{"id":554038,"date":"2026-10-09T03:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T03:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newjerseyheadlines.com\/news\/story\/554038\/habib-o-lawal-shares-how-he-builds-businesses-without-leaving-his-9to5.html"},"modified":"2026-10-09T03:00:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T03:00:31","slug":"habib-o-lawal-shares-how-he-builds-businesses-without-leaving-his-9to5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/story\/554038\/habib-o-lawal-shares-how-he-builds-businesses-without-leaving-his-9to5.html","title":{"rendered":"Habib O. Lawal Shares How He Builds Businesses Without Leaving His 9-to-5"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Habib<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The New Jersey product manager and real estate developer says entrepreneurship does not always have to begin with quitting a full-time job.<\/div>\n

Mount Holly, NJ – October 8, 2026 –<\/strong> Habib O. Lawal<\/a>, a New Jersey-based Product Manager at Accenture, real estate developer, and entrepreneur, is sharing his perspective on building businesses while maintaining a full-time corporate career.<\/p>\n

Lawal has spent most of his professional life working traditional 9-to-5 roles. At the same time, he has invested in real estate, moved into development, explored government contracting, and continued building business interests outside of his primary job.<\/p>\n

For him, the two paths have never felt mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

“I think there is this idea that if you are serious about business, you have to quit your job immediately,” Lawal said. “That was never how I looked at it. A job can give you stability while you learn, test ideas, and figure out what is actually worth pursuing.”<\/p>\n

Lawal began his career after graduating from the University of Rhode Island with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. He joined Fidelity Investments through its LEAP program and was placed in Jersey City, New Jersey, where he spent nearly five years.<\/p>\n

He later earned a master’s degree in Cybersecurity and eventually joined Accenture in March 2022, where he currently works in product management.<\/p>\n

Outside of his corporate career, Lawal began investing in real estate in 2019. His involvement later expanded into real estate development and work involving local government.<\/p>\n

That experience reinforced a lesson he had already learned through technology and corporate work: ideas are easy to generate, but execution usually depends on structure.<\/p>\n

“I can have five ideas in a week,” Lawal said. “That does not mean I should work on all five. I have had to get better at deciding what deserves time and what is just interesting in the moment.”<\/p>\n

Lawal says one of the biggest challenges of building something outside a full-time career is protecting time for work that does not yet have an immediate payoff.<\/p>\n

Real estate projects may take months to develop. Business relationships can take years to become useful. New ventures may require repeated outreach before anything happens.<\/p>\n

That makes consistency more important than bursts of motivation.<\/p>\n

“There are nights when you do not feel like making another call or looking at another opportunity,” he said. “But if you only work on something when you feel motivated, it is going to move very slowly.”<\/p>\n

Lawal also believes keeping a corporate career can expose entrepreneurs to systems they can later apply elsewhere.<\/p>\n

His work across Fidelity and Accenture has given him experience inside large organizations, while his real estate and business interests have required him to operate with far less structure.<\/p>\n

He sees value in both environments.<\/p>\n

“When you work inside a large company, you see how teams communicate, how projects are managed, and how decisions move through an organization,” Lawal said. “When you work on your own business, nobody is creating that structure for you. You have to build it yourself.”<\/p>\n

He also cautions against treating every side project as a future business.<\/p>\n

Some ideas, Lawal says, are valuable because of what they teach rather than what they become. After leaving Fidelity, he spent time exploring a networking business and applying for government contracting opportunities. Not every effort developed as quickly as expected, but the experience helped him become more deliberate about where he puts his time.<\/p>\n

“You learn that being interested in something and building something are two different things,” he said. “At some point, you have to decide whether you are willing to keep showing up when the idea stops being exciting.”<\/p>\n

Today, Lawal continues balancing his work at Accenture with real estate development and other business interests. Rather than viewing his corporate career as something standing in the way of entrepreneurship, he sees it as one part of a larger professional life.<\/p>\n

“The goal for me has always been to keep building,” Lawal said. “Sometimes that happens inside a company. Sometimes it happens through real estate or another business. I do not think you have to choose one identity and stay there forever.”<\/p>\n

About Habib O. Lawal<\/strong><\/p>\n

Habib O. Lawal is a Product Manager at Accenture, real estate developer, entrepreneur, and business strategist based in Mount Holly, New Jersey. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a master’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of Rhode Island. His professional background spans financial services, technology, consulting, real estate, development, and entrepreneurship. Lawal began investing in real estate in 2019 and continues to pursue development and business opportunities alongside his corporate career.<\/p>\n

Media Contact<\/span>
Company Name:<\/strong> Habib O. Lawal
Contact Person:<\/strong> Media Relations
Email:<\/strong> Send Email<\/a>
City:<\/strong> Mount Holly
State:<\/strong> New Jersey
Country:<\/strong> United States
Website:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.habibolawal.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Jersey product manager and real estate developer says entrepreneurship does not always have to begin with quitting a full-time job. Mount Holly, NJ – October 8, 2026 –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554038"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northcarolinaheadlines.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}