Why Ex-Employees Struggle to Make Money

How I stopped obsessing over money and started producing it

In last week’s post, we tackled the mechanics of the bridge between employment and entrepreneurship: what it means to sell your time and how to begin productising your skill. We also talked about why your first move out of corporate shouldn’t be building a massive venture, but something more grounded: selling your time to several customers.

If you haven’t read that one, I’d recommend you start there.

This week, I want to talk about what happens once you’ve started selling your time. You’re out. You’ve left. You’ve sent the proposals. You’ve maybe landed your first client. And then you realise something.

You're still not okay.

Because even if you’ve saved up money…
Even if you’ve landed a few clients…
Even if your calendar is fuller than it was a month ago…

You can’t shake the stress of not having a salary. And that stress, left unmanaged, can wreck your productivity, your thinking, and your momentum.

When You No Longer Have an Inbox

The first time I woke up after leaving corporate, I had this bizarre moment. It wasn’t just that I had fewer emails. I had no inbox at all.

No automated requests. No weekly cadence. No recurring calls. No salary coming in at month-end. Just space. Which, on a good day, feels like freedom. But on a bad day, it feels like a void you're falling through.

And that’s when the money stress starts to creep in.

Even if you have savings, it doesn’t matter. Because the rhythm is gone. The predictability is gone. And your brain starts asking the question you’re not ready to answer: “How am I going to replace that money?”

Salary Thinking vs Entrepreneur Thinking

As an employee, I planned my life around my salary coming in every month on the 25th.

Each month, like clockwork, money would come in. I had spreadsheets with all future salaries forecasted, all projected commission payments mapped out. I would plug in my expected income and arrange my spending accordingly.

My salary was the constant. And I just had to do the needful to keep that constant there. Beyond meeting KPIs, I had to smile at the right people at the right times and life was okay.

That’s salary thinking. And it works. In corporate.

But it’s fatal outside. Because the moment you go off on your own, that entire formula breaks.

There is no constant paycheck. So if you keep thinking like an employee, you will panic. You will wait for money to behave like it used to. You’ll stare at your bank balance. You’ll second-guess your decisions. You’ll spend your attention where you no longer have direct control.

Effort First

The single biggest mental reset I had to make was this: Your effort is your new constant. Not your salary.

You can’t control when money arrives. You can’t force a customer to pay today. But you can control how much product you create. You can control how many people you speak to. You can control how often you show up with something valuable to offer.

And when I say effort, I mean things that YOU do, like:

• Time spent creating the product.

• Time spent talking about the product to prospects.

• Time spent marketing, packaging, refining, quoting, delivering.

Effort includes every deliberate action you take to put something into the world.

And the more you increase the quality and intensity of your effort, the more money starts to show up. Not always instantly. But consistently.

Attention Management > Financial Forecasts

This might sound obvious, but it’s deceptively difficult. Because when you’re under financial pressure, and let’s be honest, many new entrepreneurs are, it’s incredibly hard to keep your focus on effort. The instinct is to fixate on money.

You start refreshing your bank balance. You start panicking about the next two months. You start questioning your path.

And that panic distracts you from the only thing that can actually improve your situation: your effort.

Not just busywork, either. Directed, deliberate work. You need to block your time, structure your weeks, and push yourself to track your outflow, not your income. That’s the correction I want to drive home here. Because I made the mistake of thinking that stressing about “making money” would help me. It didn’t. It broke my rhythm.

Mastering the Week

Here’s what worked for me:

I picked a number. For me, it was 50 hours a week. That was the container. And then I filled that container with every bit of productive effort I could muster.

I logged my actions. I tracked what worked. I refined the time blocks. Marketing, sales conversations, product work, delivery. Everything that I needed to do. And each week, the game was simple: increase the output within those hours.

You’re not trying to make money by watching the pot boil. You’re trying to create pressure at the source. Effort is the source.

The Mistake 90% Make

Most people can’t hold this focus. They spend the week worrying about the money instead of engineering it.

And when nothing comes in, they panic more. They lose a week. Then two. Then a month. And suddenly they’re burnt out, discouraged, and looking for full-time jobs again.

Don’t let that be your path. The money doesn’t come because you want it to. The money comes because you made something and put it in front of someone. Remember the sequence: effort before money. You control your money by controlling your effort.

Do that again. And again. And again. And then track what’s working. Adjust. Improve.

And repeat.

Next Week

In the final part of this series, I’m going to share how I built my first real product.

It wasn’t perfect. It didn’t scale instantly. But it was the beginning of something I could build on.

Until then, I’ll leave you with this: Don’t stare at your bank account. Stare at your calendar. That’s where the answers are.

Now, make it rAIn,
KG