Many professionals in their 20s & 30s seek me out for coaching because they want to run their own businesses.
This is usually a long-held ambition, though they don’t have the clarity to take meaningful action.
One of the first exercises I run them through is to understand their opportunity set as a career professional.
This is because a lot of what they want to achieve with their own business can be achieved within someone else’s.
When you run your own business, you are 100% accountable to win clients, engage stakeholders, put out fires, manage finances and ultimately deliver on a product or service that will make all this effort worthwhile.
But these are the same components that you can simulate within a company.
You can do this by yourself, or leading a team, or leading a division.
What’s usually missing is an attractive incentive structure, and negotiating this with management could be far easier than starting a whole new business from scratch.
So if you want to run your own business but don’t know how to realise this dream, first consider these two questions:
- What are positions you can explore within a company that would be the equivalent of going out on your own?
- What is the incentive structure you would need within a company to discourage you from going out on your own?
Your answers will provide a much better appreciation of the long game you can play.
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