How to start a small business while working full time

Posted by Damian Roberti on May 19, 2022

How to start a small business while working full time

How to start a small business while working full time. So in this video, I'm going to break down the steps to get you started with your small business. even if you're working full time. From my own experience, I started 12 years ago, and I'm going to share some tips and pointers that helped me launch my multiple businesses. We're going to get to that right now.

All right. So, welcome back to marketing food online. It's Dan Roberti, founder and CEO of marketing food online. We are going to dive into the steps to get your small business started. even if you're working full time. I know there are a lot of you out there who have actually emailed and asked questions on our marketing food online YouTube channel about how to do this, because it seems sometimes quite overwhelming. I'm going to break it down step by step and make it simple. To understand the steps that you need to take, Not everything has to be done in a week or even in a day, or even in a month building a business, whether you're working full time or even if you don't take some time to do it, but you don't have to feel overwhelmed to get started. So, as I mentioned before, this is inaudible> online. If you have your first video here on our channel, definitely hit the subscribe button and the bell notification. We have a ton of videos, over a thousand videos, to help you hit the ground running with your food business. This video can actually be for any business. It's not necessarily for food businesses as well, but it will definitely help you get an understanding of how to get started. So here is your goal. Your goal is to own your own business.

How to start a small business while working full time

You're down here on the bottom, working 30 to 40 hours a week, and I'm going to show you how to get all the way up to this point in 10 steps. Now don't get me wrong. Do not think that it is easy to start a business from scratch. It is easier to understand when you break it down into steps, but it does take work. It takes time, persistence, patience, diligence, and all of that good stuff. So don't underestimate what I'm trying to say, or think that it's easy to just jump into a business, but I'm going to give you the steps, and that way you'll understand it much better. One thing at a time is the best way to go about approaching a small business. So, number one, what business do you want to start? So you are down here and you're trying to figure out what business you want to start.

Okay, So this is where we're at. Now, The reason why I say this, of course, is that are you going to start a food business? Are you going to start a food truck? Are you going to start an online e-commerce business? Do you want to create products and sell them to retailers? Whatever it may be that you're looking to create, That is something you need to sit down and brainstorm and truly think of what kind of business you want to start. Now, a couple of tips about that. When you start a business, it's always best to go and pursue something that you enjoy. Maybe it's something that you're very good at, but you haven't pursued it as a business just yet, because you have to understand something. When you launch a small business from scratch, you will be investing the vast majority of your extra time. And we're going to talk about how to create extra time, extra time into how to build and grow that business.

It's got to be something you are passionate about, something you're excited about. Now, Damien, a lot of people tell me, well, businesses where people are passionate about can't make money. That is nonsense. Anybody that tells you the thing that you're doing that you're excited about and passionate about can't become a full-time business has never started a business from scratch. You need to find something that gets you up early and keeps you up late at night. That, that thing that drives you, for me, it happened to be just the food industry and the food business, because that's what I was around most of my life. And I actually enjoy doing what I do. Now, I transitioned that into my YouTube channel and have made hundreds of videos explaining how to start food businesses. That is my passion. And that is something that has made me some money.

How to start a small business while working full time

Of course, in the past few years, I've been doing this for 12 years, and I'm not bored doing it. 12 years later, I'm still excited about it. So if you want to create a business, find the thing that you are passionate about and don't listen to what people tell you about the nonsense that you cannot create a profitable business from a passion that you have for a certain type of interest. Okay? So what kind of business do you want to start? Is that the first thing now? How do I incorporate that Damian into my 30 to 40-hour work week? I don't have a lot of extra time. I need to find out where I can find the time to stop telling yourself to find time. There's no such thing as finding more time. We all have 24 hours in a day. If you have to work and you've obviously got responsibilities, we do the same thing.

I've got my second child. We just found out that we're having a second child. We have our second child on the way. And I know that that's going to take more time out of my day, but I'm not going to find more time. I'm simply going to arrange my time so I can use it efficiently and effectively. Okay? A lot of that spare time that you might be watching TV may have to go away. If you're looking to create a business, you will have to take your lifestyle up a notch a little bit and reduce some of the leisure activities that you're doing right now. That is a part of development. A small business is giving up one thing in order to have another, but that other, as it begins to grow and build, will free up even more time because you'll be making more money and that money will allow you the opportunity to do more things that you want to do when you want to do them.

