Kennedy Libingi

THE BEST TIME TO START A BUSINESS IS WHEN YOU STILL HAVE A JOB.

I once heard a motivational speaker say that if you have a job and want to start a business, you should quit your job and go all in. But I found that advice incomplete, and to some extent, irresponsible. It leaves out the most important part: what should you do before you quit?

Many people hear this kind of advice, even when they have stable careers or good-paying jobs, and they resign believing that passion alone will carry them through. Then reality sets in.

What actually happens when someone quits their job without savings, a financial plan, or a business strategy is that they become desperate from day one. And desperate people rarely make good business decisions.

They underprice their products or services because they need money today, not next month. They accept every client that comes along, even when those clients are a poor fit, because saying no doesn’t feel like an option when rent is due. They struggle to reinvest in the business because every kwacha they earn is already committed before it even reaches their account.

At that point, every decision is driven by survival rather than strategy. And it’s incredibly difficult to build a sustainable business when you’re operating from a place of panic instead of purpose.

Now compare that to someone who starts building something while still employed. Their rent is covered. Their food is covered. The kwacha the side business generates can actually go back into the business instead of straight into survival costs. They can afford to say no to the wrong client. They can afford to take two extra weeks to do something properly because the electricity bill does not depend on whether they finish it this week. They are building from a position of stability. And that stability changes everything about how the business gets built.

I worked at an Engen filling station. I worked at a plastic company. Neither of those jobs was glamorous. But both of them were paying my bills while I was observing how businesses actually work. How money moves. Where the inefficiencies are. What customers actually want that they are not getting. I was being paid to get education. The question was just whether I was paying attention. At that time I wasn’t.

That is the thing about employment that people completely miss like I did. Your employer is funding your business education without knowing it. Every day you are inside an organisation you are watching a real business operate. You are seeing what works. You are seeing what does not. You are building relationships with people who will become your first clients, your first suppliers or your first referrals when you eventually go out on your own. That network is built on the employer’s time. It belongs to you.

I can argue that most of the teachers in our country who eventually start their own private schools almost never start from zero. They spent years inside the system understanding how schools are run, where they fail their students, what parents actually want and cannot find. The builders who start their own construction companies spent years working for other contractors first. The bank employees who eventually start microfinance operations spent years watching how money moves and where the gaps in financial services are.

This pattern is not accidental. It is the actual way serious businesses get built. Not from enthusiasm bane but from knowledge. And knowledge accumulates inside employment in a way it simply cannot from the outside looking in.

Now the pushback that always comes is that having a job makes you too comfortable. That you need hunger to build something. That the pressure of having nothing is what forces you to make it work.

There is something to that. A side business treated as a hobby that can always wait until tomorrow is not a business. I call It a thought experiment. If you are employed and building something on the side you have to be brutal about treating it like a real business. Not after you finish watching something on your phone .

This is how I look at hunger and desperation in regards to building a business. Hunger is knowing exactly what you are building and refusing to let anything slow it down. Desperation is making decisions because the pressure of having no income is so loud in your head that clear thinking becomes impossible. One of those builds businesses. The other builds stress with occasional revenue.

In our country specifically this matters more than anywhere else. Because the social financial obligations do not pause because you decided to chase a dream. The family needs do not stop. The obligations do not stop. If you are starting a business from zero income those obligations will eat your working capital before your business has had time to generate any. Employment absorbs those pressures. It gives your business room to breathe.

Look at the vendors who have built the most consistent operations in markets like Soweto, Chisokone or Kamwala. Almost none of them started by betting everything on day one. Many of them started selling on weekends while still doing something else during the week. They figured out what sold and what did not before they were depending on it to eat. By the time they went full time they already knew the business worked because they had already run it.

That is not timidity no matter how small you might look at it but that is intelligence.

The right moment to go full time is not when you are excited about the idea. Not when you are bored of the job. It is when the business has generated enough consistent revenue for long enough that leaving the job is a calculation not a leap of faith. When the numbers justify it. When the clients are repeating. When the income is documented and reliable. When you are leaving toward something instead of away from something.

Your job is not what is stopping you from building a business. Your job is what is going to fund the early stages of building it. Use it that way.

Start now. While you are still employed. Build it in the evenings. Build it on weekends. Build it in the early mornings before anyone else is awake. Not instead of the job. Alongside it. Until the business no longer needs the job to survive.