Should You Quit Your Job?
I quit my job in 2015 with no money saved. I didn't support myself through meditation until 2019. For the first time ever I share how I supported myself in those four years. I hope this episode gives you insight about when the right time to quit your job is.
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Podcast Transcript
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Art and Business of Meditation podcast. I'm your host, Lou Redman, and I share this podcast as someone who quit a corporate job in 2015, went all in on living my purpose, and had some struggles along the way, took me years to figure out how to go about supporting myself, making a living, and sharing my gifts with the world. And I share this podcast to hopefully give you some ideas so that it doesn't take that long for you so that you can start to bring your work into the world, make an impact, make an income soon, sooner rather than later. And as I've noted before, we all have our own timing. And so on this note of me quitting my job in 2015, there is left with a question, Lou. If you quit a corporate job and went all in in 2015, yet you didn't start supporting yourself financially into 2019, then what were you doing in the four years in between? Hmm. That's a great question. Honestly. Not a question anyone really ever asks me, but something I want to speak to because it's not that I had money saved. It's not that I worked at this job and was like, okay, I'm gonna save, you know, this amount of money is what I need, and I'm gonna go all in. Not even close. Not even close. I had no money. I had. Literally, I was just drinking all my money away. I was living paycheck to paycheck, and I still quit this job to go all in and trust fall into the universe. So if I didn't make a living for four years, how did I support myself in those four years? And that's what today's episode is all about. I want to tell you this story and help you answer the question of should I do it? Should I take the leap? Should I go all in? Should I really see what I'm made of, see if I what happens when I give all of myself to it? And so I'm going to help you answer that question, share with you some of the struggles, some of the reasons why I might suggest not doing it, and give you my experience of why I did it that maybe will help you think about if that's the right path for you. If you are having this question, if you are at a job and if you're not, if you're already pursuing this or maybe you have some money saved, I still encourage you to listen because I think it might be helpful for you to just trust your own timing and start to listen again for those deeper calls for our Spirit that wants to work through us. That is what this podcast is about and that is what I want to help you to do. And so to begin the conversation today, I'm going to share with you a few verses from one of my favorite songs called Two Spies by Nako In Medicine for the people. I'll be the earth that grounds you from that chaos all around I'll be the home you return to I can be your middle ground I will serve as a reminder if you jump, you will not fall Go on and spread those wings of reason we are water after all I will serve as a reminder if you jump, you will not fall. I just wanted to repeat that last line because it feels so embodied to what happened for me that there was a very extreme jump. And truly, by the grace of God, I didn't fall. I came close. I had some challenging moments, but I didn't fall. And so I start this episode by inviting you. When you think about the leaps that life has asked you to take or the leap that life is asking you to take right now, to just get really quiet, to take a breath, to feel it in your heart and to ask, is this God, spirit source that's asking me to do this, that's wanting to move through me, or is this maybe just an option, a potential I? Maybe you have a business with a business partner and they're asking you to go all in and really give it a shot and leave your job. But it's not coming from God. It's not coming from this felt sense within. And so that's the big distinction here. And I'm not claiming to have a more of a connection to God than you by any means. I believe you all have that same source and spirit and connection. And so if I look back and put pieces together, I believe the reason that I didn't fall was because the action came out of that, and the action came out of a incredible not knowing state, an incredible uncertainty. If it had been certain, if I had known the path, well, I'm going to quit. And then, you know, here's the path. I'm going to make this amount of money. Da da da da. I had no idea it was really this trust fall. There's nothing that I could be certain of. All I could be certain of was that spirit was asking me to do something incredibly radical. And it felt like, as I stated in my story, if I didn't do it now, the portal, the door, the grace of God would not be open for another 10 years. And so I leapt. And here we are eight years later now. What happened in those first four years? And how can I share what happened in a way that would be valuable to you and how you're thinking about it? And so maybe just pausing here to really invite you to think about your own path with sharing, meditation or having your own business. And the biggest thing is you don't have to fully quit. I would encourage you, unless you really feel that spirit God calling that it might not be the safest thing I've seen it not work out for people. As much as I want to promote this, you will not fall. And I believe that. The thing is I can, I can never know where it's coming from with someone