How to start a small business while working full time

Okay? So stop telling yourself to find more time. There are no more hours in a 24 hour day.You need to figure out how to use it more effectively and efficiently. So what kind of a business can you have once you've determined step two? Where can I start the business from now? There are multitudes of businesses that you can start online from a home office or upstairs. If you've got an extra spare room or something, you could create a business online. If you're looking to create a packaged food product, if you're looking to create a product in general, if you want to invent something, it's going to be dependent upon where you can start this. Now, if you're looking to create a food business, like most of the videos here on our channel, yes, you can actually start a food business from home. It's limited to the types of food you can make, the types of products you can make, and where you're going to sell it. But you can definitely start one from home. It's a lot more inexpensive than starting a commercial kitchen, developing some new recipe that you've got to have it ProAct or produced by somebody else. You can start a lot of businesses from home. Now, with that being said, where in your home do you make a decision as to what will be your home office? Dedicate a space to where you could start this from. So you've already determined what the business is. Next up is where

Are you going to do it yourself?

So once you decide where to start, that's going to take you up to the next point. Now this is really critical to the next step, okay? Because some of the next steps that come to mind are in regards to permits, licenses, insurance, and things of that sort, because pretty much every type of business that you're going to have needs to have some form of license, permit, or even another insurance policy for you to run it legally and protect yourself from any potential litigation. But number two was, where can you start? Number three, how will this affect your lifestyle? Think about how you are living your life now, because when you start a business, as you transition to working, maybe even fewer hours or minimal hours, and then quitting, once the bar begins to take off and you run your own business, it's going to have a dramatic effect on how you live your life. A lot of people don't think about this because they think, "Well, it's just gon na replace my job and I can work nine to five and just put a few hours in and it's gon na make my life better, and that's not realistic." So how will this affect your lifestyle? That's number three, number two, and number one. So number three is, how will this affect how you live?

How to start a small business while working full time

All right, so now you're headed up the rung going towards your goal. Now keep in mind, you don't have to dedicate 3, 4, 5, or 6 hours a day to starting your business. This is the momentum. Getting these steps by steps, understanding the steps it takes to get to the next level. As you invest even 30 minutes or 20 minutes into your new business venture every single day, Keep in mind that that's progress. Don't try to work against yourself by thinking that, "Oh, well, I'm not making any progress." I'm only doing 30 minutes. It doesn't matter. You could put in 30 minutes or even an hour a day, two or three hours a week, but you have already started. Your mindset is made up. Excuse me. You figured out what business to start, where you're going to start it, and how that's going to affect your lifestyle and how it's going to change things.

These are things that are going to get the wheels moving. That's all part of getting it started. So make sure that you work with yourself and not against yourself. Every single step that you take is a progression towards your business. Number four, now that you've determined these three, you find out specifically what permits, licenses, insurance, or any certifications that you may need based upon the type of business you have. Now, if you're going to be selling digital downloads and you're going to be an affiliate marketer, that's what you want to do. great. You're going to have a different set of permits and licenses compared to someone who's starting a food business from home, where you may have to have a kitchen inspection. You have a certain type of insurance. Find out what your type of industry requires for permits, licenses, insurance, and such. Okay? So if that's going to take you up to the next step, number four, understanding your permits and licenses based upon the type of business and insurance,

How to start a small business while working full time

Now you're probably thinking, well, Damien, if I start an affiliate marketing campaign, we can sell products on Amazon. I'm not making 'em, I'm just flipping 'em. I'm just buying products and I'm going to build a store on eBay, maybe Etsy, doesn't matter. You need to have insurance to cover your business. Make sure that you create your LLC. Make sure that you're incorporated no matter what type of business you're doing or even where it might be. Because if you're not legitimate and legal, and there are some ramifications for selling something that injures someone or if someone gets into a problem eating one of your products and they get sick, whatever it might be, there's a potential for a lawsuit or potential litigation against you. You don't want to go about this as a sole proprietor. I personally don't recommend sole proprietorships or any business in general. Yes, you can do it, but the legalities of it and the responsibilities fall upon you, not your business entity. You are okay.

So, permits, licenses, and insurance number five. So what materials, equipment, or ingredients, if you happen to be making a food product, any equipment and INTA materials that you'll need to create this product? Now, if you're going a different route where it's maybe software or if it's digital downloads, obviously you don't have a physical, tangible product, but you're still going to develop it. So you'll need to figure out what kind of software or other digital products you'll need to succeed in this business.So, number five, what materials or equipment will I require specifically for this business?Okay, There are only two types of businesses in the world: They are physical sales. You either sell a product or you sell a service. Even if it's consulting, figure out what kind of software you might need to operate your business in your office, handle invoices from clients, or if you're doing consulting, if you may need some certifications or maybe other qualifications, find out what that may be.

