How you can use your time, experiences, and connections at your current job to greatly improve your chances of success when you finally start your own business.

Introduction

In an ideal world, you would have at least a year’s salary saved up and be in a safe position to quit your day job and focus fully on your new business. Unfortunately, this is not feasible or practical for many first-time business owners. But on the other hand, keeping your day job will give you access to several key ingredients that are essential to a new business: money, clients, contacts, vendors, subcontractors, market research, health insurance, and staff. And because of these ingredients, you should consider your job a blessing, not a time-wasting hassle.

Looking at your job as a learning opportunity, a way to build your credibility, build meaningful business relationships, and learn about all of your customers’ wants, needs, and demands, is priceless. It doesn’t matter if your new business is related to your current job or not. All the management, finance, negotiation, and marketing skills you’re learning on the job will directly benefit your new business. Learn to love your job and find a way to make it work for you.

Here are some smart strategies for using your job to help you prepare to start your own successful business:

Strategy #1. The net

Learn to network, and then grow your network everywhere, inside and outside the company, as broadly and diversely as possible. Help your network get to know you and see how good you are at your job. Network with your suppliers, contractors, customers and other employees. It is very likely that you will need these people after you leave your job and start your own business, possibly as mentors, partners, employees, and clients.

Strategy #2. take on more responsibilities

If you want to move up, try to take on more responsibility for the job you want. Show management that you are someone who can step in where and when needed. They will start to see you differently. The entire company, management and employees, will respect you more and come to depend on you and your skills.

Strategy #3. Help others

Helping others succeed at work will also help you become indispensable to the company. Employees will also see you as someone of authority and credibility, someone who can be trusted and respected.

Strategy #4. be the expert

Find out how to become the expert. Be known for something and become the go-to person for that topic. Make sure you are good at something and that it is something you love. Make it something that is not so simple that someone else can also learn to do very quickly. This increases your credibility and will help open up new opportunities inside and outside the company.

Strategy #5. Manage your career

You must have a well thought out plan. Think of yourself as a business. Where do you want to go? What do you want to achieve in this job? Are you learning a particular trade that will allow you to start your own business? Are you working at this job for a particular reason? Is it to make good contacts? Is your job at a prestigious company, and will your name on your resume help open doors when you start your own business? Be realistic and honest with your answers.

conclusion

Each of these strategies taken individually will probably not guarantee success when you leave your job and start your own business. But when done together, while you’re still at work, it can become a very powerful way to improve your chances of success as a business owner.