Every worker at one point in their career wishes to leave the full-time job and go their own way.
It sounds good not to have a boss to give you orders. When you run your own business, you communicate directly with clients. You have the freedom to negotiate the conditions for every single project and make more money.
What’s more, many people that leave full-time jobs to launch private ventures claim that they can finally express their creative ideas in their own businesses.
While all these benefits look great, it’s good to know that leaving a full-time job isn’t something that should be done at once.
In this article, we’ll explain the five key prerequisites that every working person should meet before taking a new career path.
1) Handling financial matters
Before you decide to cut off your main source of income, i.e., your full-time job, think whether you’ve ensured a fertile soil for your next move.
A rule of thumb is that new entrepreneurs should have enough money to cover six months of their overhead expenses.
In addition to this, you need to have enough money to cover your personal costs for a period of 3 to 6 months.
Take into account all the taxes, together with costs for your social and health contributions. When you’re a sheer employee, you get your gross salary and make all your due payments.
As a business owner, you first need to ensure making enough money to break even. Only then will you start making profits.
So, it’s not recommended to leave a full-time job to launch a startup before you’ve collected enough assets to do that.
Also, if you can’t make at least the same amount of money that your full-time job provided, don’t start a business.
2) Arranging the first few projects
You should have several loyal clients on your list to ensure a steady income at the beginning of your entrepreneurial story. Becoming a business owner or a freelancer with only one client with occasional projects is a bad thing to do.
Therefore, new business owners first need to work a lot on their networking. The best place to start looking for clients if your email list. Go through it to see whether some of previous company clients might become your first personal clients. Of course, it’s important that you’re not restricted by your NDA-agreement (if any) to do that.
Moreover, you should do extensive research of LinkedIn and other relevant business social networks. You can connect with different companies and business individuals to offer them your services.
Finally, you might want to try to land your first clients on Upwork and other freelance platforms. Our two cents: we wouldn’t base our small business on the freelance income, but such collaborations could add to your budget in the initial stage of entrepreneurship.
3) Choosing the business structure
Every person leaving a full-time job needs to decide how they’re going to register their business. Most entrepreneurs opt for one of the following business structures:
- Sole proprietorship. If you launch a sole proprietorship, you can use your business money any way you want. While this is a benefit, there’s a drawback: you’re held personally liable for all your business assets. In other words, if you don’t make enough money to cover all your expenses, the authorities can take away your private assets from you.
- Partnership. Former company employees who decide to join forces with one or two partners should register as a partnership. At the beginning of your business collaboration, you should write a partnership agreement to define the ownership shares, together with all your rights and responsibilities.
- Limited liability company (LLC). If you register your business as an LLC, you don’t guarantee with your private property for your business assets. This means that you can’t use the company money as you like it, but only for business costs and operations. The owner and the employees get a salary.
This is only basic information about potential business structures for new business owners. If you want to find out more, contact a local business administration or a private business counselor.
4) Working on time management
Company workers are usually creatures of habit. They get up at a certain time, get to the office, do their job, and go back home.
Even employees in companies with flexible work hours have a certain framework within which they carry out their daily activities.
Once you lose that schedule, it might difficult to manage your time efficiently.
Because of that, it would be wise to keep writing daily and weekly schedules before you get used to the role of business owner.
For instance, you can write down all your weekly tasks and note down what you’re going to do every single day within that week.
To be sure that you’re complete all your tasks, you might make a daily timetable when you sit down to work in the morning.
All these small steps will help you organize your work tasks and manage your time.
5) Ensuring marketing features
It’s not enough only to launch a business, land a few projects and think that you’ve done your job.
The truth is that business owners, unlike employees, constantly need to promote their ventures.
Today, most of advertising activities happen on the Internet.
So, before you leave your steady job and become and entrepreneur, you need to get familiar with the basics of SMB digital marketing.
For starters, launch a business website where you’ll present your services and the reasons why people should use them. As the experts from a web design company from Houston say, there are many mobile users of the Internet today. In line with that, have your business website adapted to such potential customers.
Moreover, launch a business page on all relevant social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you notice that one of these networks generate more leads, focus on that platform.
Finally, turn to video materials to promote your business concisely and effectively.
Leaving a steady job to become an entrepreneur is a bold move, but bravery is not enough to succeed.
If you want to start your own business story, complete the financial plan to score enough projects and ensure seamless financing. Once you’ve registered your business, do your best to properly organize your time. Finally, invest in marketing features to spread the word about your business and ensure being on a winning streak from day one.