Job getting in the way...

Heathen

Hope this is the right forum for this.. sorry if its not..

I have been working for a pretty good successful company for the past 4 and a half years have been promoted 3 times in that time and the latest promotion was a very good one, im also on track to be bumped up higher again withing the next 12 months or so i have been told by management.. anyway my point is that i am very lucky right now to be one of the few people in fulltime employment.. however, im not entirely happy where i am...

This is not what i want to do with my life nor is it going to lead me to it.. I want to work for myself in a sector that has nothing to do with what i am currently doing.. right now i work in the financial industry albeit in the information security end of it.. but i want to follow a dream of mine that is running a Media company, covering a multitude of mediums (Web, Radio, Music, Production work, Promotion work.. etc..) in the past few years i have worked (doing my own sideline work from home) in a few of these area's and found that it came very naturaly to me, within weeks i was working on projects with some of the countrys biggest promotion companies and some of the worlds biggest record companies.. whats bugging me is that right now i feel like my fulltime job is holding me back or at least preventing me from putting more time and effort into running my Media business, i just feel that after a long day in work i am too tired to work but i do a small bit to keep me going.

whats really making me think is this.. if i can achive what i have already with my media work with a minimal effort, how much more could i achive if i put 40 hours a week into it and not just 4 hours... i would also be free to travel to meet clients instead of being forced to do all my contacting via email and phone. the problem of course is that i need to be earning a living, and with any venture you need startup capital and have to take a certain amount of risk into consideration so that makes the decision so much harder, cos it would mean giving up a great job to possibly fail and end up stuck in a callcenter at the age of 35.. no thanks!!

sometimes i wish they would make it easy for me and make me redundant, then i would have nothing left to loose and a few bob in my back pocket to keep me afloat for a few weeks while i got it off the ground.. or even a cool millon of a lotto win would be sweet haha.. i wish!!

anyway, anyone got any thoughts.. have any of you out there thrown away a perfectly good job to chase a dream and suceeded? or failed?

cheers
H

Dublin_Gunner

Well, I suppose you could cut your losses, to an extent...

If you earn decent money, why not try putting as much of it by as possible - and save EVERYTHING you earn from the sideline jobs.

See how much you have in 6 months time, and if its feasible, then consider leaving your current employer, and starting up the media company.

You'll still have a decent CV from your current employer, so you could go back into that field if things aren't working out.

Starting up your own business will always involve risk - if it was totally risk free to invest time and money into a new business that instantly became successful - sure we'd be all doing it!

IMO try to save what you can towards the media company (in the CU, then you can get a decent sized loan if needs be for the set-up), and then decide what you really want to do.

IMO if you're really stuck doing something that you don't want to do, and your talents lie elsewhere, go for it.

looksee

I agree with Dublin Gunner about saving for a few months then making a go of it.

A couple of things though, how much do you make from your 4 hours a week -if things were really clipping along you would not be doing 4 hours a week you would be spending all day at the weekends and bits every evening no matter how tired you were. You would not be thinking that your job is holding you back, you would be thinking that you could not possibly continue working because every spare hour was full. How have you managed to keep the hours down? How many jobs have you turned down? If things are really flying how do you manage to have meetings with people, how do you travel to the venues.

Why not take two weeks holiday and throw yourself into the media business. If nothing much has happened - bearing in mind that you already have the basis of a business - after two weeks, ask yourself how you would live if you had given up your job, rather than taken a holiday.

The other thing is going to cause waves, but if you are going into the media business you have to be sharp, confident, and give off an aura of competence. To be honest, you need to tidy up your spelling and grammar before you sell yourself to the media moguls. Sorry, I know that is not a fashionable thing to say, but to me it seems fairly basic.

I'm not entirely sure this is the right forum for your questions, Heathen. You might get some interesting answers here, so I'll leave it, but if you'd like me to move it (or put a copy of it) to Personal Issues or Work Problems, just let me know.

thebaldsoprano

Heathen wrote: »

if i can achive what i have already with my media work with a minimal effort, how much more could i achive if i put 40 hours a week into it and not just 4 hours...

What's stopping you putting in 40 hours?

I'm in a similarish situation in that I'm studying for a second degree that has little to do with my current line of work and I usually put in about 40 - 50 hours a week on top of the 40 - 50 hours a week that I work. Social life, sleep and the like can take a bit of a hit but it's well worth it. Plenty of people put in this kind of effort with studies/side businesses and the like when they're interested.

Heathen wrote: »

i just feel that after a long day in work i am too tired to work but i do a small bit to keep me going.

Or maybe it's lack of enthusiasm. 'Media' is a very broad area, how about narrowing it down a bit to something you're really interested in? Or looking at something else entirely. You may well have a knack for it but just because you're good at something doesn't mean you should do it.