What is the biggest fear people have when thinking of leaving their jobs and becoming entrepreneurs?
It can be a long list:
- Would I make as much as I get paid now?
- Would I lose the career opportunities I may have in the future, salary increase, paid holidays, promotions opportunities in the company I am or in any other?
- Even if I manage to make as much as my salary or more, would I be able to sustain it?
- Am I the type of person required to succeed as an entrepreneur?
- I am not very confident so I am not sure I can do this.
- Would my family understand it and support me?
- If I do it, what would I do, what business is good to do, how am I supposed to just come up with an idea?
- I am not a leader, if in the future I need people working for me, would I be able to manage them, I don’t think so.
- I only want some extra money for better holidays and to leave something to my kids, do I need to become an entrepreneur? Can’t I just make some money aside somehow?
- I have worked so hard for what I have achieved in my professional life, I don’t want to just put it all in the bin and start all over again.
- What if I fail, would I look for a job again or go back to my job?
And so many more.
Before I became an entrepreneur, I went through every single one of these questions.
After years of working so hard in pubs, as a babysitter, as a shelf filler in Tesco and in a call centre, I finally got my dream job, I was working 3 years in my dream job by the time I decided to leave and become an entrepreneur. Most people think it was crazy, If you could think of your dream job, that one that you think you might never get, well I had it and I still left it to follow my personal dreams and to offer a much better life to my loved ones; my daughter and my parents.
To start with, I believe having a job or becoming an entrepreneur should be a choice, not the only option, we’re all different and we all want different things but most of us felt, by the time we got out of school, that we had no other option than getting a job.
What I mean by this is that I strongly believe that children and teenagers should learn enough about both and by the time they leave school or university, they should feel confident and capable of doing both.
We should receive enough education to make us understand the pros and cons of both, make us confident enough that we could do both and then we should be able to choose.
Most of our generation and previous generations felt that way, that the only option was to get a job, starting a business wasn’t an option for most of us, the question is why?
There are many reasons people feel that way but the most common one is that; we are either influenced by our parents, relatives and friends, we believe that to create a business we need to have money or we believe we don’t have what it takes to do it.
What made me take the decision in 2009?
Simple, I was in debt with credit cards, I had to send money to my parents to pay for their living in my country of origin and I had a little daughter. I wanted a much better life for her than what we could provide at that moment and even if my salary increased or I had better job opportunities, I would never have the freedom, control of my own free time and endless income opportunities as I will have as an entrepreneur, so …
I took the decision to make it happen by starting learning and playing around creating businesses before I left my job, so it was like having a side life. I wasn’t going to leave my job until I was making at least double my salary every month.
But there are some important points to consider.
I decided not to tell my relatives or friends, because they care about me they would make me doubt, put me off, and even scare me about the risks. They do it because they worry about you, they worry about what will happen if…
I told my partner I would not leave my job until I was making more than my salary month after month.
Was it going to be tiring? Hell yes, but sleeping slightly less and working 13 hours instead of only 8 for maybe a year was TOTALLY WORTH IT!
Did I sacrifice some time with my little daughter, OF COURSE! Was it worth it? YES!!!!!!
Because I was able to offer her much more and I am not talking about money but education, many more quality times together, more free time to be with her and opportunities she would have never had if I didn’t.
Mili Ponce