SELL YOUR HOUSE AND START A BUSINESS

 

You live in your own house. That is, you live in a house you bought or built. However, you are broke. Dead broke. You have been in that situation for at least one year. Things are not working out.

You have a good business idea but need cash to make the dream reality. You have not been able to find that money. Your thoughts are now entertaining the idea of selling your house to raise the finances you need. Sell the house? You are extremely apprehensive, for good reason. Owning a house is one of the major milestones of life.  It has fundamental implications for the family’s wellbeing. What if selling the house brings perpetual poverty? Sell the house? Sounds a crazy idea; sell house make money? Most people work hard to buy a house. How could one sell it off just like that?

Owning a house means that the possibility of being on the streets with no shelter, if the worst came to the worst, is eliminated. It means though you may be hungry, you will be in your own home, assured of the comfort and protection a house brings. And after daybreak, you can fight whatever problem is keeping you hungry, like joblessness. So, where does the idea of selling one’s house come from?

Well, in this case, we are talking about the big money that normally goes with funding a business. Let me state what many will say you do not do. You can sell your house, your only house, to start the business you wish to have. Yes, you can sell your only house. But there are things to look at first!

Your uneasiness about selling your house is understandable. So, let us soften those feelings first. You only sell your house when certain conditions are satisfied. Only then.

The first consideration to make is whether or not after selling your home you are able to buy a smaller house and use the remaining money to do that business you dream about. This approach will ensure you do not remain without a house of your own. An equally good approach is partitioning the house and selling off one section. If one of these approaches is possible, then you do have a really safe way to start off into your business. And if neither of these, or a similar model, is possible? Well then, indeed, you have to look in other directions. You do have to find the money, don’t you?

Do look for sources of loans or grants. Are they there in your country? Can you find foreign sources online? Let us assume that there are no external sources of financing, and you have to depend on yourself. Then, of course, you just have to sell that beautiful house of yours. You do have to take care of certain things, though.

Firstly, if you are selling your house, then you almost certainly have to pay rent for your new accommodation. Here is the rule: find a really low-priced place. The rent should not finish up all the money you get after sale of the house.

Secondly, as soon as your business picks up, buy a new house, even if it is a really small unit. That will put an end to paying those rents, and will bring you back the protection and joy owning a house brings. That is, the protection and joy you had before selling the first house.  

Thirdly, you have to be sure your business is likely to succeed. This is perhaps the most fundamental step you need to take. Some businesses that appear easy to do prove very difficult when one starts them. One way to limit the likelihood of unpleasant surprises is picking a business one is already familiar with. It is no wonder many people start enterprises similar to those done by organisations they have worked in in the past. So, many former employees of automobile companies later start motor-vehicle-related businesses. Many former IT firm employees have started their own IT businesses.        

Ensuring that a business has chances to thrive is not only about familiarity with the type of enterprise. It involves other basic business considerations such as the size of the market and location of the business. When you have all these taken care of, and you have the discipline and heart to persevere when challenges come, selling your house should be the wisest decision you ever made.

   As we end the story, let us revisit the basic contents. Selling your house to do business with the money you are paid for it is not the first consideration one should make. It should be the last. What I wish to dismiss here is the myth that selling one’s own house to invest in a business is always wrong. It is not wrong sometimes. You do, however, need to lay the right foundation for such a decision. For example, you must be sure there are no other ways to raise the financial capital you need. Additionally, if you can sell only part of your property to find the money you need, and remain with a part yourself, that would be a lot better than selling the entire house.

Goodday and do not be scared to sell your house when all the conditions are right!  

TO BE “EMPLOYED” OR “NOT TO BE EMPLOYED”, THAT IS THE QUESTION

 

By “to be employed”, what ismeant is working in an organisation owned by another person. By “not to beemployed”, what is meant is working in an entity you own yourself; your ownbusiness. I assume it is a business.