And that would be along the lines of what materials, equipment, or other things that you would need to get you to the next level. Okay, Sixth, how will you sell this product or service? There is a multitude of ways in 2022, 2023, 2022. There are a million different ways to sell everything. Believe it or not, Are you going to sell it yourself on Amazon? Are you going to create a, you know, Shopify website? Are you just going to sell it on Facebook or another social media platform?You can actually operate businesses now, selling products or services, just on social media. You don't even need it. Are you going to create a blog? Are you going to create a physical product that you're going to make and have shipped to a retail store for you? If you're a consultant, how are you going to reach people? Okay, So the idea is, how are you going to sell it?

How to start a small business while working full time

If you're consulting and you want to get connections on LinkedIn, for instance, or have your own website, tie that into social media. That's what you need to figure out. So six. How are you going to sell it? Okay, A lot of times, if you're selling physical products, I would highly recommend you tap into existing websites and platforms that exist. Well, that means not Shopify, but Amazon. Evey, Etsy, Bonanza, Waller.com. If you're selling anything physical related, those platforms already have customers built in. As I mentioned in a lot of my videos here, on the market for the line, you can actually tap into an existing customer base. This is great because if you build out a website, that sounds great and exciting, but getting traffic to it is another thing. Getting traffic to convert is another way of getting a customer to buy something you don't want to go about. Starting a business and getting a lot of thumbs up on Facebook means getting likes, hearts, and things.

That's all nonsense. That's not turning into money. That's a waste of time. And if you get excited about just that instead of making money, well, then you shouldn't start a business. So sell on these existing platforms, even your digital downloads. Etsy is a huge marketplace for digital downloads. Ebay. You can even sell digital downloads on it. It doesn't matter what the product or service might be. There's always a platform with existing customers and existing traffic. Tap into that first number seven, make connections online. So one of the fastest ways to launch a physical product or even a service is to make connections either prior to launching or after you launch. You need to create those connections as you go along. One of the best places to do that is through LinkedIn. Yes, LinkedIn is a mind-blowing machine. It is amazing.

LinkedIn, if you are a consultant, it's great. You have over 700 million active users on LinkedIn globally. I'm pretty sure that you can find a few hundred thousand or even a million customers for your specific niche of product or service. With a fantastic page dedicated to your business, fill out all of the information. Let people know who you are, what you offer, your experience, your background, some images, some content we have already created. Now it's nearly 10,000 food industry connections in a matter of two years on LinkedIn for marketing food online for our YouTube channel here. This is one way that we grew our channel is through LinkedIn. We create posts and content every single day. Yes, every single day. So LinkedIn and other social media-related sites are excellent places to make connections.When you're starting your small business, it can accelerate the exposure of your product or service rapidly.

How to start a small business while working full time

So keep this in mind. This connection is a gold mine, and it's free. By the way, it just takes a little bit of time. As I mentioned, you know your schedule, you know your timeframe of how many hours you work every week. If you can allot 30 minutes a day, fantastic. If you can only do 15, take it, use the 15 minutes and do it every single day. As time goes on, your business grows, and revenue comes in. That's going to save you even more time, because then you could start cutting back on your hours at your job. Okay? So if you're working 30 to 40 hours a week, I know how that is. I worked in retail for 25 plus years, and we needed a minimum of 40 plus hours a week. So I know what the challenges are when it comes to working full-time and trying to create a business.

But if you want it bad enough, if you are passionate enough about it, follow these steps, take a few of them a little bit at a time, and you're going to get up to this point of having your own business. Next up, number eight, outsource tasks that you're not good at. One of the most amazing things about living in 2022 is the fact that you have so many platforms like fiber upward. All of these platforms can minimize the number of things you need to do. So if you can outsource for 20 or 30, or 40, or $50 here and there, and you have different people doing things for you to help expand this business, it is so much faster to get into the marketplace. Plus, a lot of them know what they're doing. You don't need to think that you're a graphic designer to think that you're a product developer, to think that you're a label designer or a logo designer, and know how to run your business and all of the accounting.

