Respect the building blocks, master the fundamentals, and the potential is unlimited
In July 2021, I was a guest speaker on a podcast — GOAL’D in Africa hosted by one of my students Sarah Murengi and was asked a question around the lines of “What is the most difficult part of starting a business?” and my response was “Starting the business”.
Identifying a business opportunity and coming up with an idea to address it is an excellent step in the right direction. But it is a long way from having a business idea and launching the business. While on the one hand, we have people who are ready to give up everything in pursuit of their “dreams”, we also have those who are petrified to pursue their “dreams”, probably because they think they have to give up what they currently do for it.
Getting caught up in the “chase your dreams” and “era of entrepreneurship” razzmatazz can lead to hasty decisions. Entrepreneurship as an all or nothing strategy is needlessly high risk and, almost always, the wrong path forward. If you want to start your business, go ahead and start it while working on your day job. Here are five tips on how to do that
Maintain Perspective: It’s worth acknowledging it won’t be easy. Simultaneously performing a full-time job while building a business will come with enormous pressure and challenges to overcome — making time for both activities, ensuring that you are not violating the terms of your existing contract will require a lot of precision and determination.
On the brighter side, there is a lot you could learn as an entrepreneur by working a job, especially in an organisation in its growth stages. Instead of perceiving the pressure from your day job as a problem, think of it in this manner — your salary could be used as capital to fund your business, and the skill set you are gaining from the job can be pivotal for your business’s success.
Put in the hours and work on your schedule: Time and tide wait for no man, but you can make the most of the time given to you. You will need to look at your day’s schedule and see how you can allocate time to work on your business. While you may work a 9 to 5 job, unfortunately, you will need to put double effort into your business. This is not you passing time, but you are also working on something that is creating value and will be sustainable.
Everyone has 24 hours in a day, and in those 24 hours, we will assume 8 hours goes to sleep, 8 hours you spend at work and the idle 8 hours you need to make sure you use productively. To successfully run a business while working full time, productivity and time management skills are a must-have, and with the proper discipline, you can build these skills. Cut the TV time, reduce the hangouts, and be surprised by how much time you have to work on your business.
Note: This is not to say you push away loved ones because we are all in pursuit of happiness at the end of the day. My point is, if you want to start a business, you will have to create time for it.
Launch your barest minimum: Entrepreneurs are visionaries and are easily swayed by the possibilities of all they can do, but you have to slow down and start from the basics. Before jumping into what the goal is, start with the barest minimum. Your barest minimum should look at your basic product and how you reach your customers and fulfill your obligations to them.
Launching the bare minimum of your business is not an excuse to create more time for your day job; it is an opportunity for you to test your basic assumptions and find your product-market fit before diving all in. It is resource-efficient and helps you to get started because if you are waiting to start big, you might never start at all.
Do not do it alone: Success is a team sport. Failure, we can do it alone, but success takes the help of others — Simon Sinek. While there is pride in conceiving an idea and executing it, you do not have to do it alone. The odds are you do not have all the skills and resources it requires to build that business into its full potential.
Putting together a team of people with complementary (not the same) skills increases the chances of success and also reduces the burden of doing all the work alone. It also gives you a pool of people to ask what they think about the business.
Leverage Technology: While working hard is essential, working smart reduces how hard you have to work. There is a ton of technology that will help you reduce many tasks that used to take hours to a matter of minutes or seconds, in some cases. This is useful not just for your business but also for your job.
Customer Relationship Management and Marketing Automation Software will help automate some of your mundane emails. You can use AI-powered chatbots to communicate with your customers and respond to their queries. The beauty of today’s technologies is that they are always a cost-efficient alternative and can be accessed from your mobile phone.
Starting your own business can be a lot of work, from questioning yourself to putting in the work even when you feel exhausted. Don’t dismiss chasing your dreams because it gets tough. What is more challenging is waking up every day and dealing with that silent voice of “should have” and “could have” in your head.
Do you have an idea and want to put it out there, let us talk about it. You can contact me on Twitter or Instagram (@njimmawah) and on LinkedIn (Nji Mbitaownu Mughe Awah)
Thnx