Chances Are…You Have Enough Time to Start a (Successful) Business
A simplified breakdown of why you don’t need to quit your 9-5 to start a business.
Aspiring entrepreneurs are always asking if it is necessary to quit their day job to give their business idea a shot. After all, it will require a lot of hours.
The typical answer is: “If you can afford to live without it.”
However, people often underestimate how many hours they have. That makes the real answer: “You likely don’t have to yet.”
Yes, of course, there are exceptions.
It is different if you have kids you need to drive to soccer practice every day or have to drive 2 hours each way in traffic to get to work (valuable audiobook time).
For most people though, you can still get away with doing both.
The key is to keep your job until your business income replaces your work income.
“By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” - Benjamin Franklin
24 hours is a lot
Let’s break down the hours in your day so you can see how many hours you really have.
Humans average 7 hours of sleep, so let’s use that as a starting point - you have 17 waking hours.
Your day job likely takes 9 hours a day if you count your lunch break, which leaves you with 8 “free” hours (17-9 = 8).
So, those 8 hours get split up between commuting, showering, eating, and getting ready. Unless you are seriously wasting your time on those things, let’s say you have 5 hours left.
These remaining 5 hours (plus more on weekends) can be spent educating yourself, and finding a product-market fit for your business (making sure people want to buy your product).
That’s 25 hours a week plus whatever you have on the weekends.
That means you have a whole full-time job of spare time per week to start your business.
"If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." — Steve Jobs
Make use of every hour.
If you read the previous section, you’ll notice there are 3 hours allocated to getting ready, commuting, eating, etc.
That’s around 21 hours a week (or more if you commute a long distance to work), or 1000 hours a year.
To start a business, you are going to need to learn a lot, and especially educate yourself about the industry you are going into. That means reading books, listening to podcasts, taking courses, and watching videos.
1000 hours is a lot.
The average audiobook is 10 hours, which means if you multi-task, you could take down an extra 100 books a year in that time.
There are plenty of podcasts you can replace some of that time with as well. Plus, you could watch videos, or take courses during that time.
Obviously don’t watch videos while you are driving, but you can watch while you eat and then listen to audiobooks when you drive.
The point is that you have these 1000 hours each year that you are probably spending doing things that aren’t improving your chances of building a successful business.
Reallocate those hours, and improve your chances of success.
"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all." — Michelangelo
You don’t need to quit yet.
If you look at this breakdown, you’ve hopefully come to realize that quitting is not necessary yet.
Most businesses fail, and it would suck to quit a job only to launch a business that could have been launched while keeping your job.
Some might say that going all in will increase your chances of success.
They’re not wrong, but that risk isn’t appealing to everyone. The whole point here is that you don’t necessarily need to take that risk to have a shot.
What I would recommend doing is waiting until you get validation that your business is working before you quit.
There will come a point where you notice that it is picking up, and what you are missing is not resources or demand, but time.
That’s when you should consider quitting.
You don’t need to quit before getting a clear answer.
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." — Albert Einstein
How bad do you want it?
The most common thing people say from here is that they want to have spare time to hang out with their friends, play video games, watch movies, and do whatever else they want to do.
If that’s you, you simply don’t want success bad enough.
Success requires sacrifice.
If you are not willing to sacrifice time now to build a business, it is best that you don’t even bother, because you are unlikely to build a successful business anyway.
Not everyone needs to be Elon Musk working 120 hours a week even after making billions, but everyone needs to be willing to put in extra time and effort to build a business.
So, if spending your 5 remaining hours each day building a business or 1000 hours a year educating yourself sounds like a burden to you, don’t bother. You don’t have what it takes.
"I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying." - Michael Jordan
Conclusion
Business owners need to be excited to work on their project, be driven, willing to sacrifice now and put in the time to create something that lasts.
Entrepreneurship nowadays is glorified. People want the perks that come with it without realizing the amount of work that is required to get there.
As I have pointed out, you have the time, the only reason you haven’t started is because of your excuses.
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” - Walt Disney
Thanks for reading
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