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  You’ve come upon a brilliant business idea—or it just popped up in your head somehow –and now you’re thinking about starting out with it, full time.
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But you currently have a job. Whether you love or detest it, it pays the bills (at least in part). You’re wondering whether it’s right to leap from this job to your own business. Here’s the truth: building a business without the financial cushion of a day job is risky. You can’t be certain that your idea will blossom into a successful enterprise. And even if it does, you may not have enough money to take you to its break-even point. What should you do? This article aims to make it easier for you to answer the above question. We probably can’t give you an answer ourselves, as we aren’t in on your peculiar realities. But the points we’ll share here should put you in a better position to make a decision.

The Options You Have

If you have a day job and you’re hoping to run your own business full-time one day, you have two options:
  • Leave your job and start the business, or
  • Gradually build up the business while you’re still at your job until it’s generating enough for you to make the switch
The first is something that many people wish they could do, especially if they’re enamoured with their business idea, or don’t like the job they’re currently in. In reality, this option may be closed to them. They don’t have the resources required to just leave their employer and create their own venture. That last line describes a great majority of would-be entrepreneurs. Because they don’t have the sort of savings or external support that’ll see them through their business’s early stages, they settle for the second option: running their enterprise as a side hustle, until it shows enough promise and momentum to be worth working on full time. However, some may weigh the resources available to them and decide that they can start and run a business after leaving their job. Such people are often certain that their enterprise is almost certainly going to succeed. The key here is that they’ve closely examined the relevant factors, and come to the conclusion that launching after exiting their employer was a move worth making.
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What You Should Do

Here, we’ll talk about some of the things you should do before deciding whether to leave your job to start a business or build the business by the side while remaining an employee. If you’re thinking about leaving your current role to start a business, here are some things you should do first:
  • Research your target market and the existing businesses that serve them, and decide if you have an idea that truly meets the needs of the former.
  • Know where your business’s early-stage funding will come from; will your savings be sufficient, or will you need a loan or some other kind of support from family and friends, acquaintances, or formal lenders?
  • Have a workspace for your business; the form it takes will depend on the type of business you want to set up.
  • Decide if you’re motivated enough to start and run the business full time. Building a business is hard work, and requires a lot of motivation.
  • Determine the structure your business will take; will you run it as a solopreneur, or in partnership with other co-founders? If you opt for an early team, how many people would you need to be on board at the start?
  • Have a business plan that indicates what your business is and does, describes its industry and target market, defines its marketing strategy and projects its financial performance in its early months and years.
But if you want to start a business as a freelance or side project and grow it gradually, you should deal with these issues:
  • Know if you can bear the extra work; building a new venture while holding down a day job can be really stressful. Be certain that you can succeed at both.
  • Determine that you will not be slowed down by the security that comes with your job.
  • Ascertain that you can grow the business with the time you have left after attending to your day job (whether it’s early morning, evenings, or weekends).
  • Be sure that working on both your job and your business will not severely impact your other commitments, or at least inform the most important people in your life that your time with them will be limited for a while.
  • Know what metrics you need to achieve with your business before going full time with it.
Final Words In most cases, you’ll only know with hindsight if it was better to start with a side hustle or take the full plunge into entrepreneurship. But it’s possible to think smartly about these things so that your decision winds up being the right one. Hopefully, the points we’ve listed here will help you achieve this. Featured Image Source: Business News Daily
Got a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com
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This article was first published on 21st October 2021

ikenna-nwachukwu

Ikenna Nwachukwu holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves to look at the world through multiple lenses- economic, political, religious and philosophical- and to write about what he observes in a witty, yet reflective style.

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