Starting Your Business Part-Time Has Many Advantages
You don’t have to quit your present job to start earning a side income. In fact, I would never advise it. Instead you can start a home-based business out slowly, and keep it small while keeping the security and income of your full-time job.
Over the years I’ve met many small business owners, and the majority either had full-time jobs while earning a side income or had a full-time job at the time they began their self-employment. Beginning slowly will give you time to do your research, make smart decisions, and be patient – you will ultimately be much wealthier in life than the ‘limited options in life’ 9-5ers.
Why Start a Business?
In order to enjoy doing something, and do it well, you need to be passionate about it. The extra money earned will not be enough to keep you going for a long period of time.Determine why you want to earn a side income:
Do you want to help others?
Are you looking for extra money?
Maybe you want to be your own boss one day?
How To Find Extra Time
You wake up early, go to work on time, and come home late. How on earth are you supposed to find time to start a business? If you’re single, maybe you can spare a couple hours each night to work on a project. If you’re married and/or have children, finding even a moment of free time can be nearly impossible.
Here are a few helpful tips I learned. Maybe some of these will help you find some extra time:
1. Join Activities
We often don’t realize how we can prudently use our time. We spend a lot of time thinking, rather than doing. When I first started out, I would make a point of taking some flyers or business cards to drop off to potential prospects along my route. Going to your dentist, lawyer, accountant? Give ‘em a card! This has worked for me and paid dividends many times over, and all because I planned ahead and combined two activities. I built a commercial cleaning service by simply contacting people I already knew.
Let’s look at it another way.
You drive to work and you’re listening to the radio in the car. Later you go home and you’ll be listening to the radio again. Why not combine your activities or driving with some business learning. Rather than listening to music or sports and boring repetitive commercials on the radio, you can listen to pod-casts about entrepreneurship, small business or sales. Listen to teachings by Zig Ziglar, Dave Ramsey, Dan Miller, and others.
2. Pay Attention To Your Time
Working full-time you’re bound to have long days, but even throughout most days, you’ll have some free time that you can use to your advantage. Maybe a few hours before bed or after the kids are asleep. I made very good use of early morning hours to answer emails, do research or create invoices to be mailed out.
3. Cut Down On Your TV Time
You probably watch a lot of TV throughout the week. Why not just cut down on your TV time? I haven’t cut out TV out totally (I watch pro football during the season), but I’ve not watched network or cable TV shows since 1992. That’s 1042 weeks @ 30 hours per week I haven’t watched, resulting in an extra 780 weeks of time I could spend building my businesses. Thus far it’s worked very well for me.
Final Thoughts
The best thing about not having to quit your full-time day job is that you put less pressure on yourself. You’re not in urgency mode of, “I need to make money” or more importantly, you don’t feel desperate. And when you feel desperate, you tend to take short cuts, rather than truly creating real value in your product or service
