Category: Business

Starting up a business takes a lot of hard work. You’ll need to spend countless hours of your time creating your website, registering your company, posting on social media, writing quality content, organizing your finances, finding customers, and working on your product or service. It takes a great deal of dedication and patience to see it through, and in the early stages, it will take over your life.

But with such a colossal time commitment, there’s a good chance you’ll have to fit your business around another job. It will take a while before you make serious money from your business venture, so you’ll need a reliable source of income to keep you going. But this raises a serious challenge of time: how can you find the time to set up your business when you spend eight hours a day working for someone else?

It might seem impossible to be an entrepreneur and an employee at the same time, but many people do make it work. You just need to be smart about how you use your time and adopt some clever strategies to be more efficient. To get you started on your business journey, here are four tips for starting a business while employed.

Be organized

Your available time will be limited, so you need to make the best use of it as possible. For this reason, you should plan out your time comprehensively. Create a weekly planning diary as well as a more detailed daily one for specific tasks. Write down exactly what you want to achieve in this time and when you will achieve it during the week. This will keep you focused on the most important task and allow you to be more efficient with your time.

Find a more flexible work arrangement

Can you ask your boss for more flexibility in your work? Perhaps you could work from home a couple of days a week? This will give you a lot more extra time in the day as you can avoid the commute and fit in business tasks more easily around your job. If not, maybe you could find a part-time job that affords you more free time, such as bar work, blogging, or a delivery driver job (https://www.shiply.com/us/delivery-driver-jobs). 

Use your breaks

Even when you’re working eight hours a day, you will still have free time to carry out business tasks. Although you shouldn’t anger your current employer by shunning their work for your own, you can still use your lunch break and commute to make important phone calls, send emails, and work on your website. Just make sure you are discreet about it.

Establish boundaries

If your employer clocks on that you are working on your own business, they are likely to monitor your work activity more closely. For this reason, you should never work on your business during work hours and never using work devices. Although your focus might be elsewhere, you still need to work hard for your employer, or you might end up without a job.

It’s only getting harder for the average person to make ends meet. The state of the world and the way we live and conduct business is changing, and you need to stay on your feet to stay ahead of the game. 

Most people will find that they’re barely just making enough with their day job, and this is why is about that time you start to consider doing something else on the side. If you’re hesitant about taking this step, we’re going to give you 6 good reasons why you should consider a side hustle. 

It’s Never Too Early or Too Late to Save

Different people live within different circumstances, and life has its ups and downs, so you can really never be too certain about what the future holds. One thing is for sure though, there’s never a wrong time to start saving– and you should do it whenever you have the chance. When you start working on the side, you’ll soon be able to put something aside for your savings, no amount is too small, and this is extremely important to do. 

Find Out What’s Out There

You grew up getting an education and you ended up going down a career path and here you are. The great thing about getting into a side hustle is that it exposes you to what else is in the market, and what is hot, especially where you are. If you live in Canada, for instance, then you need to get online, ask around, and read reviews to see what is hot in the job market at any given time. The best way to earn money online is to first discover what is in demand at that time, and try to get yourself involved in this. There may be things that appeal to you, but don’t pay off that much, and you’ll find that this can be just a waste of your time. 

Develop Your Skills

When you try your hand at something that you don’t do in your day job, you’re actually adding to your roster of skills. We often get so caught up in the daily stress of our jobs and home that we convince ourselves that we simply don’t have time to do anything else. Once you push yourself to start working on a side hustle, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that you do have the time, no matter how much it is, to learn something new and develop new skills.

Have a Backup Plan

Soon after you get your feet wet and realize that you can do more than what you’re doing for a career right now, you’ll actually open up a world of possibilities. By having work on the side, you can consider switching to a different career, or at least live with the comfort that if something goes wrong, you’ll always have a backup plan. 

This is especially important given the state of the world right now. After 2020, the nature of business in itself has changed, and everyone is on the edge of their seats, worrying about whether they’ll be able to get a raise, bonuses, or just get laid off altogether- so a side hustle, if nothing else, is safe. 

