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One of the primary reasons why many individuals shy away from the entrepreneurship path is the uncertainty of a stable income stream. This is a primary reason why I advocate starting your business ventures as early as you possibly can. With age comes greater responsibilities, and as a byproduct, a higher cost of living. However, regardless of whether you are a fresh college graduate, or starting a business after a couple of years in the corporate world, a subsistence level of income is essential, to satisfy our basic needs and requirements. So what does it take to earn that subsistence level of income?
There are a few things that I have done personally, & seen my friends do as well :
1. I had a lot of friends who got trained as bartenders, or started waiting tables over weekends and a couple of hours a week too.
2. Getting a job doing data entry, filing, or other routine tasks for a couple of hours a week. The learning curve is very small and although it is not the most exciting of jobs , it is not that difficult either.
3. Some friends got trained as insurance or real estate agents and did sales on the side. You get a ton of exposure about the sales process in these roles, which is extremely useful when you start selling your own product.
4. If you have a skill such as programming, designing, speaking well etc, there are many small gigs that you could get your self into through the internet to make a side income.
5. Start a blog about something that you are truly passionate about, and do your best to monetize it. This is a tough one, but I have seen many people get to a decent traffic level and actually earn a little something off their blog.
These are just a couple of thoughts that came to mind. I would really like to hear from readers of this blog what they did to generate funds while their startup was just…. starting up.
Before closing there is a very important point that I would like to make here. In all the above cases, we should be spending just enough time every week to make $X (Where $X is the minimum we need to stay afloat). I do not believe that anyone can have a full time job, and just spend a few hours in the week working on their startup. This model just does not work very well. Starting a business needs you to go all out, and if you cannot, then it is better to stay on the sidelines until you can.
I know a guy that taught tennis in the early morning before he began to work. And since tennis is played by wide range of different people he got lots of good contacts while making some money.
That is a good combo. An added benefit to that routine would be the early morning exercise that really gets the day of to a good start as well.
Leveraging on our own unique skill sets is a great way to generate some side income.
Dear Usman
I have been reading your blog regularly. Your content is very fresh, compelling and comes straight out of an entrepreneur’s heart.
For this post, well i think while an entrepreneur should do his best to sustain himself in the startup days, he should mentally be prepared to sustain himself on a subsistence income or no income at all.
Great to hear from you Saba. Thank you for the compliments.
I agree that it is essential to be mentally aware and accepting of the fact that one will not have a stable stream of income, during your startups early stage. This uncertainty actually fuels an entrepreneurs to push themselves harder and start generating income as soon as possible.