I used to wake up every day with one single question on my mind…

“How many days are left until the weekend?”

I was counting down the days because, like millions of people, I hated my 9-5 job.

And this wasn’t just a mild dislike. I truly, deep down, despised almost everything about it. Waking up each day and realizing I had to go to work was torture. I felt my stomach drop every Sunday when I realized Monday would soon be here.

But since I’m not a trust fund baby, I needed that money. So I stuck it out.

That was in 2011. Today is a completely different story. Now, I like my work (most of the time). I enjoy the freedom and free time that comes with owning a business. I haven’t used an alarm clock in years, and every Wednesday, I go mountain biking, snowboarding, or golfing.

I work fewer hours, enjoy that work more, and make more money.

But I had to learn a few lessons to get to this point. A lot, actually. It turns out that many of my assumptions about starting and running a business were completely wrong.

One of my biggest lessons came from having to wade through all of the get-rich-quick schemes. Everywhere I looked, someone was revealing a “secret” strategy for making easy money online or generating passive income with real estate.

The people sharing this information made it look like they are living the dream because they figured out some secret you don’t know and that once you pay for them to reveal that secret, money will fall into your lap.

SPOILER ALERT: If it were that easy, everybody would do it!

But thankfully, there is a reliable way to escape your day job. And in this article, my goal is to help you see through that bullshit, so you can actually start a business and eventually quit your job, and do it all without risking your savings or overworking yourself.

Let’s start with a few major success-killing mistakes to avoid so you can one day give your boss the finger.

I’ve been reading Nassim Taleb a lot lately, which seems to be helping me avoid stupid mistakes in life. That seems to be essential to succeed in business these days. It’s not necessarily about being smart. It’s about NOT being what Taleb calls a “sucker.”

And one of the biggest sucker moves is to start a business where the odds are stacked against you so heavily that you only have a sliver of a chance to succeed.

So what is “winner-take-all”?

It’s characterized by any business or event where only a small percentage of people enjoy the lion’s share of the rewards while everyone settles for peanuts.

Take the book publishing industry, for example. A few dozen authors sell millions of books, while 98% of books and authors only sell a few hundred copies (if any).

Or look at the tech industry, where you have a few companies that dominate the market. Take Amazon, for example. It’s long been, by far, the largest bookseller on earth. Now, it continues to disrupt entire industries and accounts for 38% of e-commerce spending in 2023. Amazon is a giant among ants.

The same phenomenon applies to anything where a small advantage produces disproportionate results. And more often than not, that advantage has to do with luck and circumstance. No matter how skilled you are, how prepared you are, or how hard you work, you still need a healthy dose of luck to win in an industry that is “winner-take-all.” Sure, Jeff Bezos is a smart dude, but plenty of others are just as smart and creative. They just didn’t win the business lottery.

Winners like Jeff get to buy giant yachts while other smart, hard-working, and very talented losers go get a job.

So you want to start an internet business? Create the next big app? Or, get a patent on some great idea you have for an invention? I wish you the best of luck. But if you want to guarantee your freedom in the next year, those are all terrible choices.

Sure, you may have recently heard a story of another guy getting rich from the app store. But what about the other ten thousand people who spent thirty grand to have their app developed and didn’t even make their money back? You didn’t hear about them because they’re not all over Instagram sharing how to get rich by creating apps. They’re stuck in a day job trying to piece together their confidence.

Unfortunately, seeing things clearly is hard when you only hear about the winners.

There’s no shortage of experts out there teaching you how to make easy money, whether that is through real estate, YouTube, online courses, selling through Amazon, or becoming a social media influencer.

These can all be amazing ways to create freedom in your life. Even though there are some “winner-take-all” effects in these businesses, the odds are actually pretty good if you stick it out long enough.

But there’s the problem! You must stick with it for long enough. How long is long enough? It’s impossible to say. But, you should ask yourself…

Are you willing to work your day job for (at least) 3-5 more years while spending all of your nights and weekends building a passive income business?

If so, great. Stop reading and get to work. But if you’re like I was, you want the light at the end of the tunnel to at least be visible. It’s hard to imagine three years from now in enough detail to get motivated.

After I quit my job, I started listening to podcasts, and pretty soon, I stumbled on the idea of starting an internet business. The experts made it sound so easy like I could just put in some hard work for a few months and coast out the rest of my life cashing big checks and working just a few hours per week.

“Life was going to be amazing!” I thought to myself. “Why isn’t everybody doing this!?”

So, I got started, and I worked hard. REALLY HARD. I started learning how to build a website, wrote dozens of blog posts, and worked on my business with every free second I had.

Luckily, I didn’t put all my eggs into that basket and started another business simultaneously (more on that later) because all that hard work didn’t pay off until four years after getting started.

It’s funny, too, because every year, I’d tell my girlfriend, “It’s going to be so nice next year when this work starts paying off.” Then, the next year would come, and success would still be just around the corner.

Are there people who do it faster? Yep. But they’re the exceptions. The outliers. The ones in the right place at the right time in the right niche with the right mentors. That’s called luck, my friend. You can’t replicate luck.

The truth is that it takes a LOT of time, effort, dedication, failure, and learning to create passive income. Much more than you’ll be led to believe. Despite what the guru online says about his “new” strategy for growing businesses fast, making real money is not easy.

