Afraid of the Risks of leaving your job?

Is taking the risk of leaving your job worth the chance to live your dream life?  YES, if you are prepared with a plan.  Leaving your job because you are burnt-out may solve an immediate issue of joy in your daily life, but when this is done without a detailed plan then your risk dramatically increases and your issues become greater.  When you leave with a plan you have already calculated your risks, assessed what to do to avoid them and made arrangements for what happens when they do occur. 

Risk is only relative to how much or little you planned and researched your next move.  If you jump into your own consulting business but have not done any form of business planning it makes it much harder for you to succeed.  Kind of like running around like a chicken with its head cut off!  Besides for planning your new business or career move you also need to plan your own personal finances and life situations.  Ignoring issues such as cash flow, insurance and day care makes it harder for your next step to be successful.   Why?  Because you are stressed and thus less productive.  So what do you need to do?  Make plans to prepare yourself, these include the following steps:

·         Plan and evaluate your family finances – if you can only make it two weeks without a job then that was a risky move.  Wouldn’t you rather discover that before you left your job?

·         Develop a business plan or life action plan – Even if you don’t know exactly what you are going to do if you have a plan of action to decide how you are going to decide then your days will be productive and not wasted time.

·         Discuss what factors would make you change direction and move back to a paid job – this is for those of you planning on jumping into your own business.  Decide where your end point is, give yourself a deadline. 

Once you have made adequate plans, jump!  You only have one life to live out your dreams and passions.  Make it a good one!

Live a Life of Passion

Many of my clients choose their next step in life based on where they believe the money is which would ultimately lead them to happiness. Please don’t do this, because if you pick a passion and build it into your next step the money will flow and happiness will be built in automatically. This does not mean if you love to play piano that you can hang up a sign and people will come walking in. You still need to plan accordingly to either turn it into a viable business or find an employer that will fit with your personality and needs. What it does mean is that as those people eventually come in, they will sense your passion and love and will become customers for life.

So how do you pick out this passion and turn it into your next step in life?

First you need to pick which of your passions you really want to grow into a career or lifestyle. Not all of your interests will make for a good business so you need to evaluate what you want to spend your time on and what will work in a business. I frequently ask my clients this question “If you could talk about one thing everyday what would it be?” I love reading about health and fitness, but I think after a week of talking about it I would need a week off! On the other hand talking about creating an ideal life and achieving it I see no reason to ever stop talking about!

As you are discovering where your passions can lead you consider these tips.

• If you need to make a list of all your interest so you can go through and eliminate them one by one go for it! Also, don’t be afraid to combine two of your passions. A great book to help you with this is “What color is your Parachute”. Get all into it and do the full flower exercise, no matter how cheesy you feel! (Get the workbook it makes it easier)

• Just because you are good at it does not mean you should create a business around it. This one is hard because we gravitate to what we know – that does not make for a passion based business. I was a great bookkeeper that did not make me happy doing it! Avoid the easy road of turning your current job into a business or slightly altering your position. It is easy to say if you switch from non-profit to for-profit you will be happy, you might be but really analyze what you dislike about where you are now and how that would or would not change.

Once you have narrowed it down to one or two the next step is to build a business or find a career around the interests. This part can be time consuming and it just may take some brain storming around it. Give yourself plenty of time and space to figure out what the right move is. Ask yourself these questions:

1. What can I do to make money with this? Would I pay for this?

2. Do I need training to do this?

3. If someone else is doing it is their still room in the market or is it saturated? Can I do it for them instead of working for myself?

4. Are the start-up costs reasonable for me?

5. Can I imagine spending my time on this for many years in the future? Really take the time to envision yourself 10 years down the road doing this.

Finally, once you have selected a business it is time to start building a business plan or begin your career search and chasing your life’s passions! Your soul will thank you!

Your Financial Health and Your Start-up

Thinking of starting a business?  One of the most important things to take into consideration is how financially healthy your own finances are.  Why is this so important?  If you are in debt, not cash flowing your current monthly expenses, and don’t have an emergency fund then that impacts how you grow your business.  You have less room to take your time and do it the right way, there is no cushion to make mistakes.  So what why is that bad and how do you go about starting a business and having personal financial health?

Why is growing a business quickly under financial stress bad?  First, it is just plain stressful.  Stress is bad for your health, which ultimately affects your business.   Second, a business that is rushed due to lack of money will make poor decisions.  It becomes harder to make good decisions and not seem desperate to clients and vendors because you are worried about the house payment.  These bad decisions can range anywhere from pricing your products or services wrong, to selecting the wrong niche (or none at all), or bad financing.  What does it matter if you make a bad decision?  We will use picking the wrong niche as an example?  The wrong niche, or a more common problem no niche, makes marketing harder and more expensive.  If you are marketing to the wrong clients your growth is slowed because your customers don’t know they are your customers.  For example if you choose to market to the world instead of narrowing it down to mothers who suffer migraines your message will get lost on those who don’t have migraines while migraine sufferers who are moms may not stop to read your message.  You select no niche because you think you can get more sales faster, but it takes more money to reach your market because they are not looking at you! The brilliance of small business is that you can change quickly to fix mistakes, however too much change and too much radical change puts you back near the starting point and confuses your customers.  This costs you even more money, money that you did not have to start with.  So do yourself and your business a favor, start it when you are financially healthy.  How?

There are two ways that I recommend you start a business with financial health.  The first is to start your company on the side of your day job.  This will force you to start it slower because you have less time.  It also allows you a steady stream of income and will allow you to test the market to make sure the concept will work.  The biggest caution with this is ensuring that it does not cause trouble with your employer.  Don’t let it affect your performance at work and make sure if you are doing the same line of work that you don’t violate policies or lose your intellectual capital to your company.  The last thing you want is a legal battle or bad blood!

Second, you can take a couple years to focus on getting yourself on solid financial ground before starting your business.  Scale back on living expenses, pay down debt, and save up emergency funds and start up money.  Then when you are set, make the jump to owning a business.  This does not mean you don’t have to set the business off to the side.  While getting your finances together you can still write your business and marketing plan, start designing a website, or get some marketing materials ready you just won’t launch until the money is right.   

By being financially sound on the personal side you empower yourself with the time to build your business with thought, time and care.  Making it that much more rewarding and enjoyable.