else. And so I don't promote it. I say everyone's different. Everyone has a unique context, everyone has a unique experience of life, a unique privilege. To be honest, I knew that if I really fell, I had parents I could fall back on. I never had to use that. But that was a privilege that I had that some people don't have. And if I didn't have that, I can't tell you I would have made that same leap. That was a factor, that was a comfort net that I had that was definitely helpful in me making that decision. So everyone has a different experience. And so should you go all in? It depends. It depends. And you get to decide what all in is. You get to decide what all in is. And as Rick Rubin talks about in the creative act, you can support yourself doing something else. And here's the thing, here's where I had to go all in is because my new job that I had was starting to become very consuming for me. I don't have a lot of energy. I'm a manifester in human design. I don't have a ton of energy where I can grind out 80 hours a week. And I switched from a 40 hour work week to a 50 hour work week. But that 50 hour work week bled into actual home. My old job I had, it was at work. I left work and I left everything at work. This new job that I took on in marketing and event planning, I brought it with me home and I wanted that. I wanted something that I can fully consume myself in which what I do now, but I thought it was going to be that at the time. And so it really the reason for me and again so unique experience. But for me to make that leap, it felt like to give the time that this deserved, I needed to really go all in. And so here's where the grace comes or the potential of the grace, literally the day after I make this radical, I just quit my job. Da da da da crazy. I get a call from the founder of the mastermind that I was a part of in San Diego called Junto Global. And he had heard that I done this move. I told people and he said, lou, I heard you just quit your job. I'm sure this was a sound financial decision, which it absolutely wasn't. I literally had $1,000 in my bank account when I quit my job. My rent the next month was $1,000. And he says, lou, I have a friend who runs the Costco auto department and he always is looking for mystery shoppers. And it's a great gig. You work for a week, you get paid a bunch of money and then you go and you have a lot of time to build what you're ready to build. And it was just like crazy. This is literally the day. Excuse me, two days after it was two days after. Two days after. I remember it so vividly getting this text from this person saying, you're gonna be alright, we got you. And I was like, wow, I had no idea this job was there before. It's not like I quit. And I was like, I know I'm gonna have this job. I had no idea that this thing existed. But I jumped this thing presented itself and was like this, okay, this is a real thing. And just to give you actual numbers you could make in a week, you make $200 for each shop that you would mystery shop. So what the job was is you would go into auto car dealership and Costco, which I'm sure you're familiar with, especially if you're in the States, if you're not. It's a, it's a big brand department warehouse store and Costco is known for the ease and cheap or not not necessarily cheap but economical because their food is actually also, you know, typically organic and good. So cheap cheapens it. But typically you get bulk and for, for an easy or economical price. And so they can't sell cars in their warehouse. So they have this auto program that you go to an auto shop or you go to a car dealership and you go through the Costco program. And it's supposed to be different than your normal car buying experience because Costco has already done the deal for you. It's supposed to be really easy. They just give you the price you got the car supposed to be simple. So what I the job doing is to audit that to make sure that they're doing the job right. Which as you can imagine doesn't always happen. And that's why people like me do that type of job. And so you get paid $200 for each shop on a trip. You do about 20 to 25 shops. Do the math. That's 4,000 to $5,000 for a week of work. You're an independent contractor. You go on your little mission. You, you do your mission, you write your reports, do all the things. It's very intensive for that week of work, and that's it. And you make 4,5000 for that week. Pretty good. Pretty good. Especially for some kid who has $1000 in the bank account and just quit a full time job and has no idea what to do for money. $4,000 in a week is pretty good. And so I thought I was gonna have that position. I was like, wow, this is the universe is aligning. Da da da da. And what happened was, is I think the guy who I interviewed with thought I was absolutely insane because I just quit a job. It was crazy. And then a couple weeks later, I keep talking to him. I'm not getting the gig. I just, I'm not getting it. I keep having these conversations. He keeps kind of avoiding me. And then I tell him I'm about to write a book. And I just think I sound absolutely insane to him, which I was kind of absolutely insane at the time, just having this incredible spiritual opening and, and wasn't getting the gig. And this is now into February, still not getting this job. I got my last paycheck from work, so kind of boosted that a thousand. I think I got like maybe 1300 bucks for that last paycheck or 15, I can't exactly remember. But I kind of had something to hold me over. Still wasn't getting this gig. Now I'm getting afraid. I'm like, okay, I need to do something. So what do I do is I sign up for