So you want to start a business on the side

A piece of advice an old boss once gave me, and that I've come across many times since: never start a business without your first customer. This has served me well. When I decided to quit my full time job and officially launch my consulting business, I had my first client lined up and ready to go. However, making this leap was not an easy decision, as my income was set to drop significantly the moment I left my full time gig. Once I was able to talk myself onto the ledge, I walked in to speak with my boss at the time. To my surprise, after telling him my rationale and what I planned on doing, he said, "we'd love to be one of your first clients." And just like that, my income went from a significant deficit to nearly double what it had been prior.

I tell this story to highlight 2 things: if you have an interest in starting a business, having a job shouldn't hold you back, and sometimes you have to take risks that look like major steps backwards in order to actually move forward.

The easiest way to start a "business" is to develop an expertise that others will value. With this, you could launch a consulting practice, as I did, lending your knowledge and advice that would take others much longer to acquire. You could package your expertise up as a "product," such as an ebook or webinar, and sell it in a more scalable fashion. You could use your expertise to identify a need in your market and develop a product that doesn't exist or improve on something that does.

There are other ways to get started, of course, but generally as we progress through our careers we don't stop to think about the niches that the river of life naturally carves out for us. If you are young, let yourself drift deeper into those niches. Embrace them. If you are already deep into your career arc, think about how you might combine areas of focus to create something more unique.

In the evolution of our economy, we are moving away from full-time, 9-to-5, benefits included scenarios toward one in which the individual's opportunity is more directly correlated to the value they bring to others. There are now second and third tier Instagram and YouTube "influencers" bringing in 5 figures per month, bloggers and storytellers making real businesses out of their experiences and young would-be entrepreneurs launching Kickstarter projects every day.

In The Millionaire Fastlane by M J DeMarco, which is worth reading, the premise can be summed up in 5 words quoted from the book: "to make millions, impact millions." Of course there is a sliding scale, in which you could have a more expensive product purchased by a fewer number of people rather than a low-cost offering purchased by millions, but the concept holds. If you want to be truly wealthy, you must figure out how to positively impact a large number of people or businesses.

You don't need your first customer to pay you a million dollars, a hundred thousand or even ten thousand. You just need them to get you started and validate that you have something of value to offer. Once you are up and running, hard work, persistence and vision will lead to greater things over time. Don't worry about things like your logo, business cards or someone to answer your phones. Get out there, create value and over-deliver and you'll receive a lifetime of compound interest on what you've created.