This is part one of a five part series on how an IT professional can become an entrepreneur, based on my experience of doing just that. The second post will appear tomorrow.
I've written a bit recently on why you should quit your job and do something remarkable with your life (especially if you're a young adult in IT), but how exactly do you go about doing that?
Rather than be unhelpful and give you a pithy statement like "it's different for everyone, find your own way", what will follow over the next week is a bunch of practical advice, based on my own experience of quitting my job to found a startup. I hope it proves useful as you begin your own journey to becoming remarkable.
The Ingredients
You need three things before you can quit your job. Courage, resources, and a plan. A healthy dissatisfaction for your current state of life is helpful too (and some say it's almost necessary).
There's nothing stopping you trying to obtain all three simultaneously, and indeed you'll probably end up doing just that. But if you need one place to start, begin with courage. All else follows from that.
Courage
Courage can come from many sources. Mostly, I got mine by talking to other people, and by reading blogs and essays from certain amazing people.
You should start with Seth Godin and Paul Graham's essays. I'd never heard of Seth or Paul until I started looking for people who wrote about startups, but I devoured their content over the weeks after finding them.
But the most confidence I gained was by talking to friends and co-workers about my ideas and dreams. The wistful comments of "good for you!" and "I wish I was doing something like that" will inspire you.
The Education Motivator
One thing I got from my discussions was that a great way of looking at the upcoming change was that it was like going back to school. For me, founding a startup is like getting an education, except this time it's based in the real world instead of the classroom.
Your tuition fees are the capital you put into your business [1], the cirruculum covers a broad range of topics from software development, business management and entrepreneurship to networking, sales and living with an uncertain future.
The best part? This allows you to feel free to spend $20K and two years working on your business. There's something else that takes $20K and at least two years - a university education. And all you get at the end of that is a stinkin' piece of paper. If my venture goes belly up after two years and costs me $20K, it'll be the best education I ever hard, and I'll be eminently more employable afterwards.
If I was an employer, I'd rate someone who tried and failed to start a business higher than someone with a degree. At least the former person hows how business actually works. Even better, their mind probably isn't polluted with Java and ideological design pattern bollocks. At the least, when you tell them to hack it together because the business needs the money, the former person will feel your pain and ship it, rather than arguing about it.
So I find the education motive to be a great confidence builder for me. It also gets you thinking about how much money you'll need, which is where resources come in. More on that tomorrow.
The Ego Motivator
Who wants to be Dilbert?
Do you work for a boss who isn't remarkable? Who doesn't understand your job, and doesn't value it as much as you do?
If so, why? He's getting paid more than you. You might think you're smarter than him, but he's the one earning all the money. You're getting played, and you don't even know it.
You're smart and good at your job. That makes you more than capable of being an entrepreneur. You have the advantages of passion and intelligence. So use them!
It's all about learning
While prodding your ego might help, I think you'll need to feel comfortable about changing to be an entrepreneur on a deeper level than blind anger about your current job. For me, I found a great way was to learn about the path I was sending myself down, so I had an idea of what to expect.
Crank out your browser and start searching. Look for entrepreneurs, motivationalists, successful people, the people that everyone else are talking about. Start absorbing the entrepreneur culture, subscribe to blogs, follow people on twitter. Read, read and read some more. Spend an hour a day just absorbing all the positive energy, feeling the opportunities, reading the excellent advice. There is a massive community of people out there who have walked the entrepreneurial walk before, and are now sharing what they've learned with others.
During the series, I'll highlight a couple of sites per day that I found to be extraordinarily helpful while converting to be an entrepreneur. But I won't list everything I have found - it's up to you to search for yourself. Pretend you're Neo, searching for the Matrix, if that makes it any easier :)
| [1] | And you could also claim the opportunity cost of not earning a decent salary, but then you're earning that salary by working at a job you don't like anyway. |
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on twitter to hear about new posts early.
Want to share this post? Tweet
Hi and welcome! In 2009 I quit my job to become an entrepreneur, founding 
