What exactly is ‘roaching your startup’?
You’ll find a ton of websites out there that teach you how to start up a business. Usually, they follow the same steps:
- Think about the type of business you want to start
- Write a business plan
- Raise enough money to start
- Execute the business plan
- Make money
That’s just grand, if you’re a genius grad student who still lives with his parents. Real people have jobs first, and decide somewhere along the way to start up a business of their own. At that time, you probably have a real life: a job, a mortgage to pay, maybe a family to provide for. Starting up a business isn’t exactly easy.
Calculated risks
Any arrived entrepeneur will tell you that taking risks is part of the business. I totally agree: taking risks and being fully responsible is one of the things that attracts me so much. But, it’s all about taking calculated risks. Now let’s suppose you follow the 5 steps above, and let’s just suppose the bank says ‘yes sir, here’s $ 200,000 for your plan’. You’d have to quit your job, losing not only your monthly source of income, but also your 401(k), medical insurance, dental plan, etcetera. All this without knowing if your plan is going to work out. If it does, good for you. If it doesn’t, you’re in trouble. Not only will you have a giant debt, you don’t have a job to pay back the debt, and chances are your wife has filed for a divorce and a restraining order as well.
Roaching it
My idea is to start up a business during my day job. Now my day job isn’t particulary demanding, so if I work a little harder, I have enough time on my hands to accomplish this. I’ve somewhat amended the 5 steps I mentioned earlier:
- Think about the type of business you want to start
- Write a business plan during work hours
- Save my earnings to pay for expenses
- Execute the business plan during work hours
- Make enough money to quit day job
I’m using my own money to pay for expenses. This is called bootstrapping, something I’ll write about later on. The process of creating a business during your day job I call ‘roaching’.
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