I was looking for a symbolic starting point to begin my blog postings. But I later thought that philosophically everyday is a potential beginning for something. So here we go, a posting about a recent issue, I faced.
I would like to talk about an important challenge most entrepreneurs go through in their career.When to go fulltime with your business? You have been working on your idea/venture outside your day-time job. You know (or believe) that, you have a good product/services. Customers have bought and used your product, but not enough for you to put in your papers in office tomorrow. You believe your product/service has a good future. At this point, you have reached the point of max utilization of your outside-office time. If you want to increase the rate of customer signup and servicing anymore, you know you have to put in more time. But you don’t have any more time outside-work, to expand your customer base. Basically, you have reached your maximum potential, in terms of time in a part-time business environment. But the problem lies in the fact that, you are making “x” amount in your current corporate full-time job and you make only 20%-40% of “x” in your business. (This makes sense too since you are putting only 20-50% of your weekly time in business). If you quit your day-time job now, you are going to be ending with less income. Not only that, if your business goes south instead of north, you have broken your corporate career path too. It becomes more harder, when you have a family with kids (like I do).
The solution to this dilemma is going to be unique to each individual. I think, if you are interested in corporate career growth, you should not be quitting your job. Entrepreneurship can go either way. The chances of you turning your business into a corporate, is not assured. So if you like the safe life of a corporate world, I think you should keep your business part-time only.
What about the rest of those (us) who are strongly pulled by the nature-of-work, independence and creativity of an independent venture? I don’t know for others, but I can tell you what I did. I turned the problem 180 degrees to seek the solution. I made my business the fulltime/permanent option, and started doing technology contract jobs as a temporary job to compensate for the drop in income. You can work the better part of the year in your business, mixing it with a few months of contracts until your business takes off. The advantages to this approach are, One- you can make enough in contracting jobs to sustain yourself/family (although you should be ok to making less than “x” totally, in the first year). Two, you are in the middle of latest technology not only in your job as well as in contract. And you learn the best practices from both places and are not in a silo. Obviously a lot depends on the availability of contract and part-time jobs in your industry. I am still testing this approach and I shall post more on the approach, as time goes.
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