Be Yourself Online Without Scaring Off Employers | Side Hustle Advice

Relaxing Sleep Station. I've started opening up very publicly using my story as a differentiator. I'm still concerned that I'll need to get a job in the future and keep my business as my side hustle and turn until it earns enough. How do I be true to my story while not completely turning off potential employers who will find all this information with me with a simple Google search?

Yeah, I think that's great. I think actually, um, and I'll talk about, you know, the authenticity. I, I'd say a lot of great startups are kind of spawned out of people like yourself who are working, doing a full-time job for someone else, and then in the evenings and weekends creating their ideas and then ultimately building a business. And, and it's great if you can get a big corporation to pay for you to be moonlighting and creating the next Amazon business that you're going to create in your bedroom or in the garage or wherever you're doing it, then that's a fantastic thing to do. So I don't think there should be any guilt associated with that. I think that's the way people operate in 2016. I think the other thing, honestly, if people came to us in our company and said, actually, I want to start a business. Oh, I'd applaud you. And they can be full-time employees and colleagues with me and Sage. And I think you will be surprised. There's a lot of entrepreneurs out there, even leaders of big companies out there, who would really encourage their colleagues and their employees to start their ideas and incubate their ideas. And then get ready to fly. So I think it's worth pursuing. And when I just look at the range of businesses, I'll give you an example. Obviously I've mentioned this guy before, he's a genius, and that's Marc Benioff at Salesforce. Marc Benioff worked with me back at Oracle, and Larry Ellison, the chief executive and chairman at the time of Oracle, knew Marc was starting his business and was really happy for him to be incubating his business while he was moonlighting and working full-time at Oracle. And now, Mark, I don't know, the valuation of that company Salesforce must be $60 billion. One of the greatest companies on the planet, got huge respect for him. And he does amazing things around communities through the Salesforce Foundation, giving back to communities, making a difference and building and really leading the sort of cloud revolution. So that's a real example. And that happened what? 16, 17 years ago. So I think we shouldn't constrain ourselves to just say, you know, I work for a company, I leave then and do a startup. I think, you know, there can be almost a perfect melting pot where you can be working and working on your idea at the same time and starting your business and maybe even getting buddies to start the business for you. And then at the right time, you kind of flip over.

I think this ties in really well to this theme of having the confidence to be your true self, because if you are worried about a customer not buying from you because of your story or company not hiring you because of your story, that's probably not going to be a great fit for you anyway. There's going to be some— if you're looking for a part-time job to support your business on the side, there's going to be some companies who will look at what you're doing and won't want to hire somebody who has their own part-time thing. They want to hire somebody who's, you know, only dedicated to their company. And there's gonna be other people who will look at that as an advantage, like, oh, you're, you're an entrepreneur, that's great, like, you can help us because you understand entrepreneurs and you could give us advice and do a great job in your role. And so by putting that content out there and by being yourself, you will attract the companies that are a better fit for you, and the companies that aren't a great fit they won't be interested in you. And so it's the same thing with your customers. If you're sharing your story, there are some people who won't connect to it, and that's fine. Those guys would not be great customers for you. And there's going to be others who will like madly, deeply resonate with it and, and drive that extra 100 miles just to get to you because they love what you're about. So, you know, you've already heard it. I mean, I hire people even if they have their own thing on the side. I have 18 people on my team. It's not anywhere close to what Sage is at, but you just heard it from the CEO there too. Thousands and thousands of employees and they value people who have things on the side as well. So I would encourage you to go in and embrace what you're doing and maybe even include it on your resume as opposed to trying to hide it.

Yeah, I'd be generally proud of it. The other thing, Evan, the only area where it could get a bit testy is if, you know, I think this speaks to authenticity, integrity, and your values. Obviously, it wouldn't be appropriate to work for a company and then sort of steal their ideas to become a competitor of that company. Sure. But I think part of the confidence comes through having really powerful values, and part of that is integrity and also kind of connecting yourself to the customer. But I think as long as it's kind of not a conflict and you're not going to kind of rip off the company's intellectual property or stuff like that, then I think there's a lot of companies out there where exactly to Evan's point, you can find a perfect marriage with you and a company and their kind of ambition for their colleagues to be really happy, fulfilled. But also, I also just— this is kind of a throwaway. I do believe companies of the future should believe that they have a relationship for life with the colleagues who work for them. And that might mean, you know, I'd say to this to people here, they might leave Sage, they might go and start their own business. 10 years' time, 7 years' time, they're always welcome to come back to Sage. So it's not, it's not like the old days you had to have a kind of career in one company. It is definitely the case, and I think it's great for the economies, for individuals who are fantastic entrepreneurs to really be able to express their, their business freedom and really grow a lot of job creation and wealth creation by going to start your business. And then at the right time, you can come back. We need people who have got real experience of living the life of an entrepreneur, going for a startup, worrying about making payroll for a month, all that sort of stuff, running out of cash. Because the more we have people who have lived and walked in the shoes of our customers, then the more authentic we're going to be as a company. So I think, I generally think I'd really encourage you, connect yourself to a company, as Evan said, with the values that you respect. And actually, I think it could be a great marriage.