Welcome, Guest: Register On Nairaland / LOGIN! / Trending / Recent / NewStats: 3,194,119 members, 7,953,446 topics. Date: Thursday, 19 September 2024 at 04:25 PM |
Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Business / How To Escape Your Cubicle And Live The Dream Life (511 Views)
Igede Lady Removes Shoes To Enter ATM Cubicle (Photo) / Carport Fabrication, Stainless Steel Handrail And Bathroom Cubicle Installation / Etisalat Directors Resign To Escape Criminal Charges (2) (3) (4)
(1) (Reply)
How To Escape Your Cubicle And Live The Dream Life by Nobody: 7:42pm On Apr 27, 2016 |
I’ve been fortunate to live in some pretty amazing
places. They include a small tourist town in the
Canadian Rockies surrounded by some of the bluest
lakes you can ever imagine, a remote bayside town in
Alaska with office views of multiple glaciers;
and “classic” paradise on the island of Kauai, Hawaii,
from which I could gaze upon palm trees and the blue
ocean while at work. Presently, I work in Sedona,
Arizona, with views of towering erosion-sculpted red
rocks.
Feeling envious? The point is, you can do it too, and you
don’t need to be rich. You just need to believe in
yourself.
Related: 10 Reasons You Have to Quit Your Job
For years I worked as a design engineer for Texas
Instruments spending the biggest chunk of my life in a
tiny cubicle. Then one year on vacation, I went
backpacking through the spectacular Canadian
Rockies. I was absolutely blown away by the beauty and
tranquility. During that trip, I decided I didn’t want to
spend my life in a box, that I wanted to live and work
someplace spectacular.
Advertisement
But I figured that the only way to do that was to get rich
in the stock market. So I began taking some ridiculous
investment risks, in the name of breaking free from the
daily grind. That strategy was a big mistake and a year
later I was no closer to breaking free of my cubicle; in
fact, I was further from it.
Then I became an entrepreneur and everything forever
changed. Instead of taking investment risks on random
companies, I took a chance on myself. There really is no
better investment. The transition to entrepreneur is by no
means easy; antcipating the loss of a steady paycheck
is daunting and stressful if you don’t plan
appropriately. Some of things I’ve learned along the
way:
1. Save money before quitting your job.
Better yet, continue working your day job while you
develop your new business. Any new business takes
time to build, and you can usually expect at least a year
of hard work before making any significant income. In
fact, a hardware product startup will almost surely
require several years' worth of up-front savings to build
up any sizable income. Attaining financial
security almost always takes much longer than you
expect, so be prepared.
My first product startup took me about three years
before I made any income; (fortunately I was able to
support myself by doing engineer consulting for my
former employer). Most of us can’t afford to work for
years on something full-time without seeing any
monetary reward. But that really is the pattern for a
hardware startup. Not only do you fail to draw any
income for a while, but you can burn through your
savings rather quickly as you're developing and
marketing a new product, especially if you have to pay
someone else (e.g., an engineer) to actually develop it.
2. Start a service business to generate
immediate income while working on your
new product.
All new businesses require time to become profitable,
but that process is many times quicker for service
companies. With a service company you can begin
selling immediately, whereas product startups have to
first develop the product (which requires spending
money, not making it).
Whether you are an engineer, or a marketing
professional or a programmer, you surely have skills that
others need. If you have a job now, that’s proof you have
skills someone wants.
I highly recommend you start offering your services
using outsourcing websites like Elance, Guru , or
Upwork. These websites allow you to begin bringing in
an income almost immediately. Some of the categories
of work available through these websites include
translation, data entry, website design, engineering and
various administrative tasks.
Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247222 |
(1) (Reply)
Top Five Signs Your Business Is Ready For An ERP System / Do You Have Any Dieng Business U Want To Lease Out?? / Vodacom Overtakes MTN As Africa’s Largest GSM Operator
(Go Up)
Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 12 |