Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts

When We Only Focus On Being A Full Time Entrepreneur

Working for yourself full time can be terrific. However, it should never be your number one goal when building or operating your business. Inside the world of creative entrepreneurship being “full-time” can feel like THE stamp of success. When in reality, there are so many other ways to run a profitable, successful business before it’s “full-time”. In this episode, we are going to focus on why going full time should never be the #1 goal for any entrepreneur.

The Number One Goal of Business

Although being a full-time entrepreneur sounds fantastic, we have to understand it should never be the #1 goal. The main goal and focus of any business needs to be tied to income. And you don’t always maximize profit margins by working a 40-hour work week.

Inside this episode, I am going to walk you through three harsh realities of what happens when we make going full-time our number one focus. There is a lot of pressure inside the entrepreneurial community to be successful “full-time”. However, when you look at your numbers, that isn’t always the case.

Side Checks podcast is all about embracing side hustles and part-time business models. We believe that the stamp of a successful entrepreneur is never directly met when the business goes “full-time”.

Your Goal Becomes Time-Oriented

The first reason why you should never make “going-full-time” your number one goal as an entrepreneur is because that’s a time-oriented goal. Not a business goal. When you approach entrepreneurship as something you want to do full-time, you’re looking at things backward. 

A successful business doesn’t fill up the calendar with 40 hours of work and it is successful based on that fact alone. 

You may work for yourself full-time now or in the future and work 40 hours each week. And this doesn’t mean you’re not successful or you’re not doing things right. Simply put, we shouldn’t chase a “full-time” status to claim success. 

There is SO MUCH success in side hustling. There can be SO MUCH success in running part-time businesses. 

And so when we are building our business and building the foundation of our business, we always want to ask ourselves “How can I maximize this business in less time”? This is a much better question to ask yourself before “How can I go full-time?”

When we think about maximizing our dollar and man-hour in a smaller time frame, that is when we begin to build businesses better. And it’s when we start to question what “full-time” is, to begin with.

That’s when Rachel figures out that her business can earn $50/hour through doing XYZ versus $100/day by being full time. 

Now Rachel can keep a part time schedule. Or she can add hours to her business, grossing more income and earning more profit along the way. Or she can create another stream of income with her extra time. 

Having our business’s number one goal be “working full time” is a time-constraint goal. And we want to avoid. 

You Focus More On Your “Enough” Point

Another reason we should never make going full-time our number one goal as an entrepreneur is that this can be a fast-track way to create a paycheck-to-paycheck career. Or a paycheck-to-paycheck mindset. 

So many times, when we get excited about turning in our two-week notice and only working for ourselves, we look at our bottom line. We calculate how much money we need to do life, pay our bills, pay down debt, and get by. And if our business makes that….we say si-a-nar-a to our 9-5’s. 

We have to think bigger when it comes to running businesses. We can’t just put in enough hours to get the same results week after week. Even if that means the results are paying our bills and giving us that entrepreneurial freedom we all crave. 

We have to consider where the hours and energy are coming from that is going to grow our business. And provide security. Do amazing things like pay for maternity leave, purchase health insurance, and invest in retirement. Hire and invest inside our businesses. 

When we are more focused on being full-time, we get tunnel vision and lose sight of the actual business side of things. We work so hard (like I know you do) to get to our enough point and see it as a green light to work for ourselves full time. 

Instead, what if we grew our businesses and put them on a scalable track? A track where we knew that wouldn’t just be earning our bare minimal living allowance, but some extra, AND were growing. The last thing we want to do is work as hard as we do as business owners just to “get-by”. 

Plus, there is also a lot of pressure to go “full-time” so we end up leaving our 9-5’s prematurely to feel more successful. Or worse, our income goal is short-sighted. We lose momentum after we hit our bare minimum income goal to be full time and then really, we are just trading one income for the other. 

If your business is funding you to “just get by” it’s very hard to make moves and grow the business to a point that is giving you life, rather than taking it. 

Full Time Is Not An Entrepreneurial Term

The third reason you should never make going full-time your number one goal as an entrepreneur is that “full-time” is not an entrepreneurial term. This doesn’t mean you need to clock less than 40 hours a week. In fact, it has nothing to do with hours. 

We continue to get so fixated on part-time versus full-time that we allow these two concepts to rule our businesses rather than looking at how our businesses are earning income and how we can keep doing it, smarter, faster, and cheaper. 

That is the bottom line. Business isn’t dirty but we have to start confessing that our number one goal inside any business that we run is tied to income. It has to be. 

A business is a business. It’s about income. Transaction. And it’s not about a 40-hour work week. Or 60 hours. Or 20 hours. We are so groomed to work Monday-Friday 8-5. And that is due to working in corporate and going to school for 15 years.  

Now if you’re a business owner listening to this and you work M-F 8-5, you don’t need to change everything. We just need to realize that business, (i.e. income, transactions, security) does not need to be labeled full-time in order to be there or be successful. 

The label of “full-time” is really for us. It’s not for our businesses. It’s for us. And it’s for others. 

Conclusion

If your goal within your career is to work for yourself full time one day, then my friend I am here for that. And I truly hope that I can be a resource to help you do that. And I know how hard you’re working within your business. But I  want to offer you a different perspective that you may not be receiving anywhere else. 

There is so much pressure inside the entrepreneurial community to either A) subscribe to side hustles as a stepping stone or B) subscribe to full-time or bust. And I just want to encourage you today to consider rejecting what you think “full-time” means. 

Instead, be a friend to your business and look at the bottom line. What does your business need in order to maximize output and provide fulfillment and security. The answers to THAT will serve you so much more than the corporate-based (and perhaps ego-based) notion of being “full time”. 

If you make your number one goal is income, then you’re going to end up with a business with capital and possibilities. Maybe even possibilities that lead to only working for yourself. 

But if your number one goal is working for yourself full time, you may end up with a full time job sustaining a business. 

---

Are you looking for a creative side hustle idea? I have 97 of them! Download my free list of 97 Creative (and profitable) Side Hustle Ideas right here. This list is way better than what you will find through a Google search….