You Might Want to Keep that Day Job...

I get asked for business advice from new entrepreneurs a lot. 

No matter what they say about their business dreams and aspirations, my first question response is pretty much always the same, “okay but how do you make money now or next month?” Nine times out of 10, their business dream/aspiration and how they make money now/next month are completely different.

Listen, while I admire the vision, ambition and #goals you have for your business. I feel I must share that there is a lot of misinformation out there about the windy road it takes to get there. 

When I launched Blavity on July 14th 2016, I was still working my day job at Intuit. I dreamed up in December 2013 and the first thing I started working on was a plan to replace my income and getting more free time, not just so I could eventually make the leap but so the success of Blavity wasn’t hindered by taking our first revenue out of the business for my salary.

Check out this Gchat convo with my friend Jeff (who would later become my Blavity co-founder) about someone asking if we were going to move forward with doing consulting work on the side: 

→ This was Dec 2013! 

→Blavity Launched July, 2014 publicly

→I took my final paycheck as a consultant to Intuit in late 2017.   

Even though I made the leap to full time entrepreneurship, I still worked to supplement my very low, very basic startup income for 2.5 years. This allowed me to invest all of our revenue back into the business, in employees, in our first office. Even after raising VC funding I was incredibly cautious about spending our money because I was laser focused on building a sustainable business early. 10.5M+ in funding later, the strategy of building for revenue first and having a diversified business has helped Blavity Inc weather the market storm that many in millennial digital media or black media couldn't.

And I’m not alone:

Phil Knight: For six years, Phil Knight worked two jobs. During the day he was a CPA for Price Waterhouse and at night, an entrepreneur selling shoes and building a little startup that would eventually become worth $25 billion: Nike.

Sara Blakely: She sold fax machines going door-to-door for 6+ years before making it big with her no foot pantyhose design. For years she was ignored by manufactures, but her consistency paid off, and that little innovation – Spanx – made her the youngest self-made billionaire in America.

John Legend: Our favorite platinum artist released his debut album in 2000, but worked at BCG as management consultant until 2002.

There’s a huge myth that in order to make it you have to go all in, all at once.

The truth is you have to learn how to create more money, and free up your time so you can build the life of your dreams. All while your business sustains itself without having to also support you.

Every quarter I do a Zoom event for early stage founders and small biz owners to share my advise on getting a biz off the ground and growing it. (I don’t talk VC tho). Typically 1k+ ppl join from my weekly email list. 

Next one is TONIGHT.

If you’re struggling with how to grow your business and balance your job, please sign up

I hope you’ll join me.

RSVP HERE: https://bit.ly/2VWdBgk