Desk jockeys and cubicle dwellers yearning to go free, start your own companies now.
Yes. While you’re still employed.
In fact, ramping up while you’re still staff gives you the advantage of choosing a niche that has long-term potential, instead of just running from a tedious or odious job. Minda Zetlin outlined my Career Lattice strategy for managing this transition in her January post at Inc.com.
The strategy pivots on mining your remaining staff days to understand how you can leverage your industry knowledge and skills in a new direction that will be more apt to support some of your other priorities, such as flexibility or working remotely.
The key dynamic is one that you’ll keep using once you are on your own: tracking trends and interpreting them as market opportunities. If you aren’t sure how to do that, you’d best figure it out while you are still employed. And if you do know how to do that, now’s the time to start creating and connecting the dots that convert trends to clients.
And if you live within 150 miles of Chicago, consider signing up for the “Lattice from Staff to Entrepreneurship” workshop I’ll be leading later this year at Chicago’s Women’s Business Development Center.
