point in running this business where you either are fully

ready to go and do it. This next bit is not something that's going to

happen for everyone. Right? Because some people really enjoy their nine to

five. They really enjoy going to work and contributing to

a company and their coworkers and working with the

clients, in whatever capacity they do, that. There's nothing wrong with

keeping your nine to five, but at some point, for some of

you, you're going to have this moment of, I'm done. I can't do

this anymore. I cannot go to this job

and spend my time there and do this work and deal with

these people and everything under the umbrella of what

you do there. It's just your spirit will be spent. Another

moment in that building, either virtual or real,

will be something that you just cannot muster the strength to make

yourself do right, because you've seen the other side. And this is kind of what

happened with Lauren and a bunch of my other clients. When they realized they needed

to take their business full time, they just could

not keep going with it because they'd seen

and experienced the joy that they have doing work they actually

love, and they'd seen evidence that they could

actually make money from it and be successful at it.

Sometimes this point will come before you're making a certain percentage of

your income. And here's where we really need to assess what your risk

tolerance is. If you're completely risk

intolerant, unfortunately, sometimes you're just going to have to force

yourself to continue with the nine to five for a

few more months until we build your side hustle business up to

enough of your full time income so that you

feel confident enough and safe enough to successfully take it full

time. If you're risk tolerant like I am, you can

absolutely, at that moment, be like, what's worth more to me? The paycheck where I'm

trading my soul and all my energy every single day,

or doing work that I really love and having some risk here,

you know, maybe some months will be a little tight. I want to own that.

I jumped from my nine to five way too early. I was nowhere near

this, thankfully, because I'm a maverick, I was

able to pull it out. I was able to, like,

hustle and get my income up to what I was making before and then

surpass it, you know, times three. That's possible

for some of us who. Who aren't crushed by the pressure to make it work.

For some people, that pressure to make it work or else you're gonna

die, is just a little too much. And that's

okay. You don't have to. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. You're

living life for you, not for anyone else. And there's nothing wrong with living

life in a way that you actually get to enjoy the journey. And of course,

there are gonna be trade offs along the way. Maybe you do need to

stay in that soul sucking job for an extra two months until you get another

client or two. But I would rather you give that

little sacrifice than sacrifice the potential

success of your business. Right. Because what happens if you leave your job

too early? You don't have that risk tolerance and you

completely melt down under the pressure. You're just going to have to go back to

a nine to five. If you were already miserable there and

wanting to escape, imagine how much worse it's going to going to be after

you tried going for your dream, failed at it because you couldn't take the

pressure, and then had to crawl back to something that made you

miserable. We don't want that for you. Okay? That's going to make for a

really boring deathbed story. We are, after

being very interesting on our deathbeds. We don't want our loved ones sitting there and

be like, oh, my God, not this story again about all their regrets and

the things they wish they'd done and, ugh, God, I can't listen to this

anymore. We want people to be like, oh, my God. Yeah, you did that and

you did that and you did that and you were brave and you were

funny and you were lit up with life. And I'm going to stick around

until your final breath. That's the goal. Anyway, back to the point feeling

of being done with your nine to five, that is another sign. That is time

to leave the nine to five and take your side hustle full time. Another

part, and just a very, you know, straightforward logistical

part, that will be a sign that you are ready to take your side hustle

to full time is, oh, what am I gonna say next? Well, you'll have to

keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel.

Another part. And just a very, you know, straightforward

logistical part, that will be a sign that you are ready to take

your side hustle to full time is whether or not you have consistent

leads. Do you have consistent new business coming in? If it's

still at that stage where it's really unpredictable and you can't count

on getting a client every single month, maybe you get a big client

every seven months. You know, depending on how much that client's paying, that

might be enough. But if it's not, you're taking

a huge gamble going full time. If you can

reliably say that you're getting anywhere from four to ten sales

calls a month, and you know that your closing percentage is anywhere from

25% to 33%, then I would

say that you are ready to take your business full time, especially if you're selling

a high ticket offer. And again, something that's, like, purely

logistical when you're considering if this is ready to be full time,

is are you running out of time? You know, there comes a point in running

a side hustle where you know that you could do more

and make more money if you just had another five or 10 hours

in a week. And if you're at that breaking point where you just don't have

the time to put into it because you're spending 40 hours a week at your

nine to five, that's really a time to consider. Should I be

jumping from the nine to five? Now, this part you want to check

up against the first bit where you're making 50%

to 70% of your nine to five income, because if you're only

making 10%, it doesn't really matter if you're running out of time. You know, you

could do more if you had more time. Like, that's not enough.

The last bit is, do you have the savings for this?

