MBA2427 How to Use Your Job To Start Your Business

0:09Heyo, welcome to the$100 MBA show, no fluff, just the good stuff with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. And in today's lesson, you'll learn how to use your job to start your business. A lot of people approach me and say, I want to start a business, but I'm in a job right now. I can't quit my job. What do I do in the meantime? Maybe we'll just put off their entrepreneurial dreams and say, not right now, maybe a few years down the line. And they just completely forget about it. And I just want to shake them and say, there's a ton you can learn from your own job right now to start your own business.

0:47Newsflash, your job is in a business, right? You work for a business. You're a part of a business. Even if you work for government, you're part of an organization that has systems that runs like a business. So in today's lesson, I'm going to tell you how to use your time wisely while you're in a job right now. so you can learn important skills, important practices, important procedures that you're going to need to do in your own business. I'm going to give you real life examples from my own history. When I was a teacher, I was working for a school. I learned a ton about running a business through that experience.

1:22And it gave me this launch pad to launch my business with a leg up, with a head start. And I'll explain in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want to start today's lesson with a huge disclaimer. You should never, never, never, never work on your side hustle, work on your business, even the planning of your business while at work or while using company property. The experience and the things you learn is something that's inside you. How you document that, how you work on that needs to be done outside of work. Why? Because technically, anything you do at work or with company property is the property of the company that you work for.

2:06This is why when I side hustled for over 12 years when I was in teaching, I made sure that I did everything outside of work on my own laptop, never, never, never with the company's property, either physically at the actual location or during my work hours or with any of their materials. Don't even share ideas that you come up with for your business with people at work while at work. Don't do it. Because again, anything that you come up while you're at work or with work property is their property. I know that sounds strange or maybe unfair, but it's the truth. And it is to your advantage when you run your own business.

2:49So let's get into what does this all mean? How do I actually benefit and know how to start my business and learn the things I need from my job to give me a leg up when I start my business? Well, let me give you an example. I was a high school and university teacher and middle manager for over 13 years. I was the head of department at my school and I learned a ton about what it takes to run an efficient team, how to have a budget, how to make sure that I have successful projects, all kinds of stuff that can help me run a great business. So when I was building my businesses on my own time at home, I applied a lot of what I learned and it helped me tremendously.

3:31Here are some examples. You need to stop looking at your job as just a job, but look at the fact that you are walking into a business, an organization that has different departments that have different functions, functions that you're going to need to create and build from scratch when you start your own business and start to scale. A very simple example is recruitment. One of my jobs as the head of department was screening CVs for new teachers that wanted to work for the school, then conduct interviews with a panel of interviewees, and then make a decision on a hire. This was my slice of the pie of recruitment.

4:09This is the things I had to do. But obviously, there's a lot more to it, meaning there's a job post that needs to be posted, Somebody's got to create that job post and has to advertise it and needs to schedule appointments for this candidate to show up for the interview. If they get hired, they need to be sent an offer. And then when they get sent an offer, they need to make sure they accept it. And then they need a start date. And then when they start, they need to fill out contracts. They need orientation, all kinds of stuff, right? As you can see, there's a lot of things that go on. Guess what?

4:41Somebody in your company right now does that. You have access to them. Go have lunch with them and ask them what they do. What's their job? How do they do it? What's the procedure? I did this and learned a ton about what it takes to actually make a hire in an organization. Later that day, when I got home, I journaled about it, wrote down all the things I learned, all the things I heard, all the hiccups, all the hardships, all the things they hated about the procedures and the jobs. But I also learned, hey, how do they actually decide on a salary scale? How do they make these offers? What do these contracts have?

5:14what's involved in the orientation when they get hired what are the things they cover or company policy and i would just journal my notes down it took me five to ten minutes i would do this every day and guess what this is just one department hr right recruitment there's a bunch of people you can have lunch with in your business right now to learn about their function and their role and what they do to keep the business going this could be sales this could be payroll accounting marketing management, you name it. You can basically spend the next five to seven weeks exploring a new department every week, learning about it, basically becoming like a mini internship, obviously outside your work duties.

5:55That's why I mentioned lunch. Go back home, jot some notes, and now you know how each department in an organization functions so that when you start your business, you can start thinking, what's the minimal viable version of each of these departments? Which is the first hire I need to make? Maybe my first hire is a salesperson who then later can become the sales manager that can recruit other salespeople. Now you're talking. Now you're understanding that you have a goal mind you're going to every day for work. There's so many people I know that they go to their job and they just put their head down, they do their work, and they have no idea what anybody else does in the company.

