Many people dream of one day when they will say bye to their day job and go continue their business that they have been building while working on their day job. It is so unfortunate that others still wonder if it is possible to build a profitable business while working their full-time job.

This might come as a surprise to some, but the answer is yes. It all comes down to your level of desire, commitment and perseverance. To shock you, I started building my freelance writing business while I was working as a secondary school teacher in my community.

As a first time Entrepreneur, you cannot guarantee if the small business venture will succeed. So, the best option is to minimize the financial risk by initially keeping your full-time job and working on your startup during your free time.

I know you are curious to know how, that’s why you’re reading this post in the first place. I won’t lie to you, in the beginning, it will always be stressful to manage both your job and your business time. But, it is possible!

In this post, I will be sharing with you how you can build a profitable business while working a day job.

5 Ways to Build a Business While Still Running a Day Job

1. Validate your Business Ideas

Before building a business you should ask yourself, “what kind of business do I want to build?” The first thing you need to do before starting that business while running your day job is to validate the business idea. Just because you have a great idea does not mean the market is going to agree with it.

The number reason why most business fail is because aspiring entrepreneurs fail to look if the market they want to serve need what they want to offer.

Validating your idea involves getting honest feedback from potential customers before you start building, creating, and spending money.

As humans, it’s normal to think that we are right and our ideas are amazing. It is very advisable to seek market feedback before pumping more money into an idea so you don’t end up discourage if your business do not work the way you planned.

2. Set a Goal

In setting your goals, consider your business plan and make sure your goals are detailed, measurable and realistic. If you want to turn your business into a full-time venture, come up with a rough idea of when you’ll like to begin this transition.

Think about what you want to achieve in your business on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis and how you intend achieving it. When building my freelance writing business while as a teacher, I made it a goal to me and my writers to always write one blog post a day. With this, we were able to deliver 100+ blog post monthly to our clients.

Set goals for your business. Set sales goals, income goals, how many prospects do you want to convert to customers weekly or monthly. When you set goals and you achieve them, it enables you to track your progress and evaluate your business.

3. Decide Your Working Days

Decide how many hours per day you want to spend on your business. Since you are still working a day job, you won’t be able to spend all day running your business. You have to decide how many hours a day you are going to spend on your business.

It may be that you can only spend one or two hours a day on your business during the week but you can spend more time on your business during the weekend. However, your schedule works, set aside a certain number of hours per day for business. Use a timer if you have to.

This helps keep you from getting burned out. It helps keep your family from being resentful of your new venture since they know they will get to spend time with you after the buzzer goes off.

I remember spending one hour every day before I sleep at night working on my business and also another one hour in the morning before getting set for work. This was my time schedule so I won’t bother myself thinking about my business during my work time in the office.

4. Delegate Some Tasks to Others

Business is all about focus. Just because you are in business for yourself doesn’t mean you have to do everything by yourself. If there are tasks you aren’t that great at doing, don’t be afraid to outsource that task to someone else. Your time is extremely limited, so you need to focus your activities on income generating projects.

If it is a task that doesn’t directly generate revenue for you, right now you need to outsource it. It might be nice to learn new skills, but right now you just don’t have time. When your business is so profitable that you can leave your job, you will be able to learn whatever skill you want to.

5. Immerse Yourself in Learning

Research and read any books, listen to any audios or videos that can help you in your business. Make sure you create time to read business books that can help you build a great business. I can say that one secrets of my business success can be attributed to business books I read on managing business, building a great team and how to leverage.

Another secret I can also say is joining of mastermind group. I belong to so many valuable groups on Facebook and I consume every content that I know I need to build a successful business. It did not take me long before I said bye to my job and went full-time into my freelance writing business.

My learning created a short-cut for me. What would have taken me years to achieve, it only took me months to achieve them. So, I would advise that you immerse yourself to learning everyday even after transiting into your business full-time.

By taking these actions explained above, you are guarantee to succeed which will make you stay focused and motivated in your business while still on your day job.