One of the inescapable truths about life is that we live in meat

suits that require things like food and water and shelter

and clothing. I mean, unless you're part of a nudist colony, you live in a

really warm climate where there are no mosquitoes, but still, you're going to

need food and shelter and water. So we need

money to make this work. And that money is going to come from one of

two places. Going to come from the business itself, or it's going

to come from our savings. I can guarantee you one thing. As a business

owner, you will have slow months. You will have months where

you're panicking about money, cash flow will kind of dry

up or slow down, and you're going to get spun

into a panic. It doesn't really matter if you're a maverick

or you're an accumulator or any of the other

archetypes. When that happens, as a human, you're

still going to need to pay your rent or your mortgage and go and buy

groceries and go and buy food at restaurants and

buy some clothes. And if you can't do

that, you're not going to be able to move forward with the business. You're going

to be backed into a corner. And we're not designing businesses where you

just barely survive. That's not the point. That's one of the reasons why

when I get on the phone with potential clients and I ask them how much

money they want to make. I actually throw out their first answer because the

first answer everyone always gives to that question is, oh, well, here's

the base amount that I would need to survive if I wanted to eat ramen

every day and barely make my electrical bill and mooch

wifi off of my neighbors and pay rent for a really

shitty apartment that I would have to downsize a whole bunch, maybe get rid of

my cat to get into. I would be willing to make this much, and that

would be fine. That's not the answer I want. I want the answer

of how much money you want to make. How much money do you want to

make so that you can live in your ideal home? So that

you can adopt ten more cats? Live your best Taylor Swift

life. My favorite fact about that woman is that she is

the crazy cat lady that we all aspire to be. Secretly, personally, I'm kind

of allergic to cats, so I can't necessarily be a crazy cat lady, but I

can have a deep appreciation for them and with the pride that she

has around her cat ladyhood. For you to get there,

though, you need to not just be focused on your

survival, you need to be focused on what your bigger dream is,

what your big goals are. You know that saying, aim for the stars

and land on the moon? I'm not sure if I made it up or if

I heard it somewhere. So maybe you haven't heard it. But anyway, there's

this belief that, like, when you shoot for something that feels

so big and so out of reach, you're more likely to land

somewhere. That is still a huge accomplishment to get to. When I start with clients

and we're trying to figure out their basic pricing, we actually don't figure out how

much money they want to make in the first year of their business because that's

not really helpful. So if you say that you want to make

$100,000 that year and we base your pricing off of that

$100,000, you're probably only going to make 33,000,

right? Because you're starting a business, there's ramp up time,

there's figuring out your niche. You have to start marketing. You're not going to have

a full list of clients right away after you decide you're starting this business.

That's not how it works. However, if in year three, you decide you

want to make $300,000, great, we can base your pricing off

of that. And if you're only making a third of that, you're far more likely

to make $100,000 in your first year. And realistically, when

you're on sales calls and this is a new business and you're asking for big

money for your work, are you going to be more confident asking

for it when you have zero money in savings? Or are you going to be

more confident asking for it when you have a good chunk of change socked

away and you know that if this person says no to working

with you, you're going to be fine. You'll be able to feed yourself, you'll be

able to pay the mortgage. Your children will have shoes. If

you have children. Thankfully, pets don't need shoes. They need other things.

Watch Luna come up and be like, mom, I really want shoes. You can

talk.

So whatever it is that your brain is telling you is possible for you, I

want you to tell it to off. Your brain doesn't understand

how this works. Never done it before, has lived in a world

where you're constantly made to feel like you're not good

enough. For you to succeed in the neurotypical

systems that have been designed for things to function, you have to

go above and beyond. You have to bend yourself into a pretzel that

got twisted in the conveyor belt to be able to be

successful. One of the most beautiful things about starting a business is

that you get to design the business to function for how you

function. You do not have to create a business that will require

you to bend into a pretzel to be able to run.

You absolutely can if you really enjoy making yourself suffer. If

you're a masochist, go for it. But you do not necessarily have to

do that. One of the things that I walk my clients through is

designing a business that works for them to have their

ideal lives. This is one of the reasons why those business programs that are

like one size fits all follow my step by step plan that worked

for me and just do it yourself. Why? Those don't really work

for everyone. They maybe work for 5% of the people that sign up for them.

And for those of us with ADHd. When we start programs like that,

we get a couple lessons in and we just feel so defeated because it

feels like we're back in school and we're being given instructions

for our a project that just feels

completely alien to us, that has all these

complicated instructions that don't really feel like stuff that we like doing. And so then

we get into executive dysfunction about doing the one little bit, but then we can't

get to the next little bit without doing that first little bit. And so then

we start feeling all the shame bubbling up of, oh, my God, I just can't

do it. All that comes up when you sign up for these one size fits

all programs. If every single business

were able to function in the same exact way,

starting a business wouldn't be hard. It wouldn't be something that the failure

rate was super high. Everyone would just do the same thing. Okay, you're not meant

to do the exact same thing as another business owner. You have to

find a way to design this business in a way that allows

for you to be in your strengths, for you to

feel lit up, doing the things that you love day in and

day out. It's okay that you don't know how to do that. You've never done

this before. And up until now, you have lived in a world that

is designed for neurotypicals, by neurotypicals, and you've had to

work really hard and you've had to sacrifice parts of yourself that you

don't even realize to be successful. Your brain

is going to take a beat to understand that that's not necessary when

you start a business. It's a learning process curve that I'm personally still

on, and I train on this. I literally work with other

ADHD entrepreneurs and I'm still struggling with it myself. Your

brain is not going to be able to be truthful with you because it doesn't

actually know the truth here. So whatever it is that you think is possible

for you, whatever dream or goal you think

is quote unquote realistic for you to

reach, I hereby call bullshit. And I hope you call

bull too. And sure, come up with your five

year plan. Bring that five year plan to a generate income

strategy call with me and we'll have a nice little laugh about it, and we'll

come up with your five month plan. And if you want to book that generate

income strategy, call. The link is in the show notes and you can go

to weeniecast.com/strategycall. I

can't wait to talk to you there.