It feels a little weird for me to be writing about keeping your day job on a blog about small business and entrepreneurship. But I do think there are some scenarios where you can build a business that you own without putting all your chips in the middle so to speak. I care about business owners structuring their business in a way that works for them and the question of when should you keep your day job is important.
Everyone has heard or seen the romanticized version of the entrepreneur, the rugged individualist who overcomes all of the odds to build a successful business and becomes a millionaire. He/she puts in long hours and years of hard work and has built something that he/she owns. Great story.
Or there is the other story that people like to tell about entrepreneurs. The story of the fortunate entrepreneur who just happens to be at the right place at the right time. His/her success more a product of luck and a series of fortunate circumstances vs actual work. A lot of us for some reason hope this is true and that success will just fall into our lap one day.
The truth is that running a business probably falls somewhere between the two opposing visions that people have about successful entrepreneurs. It is hard work but that hard work puts you in a position to get some breaks.
Before I get into why you may consider keeping your day job while building or running a business, I do want to say that I am not talking about doing some work from home or some online get rich quick scheme. Those opportunities don’t exist. People who are successful building online businesses work their ass off to make them work just like everyone else. Even if they have a success formula, chances are it’s not going to equate into the kind of success that the individual who is teaching the formula had. This is nothing against that type of business but I think that unless you feel your Soul Purpose revolves around online commerce, you should not waste your time.
I read Hugh Macleod’s book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity a few weeks ago and the concept of keeping your day job did resonate with me as I did see the wisdom in this advice. Like any piece advice, there is not a one size easy fit for every single individual. I worked in sales for a number of years and I can say that if you are a commission sales person, you practically have a business even though you don’t have any input of the companies’ decisions, you do control your earnings to a certain extent and it requires a lot of work physically, emotionally and mentally. It would be hard to be a salesperson and be able to run a business on the side.
With that being said, I do think there are a number of industries that would work nicely with running a business on the side. Any kind of creative business is a no brainer. If you write, design, build websites, code websites, paint etc all of these types of businesses are easier to run on the side as you can do this on project to project freelance basis.
It’s also easier to run a business on the side if you have the kind of job that when you leave, your done for the day and you don’t have to be responsible for your work outside of your work time. Also, it may make sense to keep your day job if you really enjoy it and it gives you some freedom to do projects on the side.
These are just a couple of scenarios that I thought that really make sense when it comes to keeping your day job. Obviously there are financial considerations that come into play here as well.
What are some other scenarios where you think this makes sense? Does this even make sense to do this? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.