Have you got entrepreneurial flair? Are you itching to start a small business on
the side whilst keeping your job to keep paying the bills? Looking to start a business whilst still
working in your current job to pay the bills has its own challenges. Here’s how someone else approached this
challenge. Let me know what you think
and leave a comment below.
Tips to get your Entrepreneurship off and running
By: Michael Johnson
One of the best of the small business associations is the University of
Central Arkansas Small Business Advancement National Center (SBANC.)
While the ideal way of starting a small business would be to free yourself up
from every other venture, problem, time consuming effort and obligation and
throw yourself into starting a small business every waking moment, this isn't
an ideal world. Few of us can afford the luxury of setting everything else
aside to devote all our time and efforts, as well as capital - to starting a
small business.
Some of us have the itch to become an entrepreneur but have to "keep our
day jobs" while we give this starting a small business idea a go. It may
well be, in fact, that starting a small business part time is the most common
entrepreneurial process.
Part of succeeding at starting a small business if you have to do so part time
is to know your schedule and your time limitations and choose a business
concept that you enjoy, have some training or expertise in and can be
accomplished around your work schedule. The other alternative is to change your
work schedule either with your current employer or choose an alternative
employer. Starting a small business takes effort and focus as well as
time.
It may be that your current job is not only time consuming but also the type of
work that requires a great deal of energy, a great deal of concentration, a
very regimented schedule and perhaps the responsibility that tends to have you
taking your work home with you either actually or mentally. This sort of work
style doesn't lend itself well to starting a small business part time.
Let's look at an example of a journalist who has a successful writing and
editing business from her home office. When she decided she was interested in
starting a small business she had been working for many years in newspaper
management. Her executive responsibilities required 70 and 80 hour workweeks
and even then she took work home.
After many years of this she began to think more and more about her dream of
starting a small writing business. It called to her more and more urgently. But
how was she to even think of starting a small business when she had little
time, energy or focus left in her busy work week? Besides, she had to work to
keep the roof over her head.
What she did to determine if starting a small business was even possible, was
to sit down and write out a budget, deciding where she could eliminate some
non-essential expenses in her life, and what she absolutely had to have to live
on. She then looked for, and found, a job that not only brought in enough money
to live on but freed up a lot of her daytime work week hours as well as her
mental focus. She took a customer service job in a call center.
Starting a small business was going to be possible with this job where it had
not been with her newspaper career for a number of reasons. It required
considerably less mental acumen, it didn't require that she take her work home
with her, it was easy, the hours were flexible (she worked 3pm-midnight
Thursday through Sunday) and the dress code was highly casual. She could work
all day starting her small business and then don her jeans and go into the call
center in the evening. Now she's quit that call center job and her dream of
starting a small business has been fulfilled. Her business is thriving and she
works at it full time.
You will find links to other small business associations from the SBANC site.
These small business associations include the Service Corps of Retired
Executives (SCORE) offering one on one counseling in person or online, the
Small Business Administration (SBA) and its Small Business Development Centers
which provide a ton of small business assistance including mentoring, training,
publications, tapes, workshops and financing, Allied Academies - a worldwide
research and training group, the Small Business Institute which provides
entrepreneurial teaching and training, and the Federation of Business
Disciplines, a group of educators devoted to small business teaching
conferences.
Author Bio
About the Author: M. Johnsona operates a variety of small business websites and
newsletters. Visit the website for many business start up ideas. www.smallbiztipscenter.com
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content
Source: by Michael Johnson
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