At the back of the mind, many people working a day job have that one idea, that one desire to do something drastic. You’ve been working a “9-to-5” for years, but with overtime and long meetings, it feels like leaving while there’s daylight still out gets rarer and rarer. It’s suffocating, and after a while, the risks of starting your own business don’t seem to be so bad.
The cause of this discontent isn’t a mystery. A Gallup survey found that even though ‘wellbeing’ was a top priority for Chief HR officers, only 21% of employees strongly agreed that the company cared. Why not be your own boss and change the game for yourself? Today, let’s go over some ideas to make your breakout a success.
Prepare Yourself for the Mindset Shift
Of the many reasons that people have for starting businesses, freedom and wealth generation tend to top the list. That said, it’s not easy going from a white-collar worker to an executive. The first and most important step to take is to align yourself with what is going to be a completely different working style.
Essentially, you can no longer think in terms of hours worked. Instead, you have to start thinking like an entrepreneur, which means thinking in terms of results and actual productivity.
This can be exciting for some but also a little overwhelming for others. Since the focus is on results and not hours, you could technically achieve huge chunks of work in the morning and have the rest of the day free. In an office job, it doesn’t matter if you work fast; you are still committed to your full 8-hour shift.
Of course, considering how challenging some businesses are to run, it just might be that achieving results would need a 12-hour shift. Are you ready to face those days with the same excitement as you do the days with 2 hours of work?
If not, start mentally preparing yourself. Join business communities online and read about the kind of experiences other entrepreneurs have. It’ll give you some much-needed perspective.
Built the Foundation before the Jump
The last thing you want to do is put in your resignation letter without any forethought. It sounds irrational. You might ask, ‘Who would even do that?’ A lot of people. Sometimes, they know that they need a foundation, but then, on a random day at work, an unreasonable demand or comment might be the tipping point.
They quit and promise themselves to figure it out. This is not the ideal way to make the switch. At the very least, have a business plan in mind. According to Eric Proos, a founding partner at a law firm, business plans will force you to analyze the market, your competitors, and more. Proos also points out that they become especially critical when you eventually hit your fundraising stage.
Ideally, you want to have more than that in place. A nice placeholder website would be a good start. It gives you motivation since there’s some evidence that you are on a new path. As Hocoos notes, it’s incredibly easy to build websites these days, especially ones that use AI to assist in the building process.
You simply answer a few questions as to your requirements, and AI takes care of the rest. Likewise, other foundational aspects to consider would be assessing easy-to-miss costs with setting up. These include basic things like insurance, taxes, licensing, and permits, etc.
Develop Systems Early on to Protect Yourself from Burnout
As we touched on earlier, being an entrepreneur will also involve a significant amount of effort and commitment from your side. While you may be motivated in the first few months, that excitement can start to fade, especially if initial growth is slow. If that happens, you might be highly vulnerable to burnout.
Entrepreneur has some great advice on this. They highlight Jeff Bezos’ Type 1 vs. Type 2 decision-making framework. Type 1 decisions involve high risk and are irreversible, while type 2 decisions are reversible and low risk. The idea is that by conceptualizing decisions into such a framework, you stop treating every decision like it’s a big crisis.
Likewise, many entrepreneurs underpay themselves and reinvest business profits. It’s an admirable decision, but one that can affect you over the long term. At the end of the day, you are human, and if you’re consistently working hard and there’s no visible return, it’s easy to feel the effort is pointless.
Even if you’re aware that you’re doing it to grow the business faster, there’s a subconscious dissatisfaction that comes with working hard with low/no returns.
Ultimately, becoming an entrepreneur is a great step in your professional career. Many people overlook how sensitive the transition from a conventional job to being a business owner is. It’s a small window, but it still has the potential to affect how you experience your new life as an entrepreneur.
Myself Aditya and I am from Mumbai, India. As an intern, I joined the local news agency in Mumbai named “The Mumbai News”. Now I am working with various News Agencies and I provide them reports from Mumbai and other parts of India.
