Part-time Entrepreneur

Hi everyone,

I want to start my own business soon. This business affiliates with some small workshops to produce low quantity parts with integrated consulting service. I have a good job and I don’t want to resign immediately. Does anyone have the experience of converting from an employee gradually to the employer of a new company? How do you solve the time conflict? There is no interest conflict between the company I am working at and my new company?

Thanks a lot,

Hi Kevlaramide,

I’m a part time entrepreneur at the moment, with my webshop http://stormagasinet.dk. I startet my business in April 06 and it’s growing, but it’s a lot of work (of course). People who think opening a succesful online store is easy clearly don’t know what it’s all about! But thats a whole other matter :smiley:

In my “real” work as a desktopper and webmaster for a furniture company I use/abuse the opportunity to do a little work on my shop during the day. I am not proud of this, but it’s necessary to get my webshop up and running for real and I simply can’t help myself…!

I suppose this is the case with a lot of part time entrepreneurs…the put in a few minutes/hours of work on their project during the workday at the job.

Thanks a lot for your answer, Kris. It is a very impressive web site you created. Both the web site and goods on the web are very neat and attractive.

In the big company I am working at, I should say half the employees are doing company’s job only half of the company’s time. I have to admit I am using some of company’s time also as long as I ensure all company related jobs are done and I do have some spare time.

What really bothers me is the marketing. It is said that 80% energy of a startup is spent on marketing. It is very difficult to do your own marketing while you have a day-time job. Your case is a little bit different because you are running e-business. The advantage of e-business is that it eliminates most of physical contacts.

I’ve been trying to start a side business myself, and its terribly difficult to make time for an additional job when I work full time during the week. I do most things on nights and weekends, lunch breaks, or even ‘sick’ days if I need to be out of the office during the day for something.

As for conflicts with the day job, I’ve been known to work on my own things at the office when I’ve gotten ahead (how rarely that is!) but to me, if you aren’t shorting your responsibilities at the full-time job, it should be ok if its kept quiet. However, many employers would rather pay you to sit and do nothing than work on your own projects or even take the afternoon off, etc., so it really depends on how they view this issue.

Marketing is a bit of a toss-up these days. Some have success with blogs and other non-traditional avenues that require fewer resources to implement, but so much of it is simply good timing, good luck, and/or good networking no matter what the path.

the classic Catch-22:

Client: We have one of our biggest customers coming in next week and we’d like you to sit in on meetins with them for a few days.
You: mmmmmmmmm… sure, I can do that.


Client: When can we expect to see your prelims?
You: In a few days.

Client: I’ll give you a call Monday to confirm dates, and times.
You: O… kay…

I tried to squeeze in ‘consulting’ work on the side for awhile. It finally took getting laid-off from the ‘real’ job to give me the impetus to commit to ‘full time’.

You (we) owe it to our clients to provide them with our full attention, but you also owe it to our employer.

The big bite comes when they want to visit your office… . … …