Millions of people are wanting to escape the 9 to 5 grind. One way to escape the 9 to 5 is to seek an opportunity that will turn you from a worker to a boss.
There are many good reasons why this will be a wise move. Starting a business and being your own boss means you’ll set your own hours. This will be vital if you’ve got young children, or just want to spend more time home. Being able to work from home also can save valuable time, if the choice is spending two or three hours a day commuting back and forth to your workplace. And in fact, starting a business also gives you the chance to determine how much money you can make.
Starting a business also allows you to obtain time freedom. It sets you free from the restrictions of being someone else’s paid employee, and reciprocally forces you to determine your own future. As a self-employed entrepreneur you’re able to set your own hours, establish your own work habits, choose what work you’ll do or won’t do, create your own products, find your own customers, and do whatever it takes to make those customers happy.
One of the most important things, once you are self-employed you are able to set your own prices and make the maximum amount or as little income as you’re able. You won’t answer to anyone aside from yourself, your suppliers, and in fact , the ever-present taxman, after you become successful.
How to start — Two Alternatives
There are two obvious ways of starting a business:
- The first way is to quit your day job and launch full bore into your new business. We’ll call this the “All or Nothing Approach”.
- This is an approach many entrepreneurs have taken including one that I really like, Pat Flynn when he decided starting a business was the only choice after getting laid off from his job
- The second way is to continue working at your current place of employment and develop a business on the side in your spare time. We’ll call this the “Spare Time Approach”.
- This is the approach I took, worked my job as normal while building We Brand Culture on side.
- The first way is to quit your day job and launch full bore into your new business. We’ll call this the “All or Nothing Approach”.
Depending on your point of view, taking the All or Nothing Approach is considered an act of bravery or simply plain recklessness. Unless you’re independently wealthy, planning and timing are vital with this approach. That’s because once you quit your job your source of income is done and you’ll have a limited amount of your time to make your business work. It’s “sink or swim”. And you’ll sink pretty quickly without a source of income.
So that means you need to plan carefully. Every situation is different. A friend of mine was ready to step from his government job into a personal consulting business because he spent the previous couple of months of his employment developing leads and contacts within his industry. When he went on his own he had customers waiting in the wings and was ready to double his income in his very first year.
But most folks aren’t so lucky. We don’t have the standard leads or the specialized skills. Nor do most folks have the chance to use our present employment to create a launchpad of potential customers before we plunge into the wild blue yonder of starting a business. Most people are beginning at zero with a couple of vague ideas, a questionable set of yet-to-be-defined skills, and severely limited income. So our venture into Starting a Business had better begin within a couple of months or we’re likely to crash and burn.
That is why the Spare Time Approach is best for many new entrepreneurs. The Spare Time Approach allows you to test your ideas, develop your skills, and build your business slowly. If you’re unsure about the products or services you plan to sell, the Spare Time Approach allows you to try different product lines and see how well they slot in together with your overall objectives. Often new entrepreneurs find that their first ideas aren’t realistic, or there is no marketplace for the services they have to provide . Or they find they can’t charge enough to make any profit providing the products or services they need chosen.
Choose your product carefully
Like all new entrepreneurs, whether you’re taking the “all or nothing approach” or the “spare time approach” be very frugal with your limited resources. Meaning don’t invest any serious money in the beginning of your product or business idea until you’ve checked it out thoroughly. The easiest way to check out a product is to do the following:
- Ask people that are already selling a product or service.
- Establish the credibility of the person or company providing the merchandise or service.
- Confirm the company provides on-going support for the product(s).
- Confirm there are not any hidden or unexpected costs (such as franchise fees) which will eat away your profits.
This applies whether you’re checking out a digital product like drop shipping, ebooks, affiliate marketing or a more traditional product or service aimed toward local customers.
For example, an associate of mine produces digital card displays. The thought behind this product is that it provides new entrepreneurs way to create an advertising service for local businesses. With the digital card displays, the entrepreneur creates a network of displays and strategically places them in high traffic areas like a grocery stores, hair salons, or strip malls. Then local advertisers can place their ads within the displays across the network. If someone browsing one of the displays sees a service they need, they could take the information or scan the QR code for future reference.
Sure, it isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. except for someone willing to work heads down for a couple of months. It is a reasonably easy because business which can return a handsome income for the future.
And this manufacturer stands behind their product. He can show you samples of successful advertising networks where his displays are used. He will provide testimonials and get in touch with information from real people whom you’ll ask how well the merchandise is functioning for them. And to top it off, he uses the merchandise himself during a network of over 40 displays, and may provide hands-on information about how it actually works during a real-life situations.
This is pretty rare within the world of “business opportunities”. Many are travel by “take the cash and run” types who make wildly exaggerated claims about how successful you’ll be. But in many cases most “gurus” have not actually turned an idea into a business themselves.
As any successful entrepreneur will tell you, your product selection is crucial to the success or failure of your business. Most products are simple ideas with no hope of working and lots of others are designed to supply maximum profits for his or her creators, and minimum profits for people such as you and me who sell them. So regardless of the hard work you put in or how committed you are to being successful, if you select the incorrect product you’ll be operating with a millstone around your neck.
