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There’s a lot of talk these days about people quitting their jobs to start companies. People feel like they won’t be taken seriously (by investors and colleagues) unless they quit their jobs and dedicate their lives to their startup. While the ultimate goal is to create your own company that you can work on full-time, I think that’s something that comes later in the process, not at the beginning.

Unless you’re a trust-fund kid or you work(ed) on Wall St. (I feel sorry for you and you’re probably not fit to run a startup), you probably don’t have enough money in the bank to forgo a salary for a year or two. So chances are, you shouldn’t quit your job to start a company. But that doesn’t mean you still can’t start a company.

Let me tell you a quick story. A story about 2 guys with an idea, who started a company and have grown it into a multi-million dollar business in a few years. They now live healthy lives, are considered “successful” (make lots of $$ and have nice apartments) and are able take vacations traveling the world.

This is not a story of 2 guys who quit their jobs, irresponsibly racked up tons of debt and were so pressured to succeed that they made irrational decisions and jeopardized the success of their company.

These 2 gentlemen already had jobs. One was a consultant and the other was running a team at an existing company. When they decided to start a company they didn’t say “We HAVE to quit our jobs to make this a reality!” Instead they said, “Let’s keep our jobs to finance the type of lifestyle we want, and hustle our asses off to build this other company that we’re really passionate about.” They didn’t raise funding right away (though they could have) and didn’t even take salaries for the first year (because the company wasn’t making enough money). But that didn’t matter. They hustled and hustled and were able to generate enough revenues to bring on a few employees and contractors within the first year.

You can easily replace “consultant” with “insert-your-job-title-here” to fit your situation. After asking one of them about how he was able to fit it all in, he remarked, “I just didn’t sleep.” Whether you have another job or not, building a company will require lack of sleep on a regular basis. It’s just a matter of whether or not you’d like to be paid for at least some of those waking hours.