What is being looked at here is an age-old question many young and even older people ask themselves. It looks an easy question to answer: “Work in my own business, of course.” Yes, indeed, but then, what is the reason not everyone is heading to their own organisation? So, the question becomes an easy one to decide on but not an easy one to act on.

Many people have been caught in the dilemma of difficulty choosing between keeping a job in another person’s organisation and embarking on their own ventures. The reason, rather, the reasons, are generally easy to see. In this article, a comparison is made between the two.

Let us look at the different aspects of working in an organisation one does not own and working in an organisation they do own. We do it under different themes. The lists of advantages and disadvantages are not exhaustive.

Main positive considerations going for “not being employed”

We look at just three:

-          Freedom. When the organisation is not yours, you have to be ready to adhere to the expectations of the owner or owners. These often include arriving at work and leaving at the time prescribed by the owner, not yourself; working by the stated rules. Besides, you would not like to hear the nastiest words of any workplace: if this does not happen, John, you’re fired!

-           

If you need freedom, start your own organisation. Here, you could set your own rules. For example, you could arrive at the office a little later than the others, if you can still effectively supervise them. Simply remember that there is no total freedom in any organisation. If you have to meet deadlines, for example, you have to sacrifice some freedom even in your very own business. However, you do indeed have a lot more leeway in your own institution.

 

-          Profits. This is probably the biggest motivation for one not being “not being employed”. When you are “employed”, as in working in an organisation you do not own, the profits belong to the owner of the business, and they pay you a bit from those profits.

If you are “not employed” (own the organisation), the profits are all yours.  They ultimately belong to you. Not only that. You decide how to use them.

-          Wealth building. It is often faster to become financially prosperous when you run a business. Few have become rich in a relatively short time depending on the income they get working in an enterprise they do not own. This is connected strongly to the preceding point concerning profits. The profits are yours and you can invest them in a business with great net earnings potential.

Challenges  

As you can see, it can be very rewarding not “to be employed”. In this sense, what is meant, of course, is being one’s own employer. But why is everyone not owning their own business, then? This is what we look at now. Even here, though, only three factors are examined.

-          You are on your own. If you run your own business and depend entirely on that for your own survival, you are essentially on your own. Working in another person’s institution almost always guarantees you a salary at the end of the month. The employer may also be paying your health insurance, and may have accommodated you, as is the case in socialistic economies.

 

If you own the organisation, you have to work the sweat to make the money. If you work lazily, you may not have anything at the end of the month. You will be in free fall. The possibility of starving is more real.

 

Fortunately, it is not a hopeless situation. you can minimise the possibility of adverse financial moments by ensuring you choose a business that deals in a product or service with good and steady demand. By “good”, I mean that you need to be able to sell profitable amounts all the time. By “steady”, I mean there must not be parts of the year when demand is low and parts when demand is good.

 

A product like motor vehicle tyres is likely to have stable demand throughout the year. On the other hand, umbrellas generally have healthy demand only at certain times of the year.

 

-          Capital limitations. A common factor preventing people from owning their own enterprises is the difficulty of raising the finances, for example, required to start business.

 

One way to avoid the capital problem is selecting a business with relatively low initial investment requirements. A business requiring a factory is normally a big financial undertaking. On the other hand, a stationary retail shop is unlikely to place so much pressure on finances. Any amount of stationary can be stocked initially, and the quantity can increase as the business makes more money. As regards the shop, a small trading area could be rented at the start, and when the business expands, one could look for bigger space.

  

One, alternatively, can look for sponsors specialising in helping people with financial limitations who want to start businesses. Some give grants. Grants are not to be paid back. They are not loans.

 

-          Lack of business training. Basic business education can serve as a source of confidence and spur one into starting an enterprise. Insufficient business knowledge can have the effect of holding a person back. If you find yourself in this situation, it should not be a real challenge in today’s age of digitally available information on the internet. There are many resources online that provide basic business knowledge. So I guess this is hardly a problem now.

