Should I Quit My Job
to Pursue My Passion?
Not yet. "Quit your job and travel" sounds better than "work 20 extra unpaid hours a week for years," which is exactly why it sells. I made the video below while I was still working on ships and building YouTube on the side, and the plan in it is the one I followed.
I make the full case in the video, if you'd rather watch.
The highlight reel leaves out the hard part
The people selling "quit your job" content show the jet, the water, the freedom. What they skip is how they got there — usually family money, a lottery-level viral hit, or years of grinding nobody films. The first two you can't plan for. The third you can.
The four types of people chasing freedom
This is my rough breakdown, not a study:
- The "must be nice" crew — the majority. They watch the success, explain why it couldn't work for them, and never start.
- One-hit wonders — a viral moment or a windfall. Without the skill it took to earn it, it rarely lasts.
- Unicorns — the 20-year-old who made it fast. They're real, but rare, and they're all over your feed precisely because they're rare.
- Grit — the people who stack 20 hours a week on top of a full-time job for years. That's the group you can actually choose to join.
Why the job is the secret weapon
Building anything worth quitting for takes a long time. I started YouTube in 2019 and didn't make my first dollar until I was monetized in 2024 — and even then it was nowhere near enough to live on.
Meanwhile, rent, a car payment, and food don't stop. You can cut subscriptions and the daily coffee, but you can't cut everything. The job trades your time for the money that covers the basics, so your free time can go to the real work without the panic of needing it to pay off this month.
The three-step plan
- Find the passion. It isn't instant. Mine came after I tore my UCL pitching in college and baseball ended overnight. I made a YouTube video, it did pretty well, and I thought: I'd love to do this full-time.
- Carve out the time — about 20 hours a week. That's 2 hours a day and 10 across the weekend, unpaid. It's hard. It's also what separates you from everyone who only talks about it.
- Limit your expenses. Earning more doesn't mean spending more. Pay loans down aggressively. I keep a spreadsheet of every dollar in and out — knowing your numbers is how you find the waste.
Do that long enough and the side project eventually earns as much as the job. Then you quit.
Where that left me
I recorded this as a third engineer on a ship, doing YouTube and my Turo business on my time off. I've since left the ship and work on YouTube and QUSE Cars full-time. Quitting was always the goal — just not first.
Keep reading
- What It's Like Working on a Ship as a Third Engineer — the job that paid the bills
- How Much Does a Small YouTuber Make? — what the side project paid in year one
I'm a YouTuber in Charleston, South Carolina. I built the channel and my Turo fleet while working on ships, and I share the real numbers behind both. More about me.
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