Lyft and, and I start slowly starting to drive Lyft just to give myself something of like, okay, I'm starting to make some money here and. But I'm really depending on this gig. Like, I'm really waiting for it, but it's not coming. Now. There's some crazy stories that happen in here that I'll get to at another time, but it's February, still don't have this gig. And then I'm just waiting. I'm feeling very disempowered. I'm like waiting for others to give me permission in a way, I'm waiting for others. And this is a very disempowered state. And this is maybe a lesson to just reflect to you, right, that. That the. Every time that you just take ownership over what you need to do, over dotting your T's, or dotting your I's, crossing your T's, when you take ownership, life moves for you. And I was in a place of waiting for things to happen rather than initiating and taking steps to happen. Now, I'm not going to get into. If you're any human design nerds, you might say, well, that's your type, and other people can wait. And that might be totally true. But I can only speak from my own experience, since I mentioned human design before. So what happened was, is that I'm starting to get discouraged. I'm starting to get afraid. And I go from working at this company, getting this raise, marketing coordinator for this international brand. A month and a half later, I'm walking into coffee shops and little restaurants, and I'm asking if they have job applications, because I felt like I needed to take some step, and I just wanted to be in an environment that would nourish and allow me to create the things that I wanted to create. Which at that time was an inspiration for writing the book of what happened for me in the past seven months that led to this radical transformation. And I walked into a couple restaurants, and it was just like, the vibe was just off. It wasn't felt, didn't feel right. They didn't really have any positions opening. And then I got my car, and I'm like, wait a second. I have Lyft. I know how much my rent is. I know how much I would need to make a week. And I just got really clear of, like, if I can make $500 a week, I'll be okay. And I just set that goal, and I just was like, everything just became crystal clear. It's like I was, you know, waiting for something to happen. I was feeling disempowered. I was walking these restaurants. I was like, you know what? Let me just hit this goal. I'll make $500 a week driving Lyft. I'll listen to audiobooks. I'll continue to grow. I'll spend my off time, I'll write, I'll do whatever I need to do to start growing, what I wanted to do in the world. And I decided, and literally that day that I made this kind of proclamation and this clarity where there's an alignment that happened internally that I was like, boom, this is what I need to do to make things work. I get a Call two hours later. Hey, Louis. It's this guy's name who ran the Costco program. We need someone to shadow this person today. Like, are you available? And I was like, yeah, of course I didn't have it. I dropped everything, which was nothing, because I just quit a job. And I went and I. With one of the higher ups in that program, actually this guy's wife, I went and I shadowed her doing the first mystery shops. We got along so great. It was such a great experience. The next day, she's doing more, and she's like, would you want to come back and shadow more? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. Right? I'm like, wow, I finally get this opportunity. And so this is about mid February at that time. And I continued with her. And after that, after they saw she felt my energy and, like, what I was able to do in this job, it was so fun, such a fun gig. It's like you're going and you're. You're kind of being. You're being an actor. You have to make up a fake alias. You have to have a whole story about what you do, where you live. You. You have to. You are acting. And I know there's a. You know, for someone who's all about authenticity, but when you play a role, when you have a job to do, you kind of have to embody that job. And so what I got to do is to wrap up, you know, a very long story, because there's other things I could say in here, but I got the gig and slowly got some. Some bigger gigs. So I first was doing a local gig in San Diego that paid you a little less because you still had to pay for all of your travel. So even though if you make 4,000 in a week, you know, you have to pay for whatever your costs were to travel. Airplane, rental car, Airbnb, all those things. And so it. Long story short, I got. Got more opportunities. It's not like you ever have the job because you're an independent contractor. You just start getting, like, opportunities. It's like, hey, this job's open. Do you want it? And I started saying yes to anything and everything. And so I did. My first job was six shops in San Diego. My second job was 16 shops in LA. And then my first big kind of get on a plane, rent a car job was in Seattle in May of that year. So it slowly started to happen where. And I started doing a good job on these jobs. And so I got more opportunities. And the craziest thing, the craziest thing Is that when I quit my job in 2015, with no plans on how I was going to support myself for the next year, just jumped, jumped. I made more money in 2015 doing this gig for Costco Mystery shopping cars than I did working my full time job where I was working every day, 50 hours a week. I made more money working like a week, a month than I did in my previous job. And this was a wild lesson for me because early on it broke me out of the paradigm that to make more, we need to work