6:32They have no idea what the marketing department does, how they advertise, what's their ad spend? Are they using Facebook ads? Or is that old news and they're starting to use TikTok? Or maybe they're doing billboards. Get out of your bubble and learn because this is amazing information that you can learn from somebody that does it day in and day out that can share with you. They know you already. You have an in. When I was 25 years old, I was the head of the department of grade 10 of the high school I was working at. I was also building some small businesses on the side. I knew that one day I would have a team and I would want to learn how to train my team so they can get better and get me better results.

7:12But I had no idea what it takes to train people or what it costs or what's involved. So in my day job, I went to my boss, the principal of the school, and I said, hey, I'd love to throw a professional development day for my team. In fact, I want to do it for the whole school, all the teachers. I want to run a full day where they can get better at different skills at their job. My principal was like, awesome, that sounds great. Of course we want our teachers to get better. Let's put in the calendar. Let's make it a day. Let's tell the students to stay home that day, actually. You don't understand in an organization, when you go to your boss and you say something like this, this is amazing for them.

7:51They're like, wow, somebody's going to do work for me and take care of the whole thing and take responsibility and take initiative. I'm going to look good. The principal is going to look good to the board of education because they are taking initiative and improving their staff. And when I approached him, he was like, great, awesome. What kind of budget do you need? I'm like, I have no idea. I've never done this before. So he suggested a budget, gave it to me. In the next few weeks, I planned out an incredible professional development day for all the teachers in my school. In that process, I learned how to survey my team to learn what they are craving to learn and what are some areas they're struggling with.

8:29I learned how to put together an itinerary and a fun schedule filled with activities and a bit of entertainment. I learned how to cater a lunch, right? how to find a caterer and feed these people while they're on their PD day. I'll learn how to communicate this to everybody so that they're not confused about when this is and where it's going to be and which auditorium it's going to be in. I'll learn how to get feedback from the teachers by creating a feedback survey so that I can know how to do better the next professional development day. I learned a ton and everybody wins. The teachers won, I won, the school won, the principal one and my business in the future one.

9:08There are incredible opportunities at the job you're at right now so that you can get the skills you need and get the experience you need to build an incredible business. So let's get practical. I want you to sit down right now and write down the top 10 things, the first 10 things you're going to need to do when you start your business, whatever your business is. This might be creating a loco, getting a website together, having a marketing strategy, making your first hire, whatever it is. Make a list, 10 things. Then ask yourself, who at my job right now is doing this? Can help me with this? Every business has a website.

9:47How do they get their website done? Who got the website done? Oh, we outsourced for it. There's a company called XYZ. They're the people that did it. Or no, Johnny on the second floor. He's our web developer. He does everything that deals with the web. He's the tech guy. Go and have a coffee break with Johnny and learn about web development. Learn what are the options. Is there a cheap option if I want to start my own personal website or my own business website? Don't do any of the work there. Do it outside. But you can learn. Get through that to-do list and figure out where you can learn how to get all these things done.

10:21So go through your list. There's going to be somebody in your job that has gotten one of those things done. learn from them so that you can get it done for your business. This will keep the fire of your entrepreneurial dreams going. It's going to keep it hot. It's going to keep you motivated to work on your business on the weekends and the evenings at home. It's going to make it easy for you to realize this is not far-fetched. You can actually do this. People that you know, people that are not much smarter than you are doing the things that you need to do to build the business. In my years of teaching, I worked at several different institutions.

10:55I learned a ton about management, about team, about growth, about budgeting, about recruitment, about so much over the years that I was able to then utilize and implement in my own businesses. Don't take this for granted. Take advantage. Thanks so much for listening to The$100 RBA Show. Make sure you hit follow on your favorite podcast app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever app you're using right now to listen to this podcast, hit follow. By doing so, the show grows. When the show grows, the show gets better. We'll keep putting out incredible lessons, invest more into the podcast so that you can grow the business of your dreams.

11:34Thanks so much again for listening. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I meet a lot of entrepreneurs and people that were hardworking, that were ambitious, that went after it in their jobs. They usually make incredible entrepreneurs, people that want to learn, the people that want to put their hand up and say, I'll do that. I'll problem solvers and are going to fly in their business. So start solving problems in your own job. Start putting your hand up. Start learning. Start growing. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

12:21Thank you.