By the SERDEF Media Bureau
(first published in the Philippine Online Chronicles, June 20, 2015)
Most of us dream of owning our own business. While we slave away in our 9-5 jobs, we dream of the day when we no longer have to wake up early every morning, brave the gauntlet that is the public transport system of the metro, and report for work.
But owning a business is not an either-or situation. One can be an entrepreneur while still working a 9 to 5 job. In fact, it is best to be working while you are starting your business. This way, you won’t be totally dependent in the business and your expenses won’t be part of your business’s overhead. Starting a business while you are still employed gives you the freedom to perfect your business instead of using all your resources to raise/earn enough money to cover your expenses.
Here are three ways to build your enterprise while holding on to your regular job.
- Consider your job as a gift
You job is not something that is holding you back. It is not something that makes it harder for you to build your empire. Rather, it’s a gift that will keep you warm and fed while your work on your dream enterprise on the side.
Starting your business from scratch won’t be easy, especially during the early stages. Holding on to your job while starting your business will allow you to work out the kinks in your business without putting yourself and your family in financial jeopardy since you still have your salary to keep you buoyant.
You may not want the job that you are in but use it to fuel your goals. Think of it as something you need while you perfect your business. Consider each day on your job as a step closer to your goals – that is, to have your own business and the freedom and security to finally walk away from your job.
- Plan and use your time wisely
One disadvantage in having a regular job is that 40 hours of your time every week is already ear-tagged for office work. To be able to run a business effectively while holding on to a job, it is a must to know how to manage your time.
Forty hours seem daunting and looking at our day to day, our time in the office or in our jobs seem to dominate our day, but if we think about it , 40 hours is just a fourth of the total number of hours in a week, which is 168 hours. You spend about another 25% of your time sleeping so you have approximately half of the week to tend to your business, less the time you spend fulfilling your obligations to your family.
In order to maximize the use of your time, you have to make sacrifices. Less TV time, for instance, will mean more time for your business. Being a fulltime employee/part time entrepreneur would mean less time for your friends but these sacrifices will be temporary, there will come a time when you will have all the time in the world. As one wise man puts it, Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.
- Outsource
One of the great things about today’s business landscape is the advent of companies who offer outsourcing services. Outsourcing some parts of your business will give you more time to focus on processes that you can perform. That way, you won’t need to learn or train your employees, instead, the burden of training these employees will be shouldered by the BPO company.
Outsourcing may cost more but it will lessen the things that you need to do in your business and these will be done by experts, something that will be too expensive if you have to hire them full time.
So do the things that no one else can and outsource the rest.
Putting up your own business may be hard but with hard work, discipline and dedication, you will be able to succeed. We all dream of walking away from our jobs and having our own business. This dream can be a reality. We just need to make the necessary sacrifices today to achieve our goals tomorrow.
Photo c/o Pixabay. Public domain.