 

Conclusions

If you have been wondering whether or not to quit your present job and simply run and be sustained by your own enterprise, the brief coverage of the anticlines and synclines above could give you an idea what some of the main issues to look at are. It is indeed a simple overview, but, hopefully, it is adequate as a starting point in an often important decision-making situation.

 

TO USE AI OR TO STUDY?

 

It is a school assignment requiring at least 8 hours to complete, or three days, as most students have other things to do in a day. Jack the student panicked.

“But…I have only two hours to hand-in-deadline! What the heck, this is 2026…and it can be done! It’s AI time!”

And so, within the next few moments, Jack the student has a brand new completed assignment courtesy of artificial intelligence, AI, complete with citations and references – ready for hand-in. And Jack submits his assignment with one hour to spare. Life is easier now in this area. Indeed it is, but let’s look at the use of AI instead of original study material in educational settings, in this article.

Artificial intelligence, AI, is one of the most revolutionary of modern digital capacities. When the internet is invoked to provide an answer, it uses AI to scan material (that is already online) that carries information on the given subject. It then presents that information on the screen. Sooo painless!

If you were in Jack’s shoes, you would hardly be faulted for doing exactly what Jack did. Let’s face it, there were only two hours left before the tutor stopped accepting assignment submissions. There were only two possibilities in Jack’s case. If Jack did not submit, that would be an outright fail. If he submitted compliments of AI, the tutor may not recognize it as AI work and may award a score, any score. Most likely a passing score. So, is this article saying AI is the way forward in school work? Hold your smile. Not so.

Firstly, the aim of education is to train people who when they leave college or university can help make the world a better place to live in. That is only possible if the graduates really know their work, and not if their passes were brought by AI. Students themselves need to take pride in researching and getting to understand the material in their programmes. They need to be proud that the paper they get on graduating does represent what they know.

Secondly, it is unlikely that when an AI-assisted assignment is marked, the student will sit down and now try to understand the content. It means that knowledge is missed. There is no motivation to read what AI generated once the assignment has served its purpose of saving the student from a pure fail.

Thirdly, AI is not without weakness. Studies have shown that while it can be very accurate, it is not totally reliable. It is “artificial” intelligence, remember? That is not to say natural intelligence is totally reliable. We can look at one example. AI could generate an essay but some references may not be valid. This is less likely if it is a human being researching.

 Fourthly, AI work could be recognized. Let’s go back to Jack’s story. Supposing ten other students had used AI, and the internet had generated almost exactly the same report, would the tutor not sense something fishy and investigate? Well, that may result serious punitive action. Some might say this would still be a better option than not submitting. Probably. But what if the tutor now starts giving you lower scores than you deserve, in your future work, because they suspect you are a traditional user of AI? Some educators never forget.

A fifth consideration is that AI has the potential to discourage studying. So, in a physically-supervised examination, the student may not have a clue what to write. If that is the component of the continuous assessment that carries the bulk of the marks, the student may not pass overall.

Artificial Intelligence is extremely useful in many spheres of life - and to Jack the student. However, education institutions seek to transfer knowledge from the source (lecturer, book, other publications) to the student. The student will later put that knowledge on paper (or prepare it in soft form) and present it to the tutor in an assignment or examination to show how much they understand of what they learned.

So, the movement is source-to-student-to-paper. If AI is used, this movement is short-circuited. It becomes source-to-paper. It leaves out the central figure, the student, who is at an institution to learn. The student does not learn in this case. And the student themselves must see that the purpose of being a student is defeated.

When the student is not learning, it means the educators are not achieving their objectives. This is why institutions discourage and punish unauthorized use of AI.

So how is AI useful to the student? Well, students can always turn to AI for quick, everyday clarifications. It is a useful tool. It just should not be used in assignments where more grounded information is required. More importantly, where the student has to get to “know” the subject well, for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world they live in as a whole.

Thank you for reading this article. If you are a student, be a good student. Use AI, but not in assignments and examinations. Learn the stuff. Be the light of the world.