Start up Your Entrepreneurship Journey

Entrepreneurship is pursuing an opportunity regardless of the resources currently available.
As a full-time worker, working 8am -6pm or 9am-7pm, is it possible for you to start up your own business, groom it to the extent that one day you could comfortably resign your job to focus on that business? The answer is YES.
I am one of the advocates of one setting up a SIDE-BUSINESS because you cannot tell what tomorrow would bring. I know friends and relations who had jobs and suddenly lost their jobs. All of us can vividly remember the massive retrenchment in the banking industry following the “Global Economy Melt-down”.
Do you have a business idea? Have you validated the business idea? Is it something you have a strong passion for? What is stopping you from actualizing that idea as a side-business?
If you master the art of scaling your side business idea while keeping your job, you will have no trouble succeeding once you are fully self-employed.
By Side business I mean those businesses you can set up while still retaining your job. Those businesses you can still do along with your normal day’s employment.
When you start out on a new business idea, always make sure it aligns with both your core competencies and interests. It starts with learning how to discover your STRENGTHS as an entrepreneur and build on such strength. For instance, let’s assume you discover that one of your strength is PERSUASION, you are good at marketing and getting people to buy, you can build on such strength, develop yourself as a good marketing expert and make a living marketing other people’s goods and services.
The big challenge why most of us who have full-time job shy away from setting up a side business is because of TIME factor. The truth is that setting up and running a side business involves a lot of SACRIFICE. But do you know that most of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs struggled with this same TIME factor when they started their business for the first time while still keeping their day’s job.
Are there benefits to setting up your side business?
1. It helps you start off your entrepreneurial journey.
2. You gain first-hand experience what running a business looks like especially in Nigeria.
3. It provides you with an alternative source of income. Your side business can provide you with income you can use to augment your salary.
4. It provides a Plan-B option for you when LIFE HAPPENS
5. It helps you to give back to the society(Job Creation)
Are you a teacher, a civil servant, a company worker,etc, how do you use your holidays and vacations? Can you use it to LEARN A SKILL? That Skill CAN be your SAVING GRACE tomorrow.
Are you a parent? How do you want your children to spend their holidays? Why not enroll them in vocational skill development in that nearby tailor shop, carpentry workshop, wielder shop, catering school,etc?
Are you a School Owner? Why not think of incorporating entrepreneurial skills development and vocational trainings as part of your summer camp programmes to attract parents who have interest in these areas?
Today, the Federal Government of Nigeria sponsor facilitators to NYSC Orientation camps to go train our youth corpers on entrepreneurship skills. Why? Simply because they have come to the realization that government cannot and will not be able to employ the thousands of graduates that are churn out of our institutions of higher learning yearly. Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SME) are the largest employers of labor in any part of the world.
Entrepreneurship development is one of the solutions to the unemployment facing our country today. Start that side business today and launch that your entrepreneurial dream.