How to Become a Full-Time Entrepreneur

If you can’t function, your business won’t function.

When starting out as a full-time entrepreneur, you are the most important person in your business. This holds true far into the growth of the business until you’ve truly built it to a point where you are no longer needed for it to be operational.
That’s why you should look towards building a business and brand that you can eventually step out of. Otherwise, you end up with just another job.

But when starting out, prepare three things as listed below.

1. expectations with your family
2. family financial runway
3. ‘in case of failure’ protocol

Setting the right expectations with your family:

You are likely going to be spending all your waking moments thinking and working on your business. That is just how it’s gonna be. You have to be okay with that, and more importantly, your spouse has to be okay with it. If you have young children, understand that going into entrepreneurship might especially be difficult for them as well, because their parent might be rather distracted all the time.

You will face a lot of stress and sometimes, that might trickle down to your family. If you have their support, understand that it is a very precious thing. And know that you owe it to them to be successful, and give them their rights to you when it’s due.

Family Financial Runway — because money is important.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. Money is a necessary component in our lives. It may not be the main reason as to why you are starting your journey into entrepreneurship. But in order to run a family, you do need money.

Plan out with your partner how much you need to spend per month on basic necessities. And how much you wish to spend on the niceties. Plan out your runway, i.e. how long you can afford to live in your current standard of living, as well as how long you can afford to survive if you go down to basics.

The purpose of this is to give you a peace of mind and assurance, that if all goes down and the business fails, you have this much time to get back on your feet. This knowledge is essential for you to build the business up, especially at the start as you face total uncertainty.

Over time, your situation will change, but this is always a good practice to go back to from time to time.

The In-case of Failure Protocol

This protocol is a series of steps that you predefine and predetermine that you can take to get back on your feet should your business fail. We prepare this not because we plan to take it, but because we don’t want to waste our time and precious mental bandwidth to keep thinking about “oh no, what if I don’t make it?”

The protocol should include —

1. a short period of time for you to rest and recover (because jumping from a failing business to a high stress situation is never good for your mental well being)
2. people you can connect with to explore opportunities.
3. channels to start looking for your next opportunity, whether it be employment or your back up enterprise (if you are a serial entrepreneur)

Why is this important?

When you are well into your day to day in building your new business, worrying about failure and where will I get my next job is really going to slow you down, cause anxiety and halt your progress. It opens up to self doubt and regret. You need every ounce of focus you can muster to push through.

Conclusion

Take care of these, and you will go into the world of full-time entrepreneurship with calmness and clarity — allowing you to make better decisions. Otherwise, you will face challenges from your spouse, family, self- doubt, etc very early in the game. You might (and probably will) face issues down the road, but when starting out, you need all the focus you can get.
All the best to all you budding entrepreneurs reading this. You got this.