How to Start a Business If You Have a Job

A lot of people who want to start an online business unsurprisingly have some sort of income and usually that is a job. Typically these people tell me they would love to build an online business but they have a full-time job and have no time. My answer to that is, “bullshit.”

I know it is kind of rude, but it is bullshit. How do I know this? Because I have worked with hundreds of people and a good number of them, more than half, have had a job at the time they started their business and they still succeed. We have many stories in fact, from my mastermind where we have people join and have a job, they come home and do some work on their business, and eventually the business grows and they are able to quit their job.

How do they do this? How are they able to sustain a living and still have money while at the same time building a business online?

Time management

The main thing you need to learn on doing this is how to manage your time properly. Most people, when they come, they are tired. For eight months of my adult life I had a job and when I came home I was tired and had no time to do anything too complicated because my brain was fried. I would go party a little bit and have some alcohol and stuff like that, but that’s the kind of stuff that I used to do when I came home from work. Eventually I started to build my business while working a job and I had to change my habits.

What did I do and what did I change to make it possible for this to work?

What I changed was when I came home, I had a set amount of time for relaxation, or a set amount of time where I wasn’t going to work. This was for about an hour and a half. I had a set amount of time to where I would take a walk or I would go to the gym and this was another hour and a half. I had a certain amount of time left every single day, from Monday until Friday, to work on my business. I went to bed at 2 AM and had six hours of sleep. That worked out as you can see as I am in business, and you can do this as well.

That is just one single method. You basically master the art of putting things in your calendar and doing those things as they come up in your calendar. It sounds silly, ridiculous, and it sounds like you are back in high school, but it works. In the beginning, that is what you absolutely have to do until you are able to create enough income from your online business to quit your job.

What I recommend is that when people see their first proof that this online thing is going to actually generate some income, even if it is only a few hundred dollars, that is enough proof to start cutting down the hours at their day job. This can be just a few hours here and there, you can refuse to do overtime, and stuff like that.

Eventually, you may want to downgrade to a half-time job or quit the job entirely and go get a job somewhere that is nice, easy and not too stressful. If you are not filling up your whole day and your whole mental capacity on those jobs that are draining you, suddenly your business can grow a lot faster because all the energy and all the extra time can you go into your business.

Make priorities

There are going to be imbalances in your life if you do that of course. You will probably see your family less, your friends less, you will go to less parties, you won’t stay up late until 7 AM on weekends partying and getting drunk. Sorry if you are into that. I used to be, but not anymore. You can’t really do that as much if you are running a business and you have a full-time job obviously.

Those are some aspects, but another aspect is that when you are starting you need to make absolutely sure that the time you spend working on your business consists of absolutely concentrated blocks of work. This is because a lot of people get started online but their usual habits online at home is to browse Facebook and news websites.

The first thing I did back in the day was block news websites and not go on Facebook unless it was for work. I still apply that to this day. I cannot go to any news websites on my computer. They are toxic, weird, and I do not read that stuff. I spend all my time, energy, and mental attention focused on everything for the business. Even now that I am not working full time, I obviously do not have a job but I am running my business, I focus as much energy as possible on the business.

Create a balance

I balance it out with health and having normal relations with people. This is all very healthy and you should be doing that when you have a full-time job and run a business, but there is going to be that imbalance and you need to deal with it. It is absolutely necessary for you to build your business.

Once you have free time you also notice that all the time you spend on the street and in traffic driving a car is hours and hours per week. For some people that is 10 hours per week. For some other people that is even more, but let’s not even get into that. In those 10 hours though, how much time is that actually?

Based on me working with people and coaching people in business, I have noticed that the bare minimum that you need to succeed in business is 20 hours per week that is completely invested in the business. Half of that time some people spend in traffic. If you just take that part out and you move in closer to your job, you are able to get more free time. In addition, if you work a few hours less and do a few more things, congratulations! That is 20 hours more per week.

Here’s the thing about the 20 hours though: weekends.

Most online businesses, unless you are contacting real life brick-and-mortar businesses that are closed on the weekends, you are able to run and build them on weekends as well as during weekdays. This is a big thing actually because those weekends can add about 16 more hours to work with all the extra stuff you can do for the business.

After work is not the only solution. I have actually worked with some people that grew up on farms and they are able to wake up at 5 AM and they did their best work at 5 AM. This does not work for me as I am an evening person and like to get stuff done in the evening, but some people are morning people and my hats are off to you because you are brave souls. These people can wake up at 5 AM and get their best work done super early. If you are like that go for it, more power to you. It is not for me but I am very proud of you.

This is the kind of stuff you need to do to build the business on the side as you have a full-time job or whatever it is you do. Here’s the thing, you cannot go out for some random idea and try to figure out a brand-new business model. Go get that coaching, go get mentored by someone that is actually doing it, and go get that working business model that is guaranteed to work if you implement it.