Being Realistic About the Present

I'm reading Start by Jon Acuff as of last night. I think I have the momentum and enthusiasm it takes to make a career move or as I'd like to put it, a career addition but I don't think I have enough knowledge at this point to make it successful.

Over a year ago I started reading Entreleadership by Dave Ramsey who referred me to Jon Acuffs previously published book Quitter. LOL. Don't do that in the middle of your book. That's when I jumped into Quitter but didn't quite get all the way through it so that's 2 unfinished books. Hear me out, I don't want to quit my day job. 1) I need it. Which Jon suggests in his book and 2) I love it. Dave's book Entreleadership does not apply to only entrepreneurs. Anyone can benefit from his leadership teachings if they are a volunteer, a boss, a parent. These are all leaders where others benefit from your success. So  now that I'm sure that I don't want to quit my day job I think it would be wise to hold off on reading how to run a business until I read how to "start" a business. 

Enough of this "starting" business (pun intended), let's finish something, want-to? So Jon Acuff says in the first 50 something pages about being realistic about the present and be wildly unrealistic about the future. There is a balance that should happen when starting a business or in my case, a craft studio. I must evaluate the risks involved to gauge how successful or damaging the venture will be. 

Money. This is a HUGE risk for me. I have a ton of things I could more appropriately spend money on. I won't go into detail but lets be realistic. Putting "pause" on other things that deserve funding so I can have a second career/glorified hobby is selfish and irresponsible.

Time. This is not free. This comes at a higher price than $ itself. I spend 50+ hours a week in an office 50 hours give or take for sleep which leaves 68 hours left. Minus an hour and a half a day for getting ready for work and driving and another hour for blogging and reading the news paper and or budgeting. Minus cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping etc. This calculation proves that dedicating time to my family is limited. Dipping into that wouldn't be fair to them or me. Cutting back somewhere else though...now that would be ideal but not realistic.

As awesome as the whole thing sounds, lets face it, I don't know how to start a business and it is not a good idea to rush into it. Jon points this idea out when he suggests that there are two ways to fail at a business 1) is to never start and 2) is to jump in all the way immediately. The now-or-never idea will sink the ship. The boat can take on water and sustain for a while or even forever but too much too fast will not end well. So to counter this effect I'm signed up for a workshop to cover the basics of getting started though Seminole State College. I hope to get a few of my questions answered there and then figure out what I don't know so that I can either research those aspects or work with SSC's business consulting program to fill in the gaps. 

I'm still going to take a look at the store today with W but my new thoughts of being realist about my present are weighing heavy. On the flip side of that coin, if I am overly realistic then I cannot be wildly unrealistic about my future. I will be too afraid to dream so I'm not giving up yet. I'm just saying I'm going into this with a little more careful footing than yesterday.