Challenges of Combining Roles as an Educator and Entrepreneur: A Reflective Experience on Professional Development

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the experience and challenges faced by female in multi-tasking, combing full-time academic work with being an entrepreneur; the impact on professional practice and personal development. Becoming an entrepreneur can be a challenging and daunting task, but it can also come with good experience in managing own small businesses and putting theory into practice in teaching students. The work draws on experiences of how entrepreneurs were able to combine academic work with managing their own small businesses and challenges confronted in realities. Drawing from experience, moving back and forth between the academic and business spheres, this paper considers the impact of being an entrepreneur and lecturer, and what it meant for the students, institutions and own professional development. The work uses qualitative and quantitative research paradigms to seek the perceptions of some professionals who were able to combine academic work and being an entrepreneur, challenges faced in the combined roles on their students, institution and professional development. The analysis of findings from few concludes that there are many benefits, as well as challenges, confronting professionals in multi-tasking of being a business owner and academic Lecturer, of which, most of them became very successful through hard work and determination and some failed to cope due to combination of two ultimately complementary roles. This presents further areas for research to investigate why some professionals who try to combine job roles of academic and being a business owner fail and if this may be the case for the male teachers.