Katina and I are considered hybrid entrepreneurs. Basically, that means we are employees and earning a wage while also running our own business. Having this type of dual role can add a lot of stress to your day-to-day and actually makes it a bit more likely that you give up your entrepreneurship, since both roles can be hard to maintain. We’ve talked about how a side hustle can actually help your full-time job before. Today, we talk about how your full-time job can help your hybrid entrepreneurship!
Building Entrepreneurial Persistence
Entrepreneurial persistence is an important concept to understand when talking about entrepreneurs. It is basically the ‘don’t give up’ mentality. It’s the effort and work entrepreneurs put into their business despite failures or setbacks.
This type of persistence is particularly important for hybrid entrepreneurs. It can be easier for these types of entrepreneurs to give up when it gets tough since they have other work helping support their income. It’s much harder to stay motivated if the venture isn’t doing well. Luckily, there is something you can do! New research shows that entrepreneurial self-efficacy increases persistence. In other words, if you believe you have what it takes to make your new venture work, you are more likely to stick with it!
And, what makes you feel confident in your abilities? Being a good fit for the venture! Basically, hybrid entrepreneurs that choose their venture wisely are much more likely to fight through tough times. They choose ventures that are aligned to their values, needs, and skills. Look at Katina and I! We value employee wellness, we believe in the need for research to be more broadly accessible, and we have the skills to do the translating! We truly believe Workr Beeing is the perfect venture for us. Thus, we feel confident in our abilities to see this through and, therefore, should have high entrepreneurial persistence.
How Work Can Enrich Hybrid Entrepreneurs
While everything seems right with our fit and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, what about our other jobs? How does that play in? After all, the defining feature of a hybrid entrepreneur is the fact that they have another job. Like I mentioned earlier, we know that side hustles actually make people better employees but what does it do for you? Interestingly, research shows that if you are able to leverage skills and learnings from your job to your entrepreneurship, you will fare well.
Wage work-to-entrepreneurship enrichment is similar in concept to work-family enrichment. Basically, it means that knowledge, skills, and behaviors acquired during your full-time job can be transferred and applied to your entrepreneurial venture. When this happens, your confidence in your ability is much more strongly related to how much you persist. Having that enrichment helps you push through those failures and setbacks. However, if your work does not enrich your venture, you won’t see that same increase in your persistence. Thus, it matters what your job looks like outside of your entrepreneurial work. If your job is not supporting and enriching your ventures, it may be doing you a disservice.
In sum, in order for hybrid entrepreneurs to have the persistence to push through the difficult times, they need to have a venture that is a good fit for them, feel confident in their abilities, and have an external job that enriches their venture. Are you a hybrid entrepreneur like us? Are these things true for you? If not, we encourage you to think about the job you are in, how well your venture fits you and your skills, and how confident you feel in it all. If any of those are not where they should be, take some time to figure out how to improve that area. Do you need to find a more enriching job? Should you redefine your venture to fit you better? Whatever it is, there are ways to make your entrepreneurial life better and we wish you all the best!
