The Art Of Quitting Your Job
The Full-Time Survival Guide To Reclaiming Control Over Your Career.
Reality: Your job is never actually safe.
It doesn’t matter if you work for yourself or you’re employed at a fancy agency. People are blindsided every day. You could be one Slack message away from collecting your thoughts, your belongings, and figuring out how to pay rent.
It’s time to future-proof your career.
Future-proofing your career starts with building an audience.
The reason is simple, building an audience gives you opportunity and choice.
When we’re blindsided, our choice is torn away from us. Taking back control is a power move. And having an audience is a fool-proof way to do this.
Imagine, waking up and finding out you’re losing your job…
Spending weeks dropping weed gummies to dampen the stress while applying to hundreds of jobs, writing fluffy cover letters, and wasting hours on the phone explaining why “their” company is your dream job.
Alternatively…
Posting on LinkedIn that you’re open to work. Then waking up to a comment feed of people connecting you with companies hiring and an inbox filled with job opportunities.
Or, having recruiters and companies sliding into your DMs with dream job opportunities keeping you in control of the decision to stay or go.
And if your next move is to start your own business… An audience puts you in a position where your first client might be a single post away.
It feels much better to be in a position of power.
Start building your audience before you need it.
It’s easier to dig the well before you’re thirsty.
(I’m not sure who this ^^ quote is credited to)
If our audience provides us with opportunities and puts us in control it’s important to start building it, before, we need it.
We see the value in this every day.
Large creators and influencers who can print money on demand. All they need to do is post a single message and watch a flood of comments, likes, shares, and DMs. But that isn’t the case when the audience doesn’t exist.
So then,
Being “ready” to leave your job has nothing to do with “actually” leaving your job.
But it has everything to do with being prepared too.
There’s no better time to do this than now, while you have a steady paycheck.
Start posting content and become a thought leader while someone else pays your bills.
Starting is only one LinkedIn post away.
Creating content while having a job is a cheat code.
Content creation improves your communication skills. There’s no better way to improve the way you communicate and think than writing (or content creation). It forces you to formulate ideas, generate examples and metaphors, and simplify complex topics.
The more reps you put in, the better you get. This also improves your ability to articulate what you do — in content — in your job — and to your future employer or clients.
The best source of content comes from what you’re doing daily. I’ve been complimented on my content because it’s specific, actionable, and relatable. It’s because I write about what I do. It’s the single easiest way to generate content. Write about what you do, what you think, the results you're getting, the questions clients ask, the problems you’re solving… It’s an endless stream of ideas.
Creating content helps you develop a unique point of view and methodologies. The more I write, the more I formulate my ideas and thoughts into concrete concepts. I was never able to do this until I was forced to put pen to paper (or finger to keys).
Pulling what you do from living in your brain to living in an article or post requires you to think about it differently — you’re forced to teach it. This conceptualization is beneficial to your development and understanding of what makes you unique.
Lastly, creating content is how you build an audience. It’s free. It’s scalable. It lives forever. It gives us instant feedback. Content is how we build our audience.
You don’t need to leave your job but if you end up in a sticky situation you’ll be thankful to be in control.
Future-proofing your career has no downside.
You don’t need to leave your job. But chances are, you’ll eventually do so. Regardless of who makes that decision.
If you don’t leave, becoming a thought leader can be used to stand out within your current organization and negotiate a raise or added responsibility.
If you leave (or get let go), having an audience gives you a network to leverage, can get you recruited, or help you stand out against your competitors.
If you start your own business, it gives you a leg up on getting your first clients.
And it could be used to add 1-2 clients on the side as a side hustle.
Whatever it may be…
The choice is YOURS. And that’s the point.
The post that got me started after leaving my agency job.
A single post on Substack and LinkedIn spread like wildfire.
Not only did this single post immediately land client inquiries in my inbox…
…Multiple people within my audience and network shared the post to their networks.
…People commented in support, signaling the algorithm to show it to more people.
…It signaled to the “lurkers” in my audience that I was open for business.
…I received inquiries from people looking to hire me.
…It initiated several conversations with people curious about my experience and what I was doing next — conversations that led to clients, workshops, and added exposure for me.
You can read the simple post here:
https://landonpoburan.substack.com/p/a-new-chapter-begins
(The same content was also shared on LinkedIn)
Without an audience I would have made the same post and heard nothing but the echo of my own voice.
I hope this helps.
Landon
If I could go back to myself one year ago, I would tell him to start as well while I had a job. Getting laid off was a shock and I wasn't prepared when it happened.
Couldn’t agree more, I started putting in the work to grow my network last year and it’s already paying off faster than I ever expected