Is it worth it? Hell yes, it is. But if you’re looking to quit your job anytime soon, there are much faster and easier paths.

OK, so starting a business with a new, innovative idea is a bad choice. The odds of success are dismal.

And trying to aim for the fences with passive income isn’t ideal either. The odds are better, but it takes way too long.

You need something faster. Something with better odds.

What if I told you there was a low-cost, low-risk, fast, and nearly guaranteed way to build a business that frees you from your job within this year?

There is, and it’s a straightforward concept…drumroll, please…

…Start offering a service and charge money for it!

That’s it!

It doesn’t matter what service either, as long as it pays well. You could build websites for small businesses. You could do wedding photography, video editing, manage social media, or even build Excel spreadsheets if that’s what you’re good at.

Check out this guy. He drives around and shovels dog poop and makes a six-figure income doing it! It’s not glamorous, but at least he has his freedom.

Personally, I started a handyman business to replace my income (thus the reason for the name of this website). It wasn’t glamorous. But it was fun and engaging, and it taught me many of the business skills I still use today. Most importantly, it gave me my freedom.

First, let me make something clear. I’m not recommending you try to invent some new service. That would give you a low probability of success. I’m talking about taking a common service that there are probably hundreds of competitors for and offering that service.

The less sexy the service, the better.

What, there are already 25 wedding photographers in your area? Great! That means there is demand. When I started my handyman business, do you think I was among the first? Not even close. There were dozens, if not hundreds, in my city, but my business flourished anyway because there was plenty of demand.

Now, you’d think it would be hard to compete if there was so much competition. But here’s a little secret about the service industry…most service providers suck!

The good ones are always busy, and the ones with availability are either just getting started or are terrible to work with. Or, they simply aren’t motivated to advertise and grow. That leaves a lot of opportunities for any driven newcomer to succeed (that’s you).

Ok, we both know that’s not completely true. But you need a lot less skill than you think you do. You don’t have to be a world-class photographer to get paid to take pictures. All you need is a good camera and the ability to use it.

If you bought a camera today and spent the next two weeks watching YouTube videos about photography and practicing what you learn, you’d be more than qualified to charge for your services.

Then, over time, you’ll get better, your service will improve, and you’ll be able to make more money in less time.

Most of my home repair skills were learned after starting my handyman business (mostly from YouTube). But customers loved me because I provided great service.

Offering a service is about as low-risk as it gets. You don’t need employees. You can work from your home, your office, or wherever makes sense. And it costs almost nothing to start.

Of course, you will need some tools. But my guess is you already have some of the tools necessary for whatever service you have in mind.

But here’s the best part. If it doesn’t work and nobody hires you (which is unlikely if you do it right), just try something else! The only thing you lost was some time, and hopefully no more than a week or two.

After leaving my job, I started two businesses simultaneously. One was HandymanStartup.com (this website), and the other was my handyman business.

Within weeks of starting my handyman business, I landed a $900 job. Within six months, I generated over $5,000 per month (back in 2012). Keep in mind this was my first business, and I made many mistakes. Had I known what I do now, I’d have hit $10K per month with no problem.

Now compare that to starting an online business. It took me exactly three years and two months to break $5k in a single month in my online business. Then, it took me another two years before that happened consistently. So, it took me over five years to hit the revenue that my handyman business was generating in six months.

Would you rather wait six months or five years to quit your job?

Maybe you want to have a bigger impact on the world. I’m not saying to run a service business for the rest of your life. I’m just saying that it’s an effective 9-5 escape tool.

The beautiful thing about running a service business is you can work as much or as little as you want (assuming you have your marketing in order.) You can also increase your rates and find ways to make more money in fewer hours. As you increase your rates, you can make more money in less time.

That allows you to work fewer hours and gives you more time to invest toward other dreams.

After being in business for a year as a handyman, I started scheduling jobs more efficiently, and I increased my rates. Because of this, I was able to generate a full-time income while working just three days per week. That gave me the time to learn new things, grow this business, and have more fun.

You might use that extra time to play your luck at riskier business opportunities. Maybe you’d want to travel the world. Maybe you’d just want more time with your kids. Whatever it is, you first need to take control of your time because you’ll rarely have that kind of freedom as an employee.

The ideas I share in this article aren’t sexy. I’m not promising you fancy cars, rubbing shoulders with celebrities, or even a beach house. And for some, that’s a deal-breaker.

We all want fast, easy money. We all love the idea of sipping drinks on a beach while the chips keep stacking in the bank. That’s why all of the so-called “experts” promise these things. They know that’s what gets you to buy their stuff.

But if you’re serious about quitting your job anytime soon, avoid that stuff like the plague and start a proven business model.

In just a few weeks, you’ll generate a healthy side income of $1,000 or more. A few months later, you’ll be faced with a much better problem to have – how to tell your boss you quit.

Then, once you have your freedom and some business skills, you can pursue bigger dreams, scale your service business, or just sleep in for a while.

Now, listen to the podcast version of this article, which includes extra content and examples of businesses. Listen right here or on your favorite podcast app!

HS025 – The fastest and most reliable way to escape your day job

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