© 2002 Elena Fawkner
You have a full-time job but secretly you yearn to break
free of the corporate shackles and strike out on your own.
You have a great idea for a business but you need the income
from your job to pay your mortgage and to feed yourself
while you get it underway. Sound familiar? This article
considers this dilemma and suggests how you might make the
break from paid workforce to your own full-time home business
when financial necessity dictates a regular and
uninterrupted monthly income.
This may be obvious but it bears restating: if you need a
regular paycheck to survive, DON’T give up your day job
until you have another regular, consistent income stream to
take its place. This applies even if you are absolutely
convinced that your business idea is a surefire formula for
financial success. It may be, but even the most successful
businesses take time to get of the ground and most have a few
false starts before they finally take off.
If you can’t afford to give up your paid income while you
build your business, then you have no choice but to start
your home business as a side project and run it alongside
your job. To make any sort of progress in your home
business, plan to devote two to three hours a day at an
absolute minimum to your business.
Because your time is extremely limited, you need to be
ruthlessly efficient with what you do with it. For example,
can you find spare pockets of time during your workday? If
you are running an internet-based business and use a
computer as part of