What Was the Biggest Challenge For You After Deciding To Quit Your 9 to 5 Job?

Skye Khilji:

The next question comes from my friend Ana based over in Serbia and and I have worked together for a long time. While I was in Dubai, she flew out to come and do a retreat with us. We have worked together for a long time on a lot of projects, and I'm hoping to go to Anna's wedding in Serbia in May. But this Corona virus thing is putting that at risk. So I don't know what's going to happen with that. But here's Anna's question all the way from Belgrade in Serbia.

Ana Simonovic:

Hi, Ana here from Serbia. And first of all, I would like to issue very happy by this guy. So my question would be what was the biggest challenge for you after you decided to leave 9 to 5 Job?

Skye Khilji:

Well, thank you Firstly, for the birthday wishes, Ana. And the question is one that was actually asked by my other friend Mr C Knowles on Instagram knows like Beyonce. I'm sure he's sick of hearing that. But his question was, what was the hardest thing you had to unlearn when taking a fresh direction? And it's actually the same as you know, what was the hardest thing when I quit nine to five?

That was the biggest shift in direction in my life, probably. So to answer both of those questions, the hardest thing for me was trying not to take my foot off the gas. So I'd left nine to five, the motivation wasn't about me being pulled towards something exciting at that point, because I didn't know what I was going to do with my life still, even though it was 32.

At that point, what happened was I was actually moving away from something that I hated, which was you know, that corporate career and having to be a wage slave. So once I got my freedom, I had all day to pretty much do what I want. And I was doing freelancing and marketing, consulting. And not all of my projects excited me, it was much more appealing for me just to read or do another course, or work on my passion project, which I loved. But it didn't bring me any money, right.

So I just had to remember that there's no paycheck coming, there's no company that's going to bail me out and send me a couple of thousand pounds, you know, every four weeks. So the thing that I did at that point was I had a white wall, which is you know, those walls you could write on with the marker that was in my office at home, and I put my go on the wall, I put the number. And every day at the end of the day, I'd go in there and write the new number. If you've seen the movie, The Big Short, where Michael Burry, he comes out of his office in his shorts with the drums playing loud and he writes the value of the hedge fund on the wall.

It was exactly like that. My numbers were just pitiful In comparison, but that kept me focused on my goal. So the hardest thing for me was not giving into the thing that I wanted to do, and actually focusing on the thing that I had to do just to keep them money coming in, you know, to maintain that freedom that I just got. And it was hard because at that point in my life, I was just done. I was so tired of everything exhausted. And one phase of my life was closing. And the next phase hadn't opened yet.

So I felt like I was in limbo. I couldn't move towards, you know, traveling and starting that digital nomad life because I had the commitments of my old life that I had to you know, unwind, I had to sell my house, I had to work my notice in my job. So being in that middle period was the first challenge and then once I did get my freedom, but I hadn't sold my house, I couldn't leave the country, just you know, keeping all of that stuff going and bringing it to closure, whilst making sure that I was you know, paying my bills and making sure I had enough money coming in. That was definitely the hardest thing about that time of my life.