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There are those entrepreneurs who in the course of their struggles to succeed in business end up being forced to go back to employment. Many times for these kind of people, their only hope of entering into business in the near future is by doing so on a part-time basis, at least to start with.
And you really can’t blame them. Jobs are very difficult to come by these days and when one is lucky enough to land one, leaving it for the uncertainties of business becomes very difficult. The protests alone that one is bound to receive from a spouse and relatives for abandoning a job to take the risk would probably be enough to kill any entrepreneurial spirit before it has had any chance of getting started.
Although great successes in business come to those who are ready to risk all and burn all their bridges so that there is no alternative for them other than success, there are also a lot of advantages in doing a part-time business.
Maybe you are so busy in your full time job and are sure that there is no way you are going to be able to get the time to launch a part-time business or income generating project. Maybe you even work in shifts and are sometimes on night duty. You will be pleasantly surprised to discover that you too can launch a lucrative part-time venture.
This proves that there is nobody who cannot go into business, if they are determined enough and thus plan carefully.
And with the money pressures that employed people have these days; it makes a lot of sense to pursue some extra income on the side.
There is yet another group of people who can benefit from a part-time business and that is people who are already in business. One can easily start a side business to supplement the income of their main business. Or if you are in a partnership with other
people, it might make a lot of sense to have a side business where you are sole proprietor and can make all the decisions on your own. In fact there are cases where people have started many prosperous businesses in addition to their already thriving one simply by starting it off as a side business that prospers and grows into a full-time occupation.
It has given me great pleasure researching and writing this book. Let me admit that even I was amazed at the vast untapped range of opportunities that are available for a part-timer today. As the book progressed, I got more and more excited and I trust that the same thing will happen to you as you read on.
For those who have the experience, running a part-time enterprise is littered with many pitfalls and many have learned some very bitter lessons about the multitude of things that can go wrong. I know what I am talking about because personally I have also lost quite a bundle in part-time businesses I once tried that went wrong.
To start with many have learned that you cannot leave somebody else to run your business for you. If they do not steal from you, then they will almost certainly be incapable of getting anything done. The only successful absentee-business-persons are those who have had many years experience or those who once ran the enterprises themselves and thus when they pass it on to another person, the systems are already in place for the continued smooth running of the business. It also becomes very easy to supervise your employee.
The solution is to create the time to run the business yourself. Just like the Dutch reclaimed most of their land back from the sea, you too can do the same with time.
It must be realized that there is plenty of time during the day that is normally wasted and can be put to good use running your part time operation. You can wake up earlier in the morning or you can stay up later in the evening. By simply doing this, most of us can comfortably gain as much as five extra hours for work daily without too much strain. You can even gain more time if you use both evenings and mornings.
This has actually been done very successfully by people in the past. Let us look at the case of a few part-timers whose line of business was writing. This should interest you even if you are not a writer because the examples illustrate the fact that even tiny chunks of time, reclaimed can add up to the hours needed to achieve a really major
project.
The French chancellor D’Aguesseau noticed that his wife was habitually 10 minutes late coming down to dinner. He decided to make use of the 10 minutes ( 3,650 minutes a year or more than 60 hours) and wrote a 3 volume book which became a best seller
when it was published in 1668.
Anthony Trollope spent most of his life working as a postal clerk, but he would get up at 5:00 am each morning and write 3,000 words in the 3 hours before beginning with the mail. If Trollope finished writing a novel before it was time to go to work, he would simply start another one. He finished 50 books this way.
Even more amazing was British crime writer Michael Gilbert who managed to craft 23 books during his daily 50 minutes commute to his ‘real job’ as a lawyer. You might be saying to yourself that you would never manage to do the same in a packed Matatu or bus, but you would be missing the point.
Then during the day itself there is still more time to be reclaimed. Take the lunch break. This is normally one hour long and you will be surprised as to how much can be achieved if this time is planned for and used to the maximum.
Only recently I came across this youngster who distributes magazines and books part-time while working on a very taxing full-time job elsewhere. One would wonder when he gets the time to distribute his wares to newspaper vendors and book shops. He actually
manages to do it very effectively by using his one hour lunch break every day and then the evenings between 5 pm when he leaves his work-place and 6 pm when most vendors and bookshops close. He also works on Saturdays and usually manages to see a few newspaper vendors after he leaves work at 1 pm. So you can imagine the advantage most of us who do not work on Saturdays would have.
Is this not too much hard work, many may ask? There is really no two ways about it. You just have to make the sacrifice. Too many people, still believe in something for nothing. It is not realistic to expect to achieve anything worthwhile without making some sacrifices and working hard for it.
Unfortunately the work ethic seems to be very weak in Africa and everybody wants to believe that they should prosper without too much hard work. This is a myth that seems
to be very deeply buried in the minds of our people.
That should be very good news for any would-be-part-time entrepreneurs because it means that anybody who is willing to put in just a little hard work has a huge advantage over others.
So hard work and good planning can create the time you need to devote to your enterprise to make it a success.
Some people claim that the great disadvantage with a part-time business is the lack of inertia and focus. Because one has another job, they can only devote little small time
frames to it which have to be broken regularly for them to go back to their employer. This creates a lack of inertia which a full time entrepreneur has.
Actually on the contrary this can be looked upon as an advantage by some entrepreneurs because every time a part time entrepreneur turns to their business, they bring in a fresh look making it possible to have a high degree of creativity. And besides with discipline, one will quickly adjust and get used to the unique situation of “juggling two balls in the air at the same time.”
Another disadvantage is that for many part-time enterprises, the scope for expansion appears to be very limited.
In actual fact, this is not true for all businesses of this nature and many of them can be expanded simply by employing people on a full time basis.
In fact rather than just concentrate on pitfalls, the part-timer has many valuable advantages that can go a long way in helping them to establish a business on a
sound footing. The first being that he or she will most probably already be employed somewhere else and will be earning money on a regular basis, thus they can continue to capitalise the business and need not interfere with the cash till or even draw a salary for expenses until the business is established. Interestingly, it has been established that raiding one’s own cash till is one of the major reasons for the demise of many small businesses all over the world. This is when the business-owner thinks that what he or she has on hand at the end of the day are profits which they can play around with. Forgetting that salaries have not been paid and neither have other expenses for the month been settled. Thus anyone using money on hand from their business is actually using up the capital of their business and it is inevitable that this action will sooner or later ground the business.
The tools you will need to make your part-time enterprise a success are the ideas and the correct thinking required for a part-time entrepreneur. There is plenty of that kind of information as well as inspiration and tips in our Facebook page. Just like it to get regular updates on your Facebook news feed.
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