How I quit my job with directories

If you’re trying to quit your job (or already quit) to become a full-time builder, I’m speaking directly to you.

I quit my job back in March 2024 to go all in on building website directories.

But there’s a couple things I wish I knew before I made the leap.

p.s. feel free to scroll to the end to see my 6-step game plan on how to quit your job building directories.

This marks not once, but twice now that I’ve quit my job to hopefully die on the sword of entrepreneurship.

Now that I’m 11 months into re-unemployment, I wanted to share a couple things I’m doing differently that is confidently keeping me away from returning to my old job.

Btw, is it just me or is there a wave of people quitting their jobs to take full advantage of this AI boom?

First, let’s talk about time.

The first year after quitting is always weird.

It’s almost too short of a timeline to expect any serious results. For me, the first 6 months was just balancing what I “thought” I needed to do and repeatedly asking myself “should i just get another job?”

It’s a time of wandering, learning and shipping as much as humanly possible without burning out.

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there around when you should quit.

Justin Welsh says to quit when your business revenue is nearing your salary.

Others say it’s when your side hustle brings in 30% of your salary.

There’s no black and white rule. I’ve met people who quit with 3 months of savings and made it work, but the stress was insane. In general, I think having a two year run rate in savings is a safe bet.

Now fast forward to when I quit.

Here are the harsh truths I needed to tell myself before building directory sites full-time:

The best time to start your directory is 1 year before you quit your job
Building and earning money from a directory can be the chillest money you ever make, but it’s slow because SEO is slow. It can’t be rushed, otherwise you’ll probably fail without the proper idea validation and research
You need a way to make money now. This is for your own sanity, but its also a practical way to keep afloat and reduce your burn rate

Directories are amazing distribution first businesses that share a lot of the same benefits of SaaS. But directories are slow, because SEO is slow.

People underestimate the constant impatience and mental toll of seeing zero dollars being generated from your new projects.

This feeling sucks and can slowly eat away your spirit.

Sure, my new sites were showing quick results. The SEO strategies were making incredible progress within the first month or two, but the slow money got me stressin’ at times.

It took months for me to realize that I had found my slow earner, but I needed a way to make “quick” money too.

So I did what a lot of people do – freelance on the side, while building my directory businesses.

The hidden benefit with creating directory sites is this:

Once you build a website that gets thousands of monthly visitors every month, you’re now in a position to help other small businesses who think SEO is some type of harry potter wizardry.

Unfortunately (but also fortunately), there’s a lot of snakes in the grass in the SEO world.

If you can be the trusted SEO in your circle, you’ll get enough SEO consulting gigs purely from referrals to survive, while building your directories.

It started by giving away free 1 hour consults to business owners.

Initially, I never planned to charge for SEO consulting because it was fun for me. An opportunity to teach what I know and look under the hood of different businesses.

Until I gave a free consult to one person who, at the end of the call, said “name your price.”

Confused and hesitant, I told him I wasn’t trying to make this my second business.

“No, I don’t think you understand. We’re working together. Just throw a price out there and it’s good with me.”

This led to my first client, which turned into referrals where I started charging $100/hr for SEO consultations.

And it kept happening, over and over again.

I raised my prices to $150/hr and people still paid.

This week, I broke another mental barrier after charging $500 for a two hour SEO consult – A referral from one of the first few business owners I gave a free SEO consult to.

What’s insane is that today (literally while I’m writing this on Sunday 1/19/25), this same client referred me to another company wanting a $500 consult.

Insanity.

p.s. what’s funny is the first hour was spent just talking about header tags which is insanely basic. These are older folks and I really had to break it down for them in layman terms.

So if you’re trying to quit your job, here’s a simple game plan you can try:

Build a website directory and learn basic nation-wide SEO strategies
Once you start getting traffic, you now have a proof that you semi-know what you’re doing
Play with different ways to get backlinks
Join networking groups and infiltrate private entrepreneur groups, offering free SEO consultations at first
As you improve, start charging for paid SEO consultations
Continue building directories, and while you wait for them to grow, keep doing SEO consultations until people naturally refer you because you’re the “SEO” guy/gal

The key component here is trust.

Again, there’s a lot of snakes in the grass in the SEO world.

Think about it – it’s so easy to say that SEO takes months to be effective (which in many cases it does). People buy it, pay you a retainer for 6-8 months, and whether they get results doesn’t matter. You already got paid!

Trust me when I say, a lot of SEO agencies aren’t doing much.

Or they’re doing things in a spammy way….publishing first drafts of AI generated blog posts targeting terrible keywords, buying 500 backlinks for $10 on Fiver, the list goes on.

But that’s why if you’re someone with integrity, you become infinitely more valuable.

Sometimes people hire me just to tell them if the SEO company they hired is a scam or not (lol).

So that’s what I recommend. Aggressively build your slow earners, while creating a fast earner.

Build directories that solve problems, while increasing your run rate with SEO consultations.

Now you have a serious shot at becoming a full-time builder.

Best,

Frey