How to start a small business while working full time

There are people who do that. The more people you can get into your kind of web, if you will, of your mastermind group, if you want to call it that too, the better for you in the long run, in helping you launch much faster, helping you get to this point and get out of this point. Okay? So outsource tasks that you're not good at. Hey, if you need a logo for your product, if you need a logo for your consulting business, don't think that you're a great logo. For a graphic designer, have someone do it on fiber for 30 bucks. If you need some more work from Upwork, you need a virtual assistant. You need to have someone answer your calls, customer service, and emails. You can't do all of that. While you're trying to build another brand or build a business, outsource it to someone on Upwork to take that off your hands. Outsourcing responsibilities for your small business launch is going to help you get there faster.

Create is number nine.And, you have to create a page on social media on every single platform. It's not necessarily pursuing every single platform on social media as something you want to do. And what I mean by that, I'll explain in a second. You want to have a presence on social media, everywhere from Facebook, to Twitter, and everyone in between. Sorry about my scribble. There, there we go. And even though, like I said, LinkedIn, now this would mean one thing. The more places you are online, the better off your company and brand will be.And the more benefits it will have, the more you can reach hundreds of millions of people on all these social media platforms. However, I would advise you to concentrate your efforts on two.I always say this because two things: for us, even 12 years into it, two platforms, Facebook and Twitter, actually have been benefits for us, the best places for our particular products, through our canyon stack business and also our YouTube channel.

How to start a small business while working full time

We also have over 400,000 people a month on our Pinterest page, who see our pages and our pins. That's another great way to promote your product as well. So, have a presence on social media. Once you do focus your efforts and energy, it could be 10, 15 minutes every other day, maybe 30 minutes a week, just 30 minutes a week. Start building content around your product or service, whatever that small business is that you have. I don't care if you're selling digital downloads on Etsy, you need to be posting that on Twitter, posting that on Facebook, and keeping it consistent. You don't have to be on there every single day for an hour. No, that's not what I'm saying. A few minutes here and a few minutes there, but being consistent will bring results. So be on Facebook, be on Twitter, be on all these social platforms on a consistent basis.

You don't have to create a mastermind of content all the time or some amazing YouTube videos. You just have to put up some content, whatever your product or service is for your small business, figure out and test what kind of content works well. We actually use a lot of video content, video shorts. Video content is easy for your consumer, your customer to digest. They can visually see it. You don't have to read it. You don't have to think about it. You can give them visuals. You can give them text. You can give them information. They hear it, they see it, and they can move on. That's a huge plus. And that's something that's rapidly growing over the past few years; content that's in video format is much better. So if you're selling even consulting services, you can create short videos and explain your services.

Some of the clients that have you worked with if you're creating a product for Amazon, you have a short two or three minute video on YouTube. You can link that up to your social media pages, have a presence on social media. Finally, now that you've got a lot of this understood and ready to go, number 10 is launch. Just start launch your product or service. Stop thinking so much about it. Don't just think about these things. Take actions upon these things and launch it. And then over a few months, or even less, you will be running your own business. And then you can tell the guy who you work for to take a hike. I'm done working 40 hours a week for you. I'm gonna work 40 to 50 or even 60 hours a week for me because I love what I do and I make money doing it.

How to start a small business while working full time

And that way you will start your business if you are working full time. So can you start a small business working full time? You most certainly can. You need to dedicate time to it and understand that you can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. You need to be patient with yourself. Take these steps one at a time, climb that ladder over to this section, because I can tell you over the past 12 years, I have had much more excitement, much more ups and downs. I'm not gonna tell you. It's always gonna be up up, up, but there's a lot of ups and downs with having a business. But you know what? It's mine. It's an experience that I've made me and my wife have created what we do. Nobody does that, but me. So it gives me the ability to think for myself, do for myself and grow a business for myself.

The sky is the limit. There is no limit as to what you can do. Even in 2022, stop hearing all the negative nonsense from your friends or family telling you that you're crazy. All the economy, this, all of that has nothing to do with what you have the potential to do. So if you wanna constantly think to yourself, all those negative things, you will never get over to there. You need to think outside the box. Think for yourself, push all of that nonsense to the side, take the small steps. I'm not telling you cash in your 401k and max out your credit cards tomorrow. Use your brain. Think one thing at a time. And every single time you do one of these things you're going to get there. There's no question. So that is how you start a small business. We've been working full time. If you have any questions or comments about these steps, please let me know down below. And as always check out in the description section, we have a ton of other resources and you can check our other YouTube channels. We have six or seven. I, I forgot how many we have a bunch of YouTube channels. Check out those other channels and I'll see you guys on the next one.

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