2) Quit your job

This is the part of the article, where my father, if reading, does a face palm. “Dan… tone it down a notch…”

What I’m about to say will be derided by all others in your life. You’ll likely only hear it from me. All the more reason to give it a think.

Your job is the single biggest time investment in your life. When you don’t have big money working for you, you only have your time. You need to invest it better.

You have two options. First, you can super-hack the job to provide you with cash runway while you start small businesses on the side. Hustle during your lunch break, leave early, sneak work in to your desk, use company resources for your start-up (be wary, wary careful here… this could be illegal, immoral, or other….) get home and keep crankin’. If you don’t have the energy to sustain this (it’s hard), or vision to start executing (you need to know what to do), the single best thing you can do is quit and find a better job.

You often say your job is ‘boring’ and ‘unfulfilling.’ Entrepreneurship and location independence aside, that fundamentally isn’t good enough. Don’t make me launch into a carpe diem speech!

A lot of successful entrepreneurs parlay their professional skills into small businesses or freelance consulting work. If you don’t see a straight path from your professional career into a solo gig or small business, get the hell out of there. Find an industry that is training entrepreneurs. One that challenges you and forces you to learn. Start working out that hustle muscle.

In my limited experience, the best way to train to be a small business entrepreneur or start-up founder is to be the right hand man of an established one. Find a gig like that. Take less money to do it if you have to.