Can You Run a Business While in Full-time Employment?

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Christian Chileshe is an Experienced Market Systems Development (MSD) practitioner with advanced skills in facilitating a wide spectrum of enterprise development practice models.

Importance of a Side Business While in Employment

It is a very commendable step to go out and start up a business while still in employment because this presents great opportunities. Business is all about taking risks, trying out, learning from mistakes, and growing. There is no better time than when you are in employment as you still have a steady flow of income which you are able to invest in the business, besides this, you can easily borrow on account that you have a salary.

Starting a business while having a full-time job is a window of opportunities that will allow you to grow and be established before you leave your full-time job. There is a challenge though and this comes with the level of effort you will put in and the amount of time involved.

Being Involved In your Business

This can be broken into two levels and these are:

• Business Planning

It will help you map out the processes that your business will undergo in a structured way. This business planning process is needed to help develop the business systems and assets in a direction that the business is heading in.

• Character Formation and Mindset

One will need to retrospect and rewire themselves to engage in a risky undertaking. You will have to build a character that will enable you to work under the dynamics

, this will need some form of transformation to take place in order for you to be successful.

This means you will need to develop a character that allows you to run a business in a certain way under the prevailing circumstances.

Best Time to Consider Hiring

It is a fact that depending on the level and interaction that your business has reached, there will definitely be a need for you to bring onboard employees to help you run the business be it on a part-time or Full-time basis. Other than this those employees will need someone to supervise in your absence.

To get these employees you need to employ them, when it comes to hiring you need to ensure that you advertise for the positions needed and not the titles to avoid raising expectations to the candidates that apply.

This applies to both the employees and those you are seeking to hold other bigger roles in your business. In the event that you already have employees in your business, you can build in that supervisory role and select one from those that you have, work hand in hand with your selected candidate, teach them and scale up your business.

Knowing when to transition From a Full-time Employment to Full-time Business owner

The business planning process will tell you at what point you have to seriously need to let go of the full-time job. As you continue to run your business you will begin to notice that your responsibilities are growing. There will be a need for a full-time role or at least a full-time director kind of setup because of the scale of the project at hand.

You will begin to notice that you a generating more from your side business than at your paying job. The business plan will give you a clear idea of when you can transition. But there is a reality involved with finally deciding to fully transition and that’s the fact that it is not easy.

The fact that you will be letting go of something that you have been comfortable with and has been a part of you is not easy. There is a need for preparation as you seek to embark on such a journey.

Ask yourself if the business you are running is what you would love to be doing for the rest of your life because there is a danger there that you may leave your full-time job and find yourself looking for something else that you feel may be more exciting taking you away from the business that made you leave your full-time job in the first place.

You will need to undergo a deep reflection to determine if the business you have started is something you see yourself doing even in the next 6 or 7 years. Address the economic issues involved, can the business manage to pay you, does it really need you on a full-time basis. If you can address all these aspects with a clear conscience then you are ready to transition from employee to business owner.

Preparations for Transitioning

The fact of the matter is that the business owner’s environment is very much different from the employed one.  It is no easy to transition and if done in a hurried way may have serious implications, but breakdowns in transitions can be avoided by reaching out to business consultants for counseling.

These business consultants are skilled in counseling in such a field can ultimately help you determine whether or not you are ready to transition as this is something that should be handled with care.

Key Insights:

• Structure your thoughts on your business and its goal by writing them down in form of a business plan.
• Transitioning from full-time employment to full-time business owner is not an easy step, seek advice and counseling from business consultants.
• Managing your business and having a full-time job all depends on the level of effort and time you put in order to balance the two.

“Don’t attach big labels to your recruitment process.”