harder. Because it was a clear flow that was starting to happen in my life. And you know, I made a lot of radical changes too. So I stopped drinking. I wasn't spending money on alcohol and partying. Like I had my whole lifestyle radically changed. And with that, I could see how money could come in with more flow where you can actually have space where I could make $44,000 in a year and maybe work about 11 of those weeks. And so, you know, as I think about where I'm at now, where, you know, the ratio of how I worked, how much money I make, it's really tough to feel whatever that connection is. It's really more of an alignment and a flow and. And I feel super free and I make more money than I've ever made in my life. And it, I think that paradigm shift shifted and I'm grateful for it shifted with this job. And so, so many people are going to message me, look, can I get this job? I've tried to get so many people this job and it just, it never works out that way because we all have our own path. And now this all might sound really easy, Lou, you jumped and you got this opportunity. Like, you know, how's that helped me now? I did leave out kind of some serious, serious low points in this story because it brings in a completely different story that I'm not ready to tell quite yet. But here's to bring this back to should I jump? Should I not jump? One of the most difficult things to navigate, even after getting this job. So you get this gig and I, okay, now I can, I have a space where I potentially can keep money afloat. And. But then you get home from this trip and you kind of have shifted your routine and now I'm back and I have three weeks with absolutely nothing on the calendar. And for someone who's always worked for someone, having that amount of space can be incredibly overwhelming because when you have your regular job, you can kind of build in a structure like, I'm a big believer that structure creates creativity. And so let's say you have your Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 that you go to, and you start building in a routine that you wake up at, you know, 6:37am or something, or 5:00am, whatever it is, and you create meditations in the morning, or you write in the morning, or you work on building your business in the morning and that you create a habit. And because you have just that two hours or that one hour, you really focus in that one hour. You go to work, you do your work thing, you come home, you do your family, or maybe you do this at night or after work, whatever it is. But you get what I'm saying, that because you have less time, you can actually be really productive in the time that you have now. It was for me, going from 0 to 100 incredibly overwhelming because time felt so heavy where I'd wake up and I have the whole day to do anything right? There was no boundary, There was no structure. And it would be crippling. It would be crippling because I didn't know where to start. I didn't know what to do. I would just be surfing on the Internet and bouncing around, and it would be really challenging. So I would. For some of you, that's like, Lou, what do you mean? You had all this time, now you have money. It's like what we think we dream about. But I'm a big believer that if you quit and went on a beach for four weeks, you're going to be either bored or overwhelmed or wanting to change. We're meant to have structure and purpose and routine. It keeps us going. And so if you're thinking about going full time, I would encourage you to do a. Can you test it? Can you test. Can you take a month off work? And you say, hey, you know, a sabbatical, so to speak, and see what it's like for you. Because you might actually find that you were getting more done with your job. Now, this is different for everyone. Or if you're like, if your job is taking you away from anything, if you're having to be around an energy, an environment that is toxic, that is taking away your spiritual flow and energy, that quitting and leaving is going to be such a radical shift and give you that energy, then, yes, by all means, go for it. And if you are already on your own, maybe you've had some of the experiences and challenges of trying to navigate your own schedule, and maybe you haven't. Maybe you're super connected and that's cool for you and you have your routine down, but for me, it was really overwhelming. And so do I recommend people to leap, to not leap again? I'm gonna have to come back to can you slow down and see is this spirit that's guiding me? And it doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but you're gonna put yourself aligned. As Joseph Campbell said, you put yourself on a path that had always been there all along. And that's what happens when you follow, as he would say, your bliss, that it's waiting for you. It's already written, my friend. Not my friend. I wish he was my friend. Nako in Medicine for the People has a song. It is written, I think, in the alchemist Maktoub. It is written that in some dimension, in some aspect of energetic quality, that your purpose, your life, your unfolding is written already, just as the unfolding of an oak tree is already written in the acorn. And so you learn the path by walking it. And just to. I say that because it's going to be unique to you and know that if it is, actually, if you know what the path's going to look like, if you can be. I would almost say if you have a strong plan, then I would actually give more pause to that. I would actually give more energy to someone that wants to quit a job that doesn't have a plan, rather than someone who has a strong plan of how it's going to work out. Because what I've seen is