I frequently come across people in my line of work who want to start for themselves. Being a longtime entrepreneur myself I always encourage people to start their own business. The freedom that you experience directly increases your quality of life, so why wait?
The answer is always the same; certainty. Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it, too. That is just not the way it works if you are just starting. My advise to newly starting entrepreneurs is as much mine as it is Nike’s: Just do it!
The steps I advise are always the same:
- Make sure you know how much money you really need per month (this is usually a lot lower than you’d expect, if you cut out all the unnecessary stuff, be rigorous!)
- Save up some money (enough to last you about 3 months and cover business expenses)
- Make a business plan for those 3 months
- Quit your job
- Don’t give up
Most people implement these steps like this:
- Save some money, based on an amount they think will work
- Work in the small hours, while working for the boss 9-5
- Giving up, because this puts too much strain on their lives
How I did it
When I started to work for myself, I was 19 years old. Back then I had to devise a scheme to allow me to pay for University, sports I wanted to play and other things teens do.
Since I saw no way to do this on my own, I went to my mom. I told her I wanted to try to work for myself, designing and developing websites, as a side-job. I also told her I had no idea whether I was going to be making enough money, but I was going to try. She made me promise that above all else, I’d finish my education with no more than 2 years delay.
That was my ‘loan’ to start my company, together with a friend of mine. Over the years we made decent money for it being a side-job. It never became more than a side-job, but it did fuel my ambition to be self-employed. We stopped with this company around the time of graduating from university. These were some good years!
After graduation I had to choose; take a 9-5 or do something else. The problem was that I now lived on my own, had no financial support from my mother anymore (she passed away a year earlier) and I basically had no income. Like the other sheep I did some interviews, and I got accepted at all of them. That made me think; if people think I am this good, I must be able to land projects on my own.
I phone around a little bit, and one of the people I knew through University (and my first company), was thinking about starting another company and they were looking for a technical specialist. This was just the thing for me!
So I decided that I could scrape together just enough money to last me 6 months. If it wasn’t going to work in those 6 months, I could always get a job somewhere. I still work with the person I started this company with to date.
All in all, the most important rule is: don’t give up… be creative.
Thu, Jun 18, 2009
Entrepreneurship