There’s Potential For Passive Income

There are many side hustle options out there. These jobs actually have the potential to give you passive income while you’re doing nothing. For instance, if you decide to start writing blogs and they do really well, you can start earning passive income through ads or through the product or service that you promote, so this is definitely something worth looking into. Other examples of side hustles that can bring in passive income are dropshipping and affiliate marketing. 

It Can Actually be Fun

We’ve long forgotten that it really is possible to enjoy what you do for work. Side hustles, besides everything else, can be so much fun. It’s exciting to challenge yourself to do something new, and it’s not a heavy commitment, so you don’t have to stress about whether you can do it or not because it can be a short-term trial if you like. Being able to have that control takes the miserable stress out of the situation and allows you to enjoy the process.

All the points mentioned here should be more than enough to get you started on your side hustle journey. If you’re under the impression that you simply do not have time to do this, guess what? You always have an hour or two to spare in your day, and in many cases, this is all it takes. You won’t regret it because there really are no negative points to getting a side hustle. 

Harassment comes in many forms and most of us have, unfortunately, encountered it. It is usually first experienced as rough child’s play and bullying in school, but it may continue to follow us later in life. Some will have it with their acquaintances, others with their family or colleagues at work. Whatever the surroundings – abuse should never be accepted.

Apart from standing your ground and directly confronting the abuser – a more sophisticated, yet very effective response is taking legal actions. Recognizing your situation and knowing who to consult with is the first step towards an effective reaction.

Are You a Victim of Abuse in the Office?

Abuse in the workplace is a long-lasting problem and as much as 13% of men and 12% of women have been affected by it in the US. Some forms of it are rather self-evident, such as a superior harming you physically or yelling at you, while other forms are more hidden but will hurt you in one way or another.

Being forced to work overtime while not being adequately paid, a common problem in the hotel and restaurant industry, is sometimes shrugged off as a minor thing but is, in fact, a serious offense and should be dealt with as such. Psychological pressure that comes from mobbing is also frequent and there are various ways you can fight against that too. 

And to top it all is – discrimination. A very debated topic but also a very present one, being discriminated solely for something personal and which doesn’t affect your work is also abuse and should always be brought up to HR, or the court if it cannot be solved elsewhere.

Overtime

Any hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek count as overtime when an employee is a non-exempt employee. This is, as stated in the link above, defined by law and all overwork time is supposed to be paid at least 1.5 times the regular hourly pay. If you suspect you are not being given your fair share you could contact an unpaid overtime lawyer in Nashville. But confronting your boss about it should be the first step, as it may be a simple mistake on their behalf.

In the HoReCa sector, a common scenario is being asked to stay after closing hours to clean up the establishment, even though your 8 work hours ended when the bar closed. As the boss doesn’t count the extra time needed to tidy everything up they will likely not pay you what they are due.

Mobbing

Usually a collective effort by a group of colleagues against someone who they dislike, mobbing is the cause of many serious problems. It is often seen in office workspaces where many people are working together in a tight space yet have the time to spare for such mischief.

After being mobbed at work people will start feeling left out or even paranoid, sometimes to the point of acting aggressively to people on the streets. The pattern comes in the form of subtle and obvious comments or verbal acts that make a person feel unwanted or that their work is in some way humiliating or worthless. The bullying is sometimes done even by the superior, a manager, or employer, in which case it may be wrongly interpreted as criticism instead of mobbing.

Even though it is very hard to be proven, as is with most passive-aggressive behavior, those who are abused in this way should consult a human resources department, or a psychologist, to help them recognize it as mobbing and act accordingly. 

Discrimination

In diverse countries such as the US, there are many bases on which someone could be discriminated against. Race, age, sex, and religion all come into this foul play and it is a serious legal issue. Being rejected from a job just because you are African-American or a woman, for example, even if you have all the required qualifications, is outright discrimination and should be treated as such. 

Legal actions can be taken as the anti-discrimination laws are very strict on the subject. If you have evidence for such behavior you can file a lawsuit against the employer.

Taking abuse is never OK, even if you think that accepting your boss’s rude behavior will be rewarded in any way. Ending up with unpaid overwork time or psychological damage is the only sure thing you can get out of such scenarios, and keep in mind that everyone should behave professionally, if not friendly, in the office.

Work is not playing, but neither should it be abuse.