one, often people give that plan way too short of a time. I've had a friend who quit a job and thought he was going to be making, you know, his. His living in like five months. And I'm like, dude, this takes time. You know, it says it takes, you know, four to five years for any business to get off the ground. And so if you have like a strict, a small plan, it's. It's such a balance. I'm saying this, and I'm like retracting myself, but our purpose, our spirit guidance, it's often actually taking those leaps into where we have no idea what the. The future holds. It's acting with that bold, taking those steps where we don't know that actually we open the door for something completely new to emerge. And that's what I want to encourage you to lean into, to not try and plan it, to not try and figure it out, but to really keep getting quiet and asking, what is the next step? What wants to emerge? What wants to unfold in my path, to walk the pathless path the path is found through walking it. So keep coming back to the moment, keep coming back to your connection to Spirit, to God, and asking for that guidance. Because that's really the teacher, that's the coach, that's the healer. Anyone else that you get guidance from is just in. If they're doing it in an integral way. I believe is helping you connect with that and that takes care of the rest. Should you jump, should you stay? It depends. All I know is, for me, when I have jumped, when I have followed the call of Spirit that God, the universe has made clear that when I jump, I will not fall. So thank you for listening, friends. I know this is riffy and ranty, but again, I hope sharing some of my story helps you understand my path. If you have questions on that Costco gig that's not about getting it, you're happy to share it or what else I was doing in the time was really fun. What a fun gig I got to do. I got to travel to all these cities in the country, in the US I got to go to all these cities that I would have never have gone to and explore and go on these road trips and be driving from place to place. And yeah, I had to. And I got to practice acting. I got to practice writing. I was writing these, like, thousand word reports after every car dealership, and I had to make up these stories and I had to kind of embody that. I was this person. I had to make up aliases. I had to, you know, have five burn burner phones on me. It was a really fun gig, and it was all by myself. It was fun to go on these little missions and make some money and come back and work on the things that matter to me. I got to completely leave it where it was like. So that's another lesson. It's like, can you completely leave your work at work? Because that gives you such a fresh eye to do the things that you're doing. But if you're taking that with you, it's porous. And there's energy. There's not. There's a. There's not. You don't have a clear energy to work on things they're working on. So I feel so blessed, so, so blessed for this gig because it afforded me everything. It afforded me the ability to keep putting the energy that I was putting in and to where I'm at now. And I did my last gig in 2019, September of 2019. And I, at that time, it was like, this is enough. I've done hundred, I've Sat in hundreds of car dealer deals. I've disappointed hundreds, maybe a thousand car dealers because I was never actually buying the car. Oh, man. And it was getting to that point where like, you know, when things need to end and I, and I was getting scared that I actually need to actually make this other thing work. But you know, I have, I look back and it's some of my most cherished memories. It just shows like the journey is not about getting anywhere. Like, there was so much beauty and purpose in going and doing that. And so if you have a job, you know, you get to bring that purpose to it. And it's all, it's, it's, it's for its own sake that it's not about getting to the thing. I'm, I'm where I'm at now. I'm like, you know, I made it in whatever I thought making it was years ago. And honestly, I look back and I have nostalgia for those times. They were so alive, they were so new, they were so on edge. There was, it was such a what's going to happen? And I feed off that energy. So some people don't feed off that energy. So I almost miss that. As crazy as it sounds, Lou, you've made it, but you missed the past. What the heck goes to show? It's not about getting anywhere. The journey is the reward. So enjoy it. Wherever you are today, bring your aliveness, bring your, bring your energy. Do what you need to make this day count. Because that's what it's about. I thought my rant was over, but I guess some more wanted to come through. Thanks for listening. Let me know what you thought. Send me an email and I love getting a chance to share this with you. If you didn't hear on my last episode that I have a brand new new course for you. It's completely free. It's a course called Meditation Script Mastery and it's a seven lesson video course to help you script and create powerful, unique and evocative meditations that you can use online, that you can share with your clients, that you can learn how to come up with new ideas that are different than other people, that allow others to really vibe with you and trust you and connect with you. And so it's free. So go to meditation creators.thinkific.com thinkific meditation with if I see creators.thinkific.com there should be a link in the show notes for you. Enroll, share it with your friends and I deeply thank you for your time, your energy, your love. Go out there, share your gifts. Share your light and let me know how I can support you