Why You Should Still Work While Starting a Business

“Go all in”, “Focus solely on your business”, and “Quit your day job and start a business” – All of these are familiar advice aspiring entrepreneurs hear from family members, friends, and colleagues. And while it’s spoken with the best intentions, it may not always be the most pragmatic to follow. Working while starting a business certainly sets some limitations, such as time. On the same note, however, it puts you at a better position to build a solid foundation for your future empire. Here’s five reasons why you should still work while starting a business.

Financial Security

We’ve all heard about a rags-to-riches story of someone going from being homeless to making millions of dollars a year in a matter of months. While it’s certainly possible, it’s often the exemption. For every seeming fantasy tale like this, there’s a dozen of stories where entrepreneurs fail to make it because of lack of cash. Keeping a day or night job can significantly increase your chances of building a stable business by having the personal cash flow to financially support it, especially during the first few months of the company.

Potential Connections

Another benefit of working while starting a business is that you get to maintain relations with your coworkers and employer. If you are working in a field that is also directly connected to your prospective business, these connections can be your competitive advantage. Employers and coworkers may want to partner up with you as investors or work for you if they see enough cause to join. In fact, employees going overboard to new startups created by their ex-coworkers are very common nowadays.

Capital Source

Having personal cash flow to survive the first few months of unemployment while working on your business is one thing, but having the capital to actually purchase business supplies and space is an entirely different situation. Don’t expect investors are going to flock to your business idea as soon as you open the doors for them. Even if you have a proven concept and attractive business model, you’ll want to have cash set aside for business expenditures. This also minimizes the need for foreign backers, which ultimately preserves your ownership of the company. If you have a good-paying job, you can make money fast thus giving you the financial capacity to order inventory or lease space.

Knowledge Acquisition

Keeping your existing job can yield industry knowledge that will be invaluable to commandeering your own ship when the time comes. Board managers, CEOs, and even coworkers all have some expertise they can share with you that can be useful later on. Talking with employers for advice in certain parts of a business is also free of charge, so you’re basically taking a free crash course on business management. Even observing how your supervisor or CEO performs on a daily basis can give you cues on what to do when you fill in the role.

Time Allowance

Starting a business without financial security from an existing job can pressure you into producing something right away, which oftentimes leads to subpar results. Keeping your existing job affords you the luxury to make mistakes and take your time towards developing business models and products that actually work. A rushed business is never a good long-term investment of your resources.

Starting a business while working full-time or even part-time may sound like an insurmountable arrangement. Nonetheless, it makes more pragmatic sense and it gives you a higher chance of success to keep a primary source of income while utilizing the free time and energy you have towards building your business piece by piece.