Taking a Leap of Faith: From Employee to Entrepreneur

All entrepreneurs have several enemies, to call them some way. For instance, when we have a job and we decide to become an entrepreneur, there will be mixed feelings. In this case, we’re changing a secure job, which may not be the best, but at least we have a secure payment (at least for the time being). When starting the entrepreneurship, you might be loosing this security, as the ideas is new, has not been proven and there is a large probability of failure.

Many of us have dealt with this decision, and trust me, it’s never an easy choice. In fact, this decision usually gets harder with time, as we get older and have more responsibilities, such as kids and family. Sometimes we need an additional motivation, a push, a leap of faith to take this plunge. This is the reason I write this article, in order to give you that extra push.

I want to describe a job and being an employee in a couple of different way. To start, a job is the way we make a living, which provides for our food, housing and more. But we can also look a job as something we like or we don’t. Anyway you define a job, many times we will require the push even if you hate your current job. In my case, before I started my current entrepreneurship project as an Internet and Strategy consultant I was in a dead end job, with no possibilities and I had given it all I had. One option I had was to look for another job, but I’ve always been an entrepreneur, and decided this was the way to go. The push I need was minimum however this might not be your case.

When I wrote the title of this posts I might have been exaggerating a little bit, as making the road to entrepreneurship is not necessarily a leap of faith. However I hope I got your attention. Some people, mainly critics can see the entrepreneurship road just as this, a leap of faith and something for crazy people (I’ve always said entrepreneurs have a degree of insanity in them). I rather say that the entrepreneurship road can be controlled to some extent and that it’s not a leap of faith.

I always advice people that are starting on this road to have a plan. For example, we can create a 6-month plan where we have enough money to survive and to pour into the business. This might makes us save money for a couple years, making a delay on our entrepreneurship. If after the 6-month period, or whatever time you decided the results are not what you were expecting you have to have a backup plan, like getting a job.

Another alternative can happen if there are several people in the entrepreneurship team. In this case, some of the members start working full time on the project while others keep employed.  The second one will subsidize the people who are working on the project and the project. In order for this to work, the ones working with the project must have a timeline and objectives they must meet.

Some people decide to work on their entrepreneurship projects part time, at nights after work and on the weekends. I don’t recommend this model, as I’ve seen relative poor results. Most projects require full time dedication and this can’t be done if you have another job.

There are a couple of other things you can do, but for the time being this are enough. One different and additional recommendation is to create a project as the Minimum Viable Product or MVP. In this type of product, you won’t create the perfect product, the one you have dreamed of, but it’s a good enough product to start selling something. If you don’t have too much money this can be an excellent alternative. I made this mistake and ended up wasting money on a product that didn’t worked and we were unable to market it.

My last recommendation is that if you’re looking for external financing, you take into account the time and effort this will require. For example, if you think you’ll need travel expenses in order to meet with investors, these expenses have to be included from the start.

These are just some recommendations that will make the leap of faith easier. I have never regretted taking the entrepreneur road; it’s not always easy, but it is great. I hope you find it this way and if this is your decision, make it as easy as possible.

Image taken from Flickr.com