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The Good And The Bad Of Keeping Your Day Job During Startup

This article is more than 8 years old.

The launch of Entrepreneurial Mind, LLC is a part-time endeavor of all of the founders.

Keeping our “day jobs” is an easy choice for all of us. My son has a great job with a healthcare tech startup. My daughter is enjoying being a fulltime mom after deciding to “retire” from teaching after the birth of their second child. I love teaching entrepreneurship at Belmont University.

Power of Time

We are all committed to bootstrapping this venture, so we have no expectations for it giving us a paycheck during startup. Since we don’t rely on our startup for salary, any cash the business generates post launch stays in the company to help fund the startup.

Extending the runway of our business launch this way eliminates the need for any outside funding and greatly reduces the amount of startup capital I need to put into the business.

Most importantly, bootstrapping a business this way gives us time.

Employee costs are typically the largest single cost for most new ventures. By postponing this expense, we have more time to work on our business model without the pressure of having to make payroll every month before the business can support it through operating cash flow.

We also have more time to learn what our customers like about theentrepreneurialmind.com and what we can do to enhance it. We are working with our customers to discover how to evolve our business model to best meet their needs.

The Downside of Extending the Runway

Over the first months since our launch, we have started to notice the downside of extending our startup runway by keeping us all part-time.

In our weekly meetings we review what everybody is working on.

“Russ, did our newsletter get out to members this month?”

“Nope.  Not yet. Busy week at work and home. I’ll get that out this week.”

“Dad, did you get those new videos finished?”

“Sorry, I had a mountain of papers to get graded. I hope to get to this next weekend.”

“Maggie, did you get those videos loaded on the site?”

“Not yet. My kids have not been cooperating!”

We have found that our self-imposed deadlines keep slipping away. As committed as we are to this new company, the demands of our jobs and our families have made moving this business forward the ultimate challenge of time management.

We traded off the advantages of a full-time dedicated start-up team for a business that has very little overhead . Although we gained time, we gave up focus.

Who “Owns” this Business?

Our experience reminded me of another startup that has a similar business model to ours.

Tony Bakker is cofounder of SixStringCountry.com, a subscription site that uses videos to teach aspiring musicians how to play the latest country songs. Tony worked on this business nights and weekends, while he worked for a company in the music industry here in Nashville.

“Because I knew there was a lot of risk in this for my wife and I, I was determined to get as far into the process as I possibly could before taking the leap and quitting my job,” Bakker explains.

Bakker kept his day job as he tested his business model, but realized he needed to focus on his new business fulltime if it was to have any chance of success.

My wife and I talked about how someone needs to keep our team on task. None of our roles requires fulltime attention at this point, but our business needs someone who keeps the business moving ahead. Ann agreed that she is in the best position of all of us to fill this critical role.

A couple of days later this decision was affirmed in a conversation during my weekly round of golf with fellow entrepreneur and good friend Shawn Glinter. While talking about our plans for 2016 Glinter asked, “But, who ‘owns’ your business? Who wakes up everyday thinking about it?”

Fortunately, Ann has the time to assume this role. It is not a fulltime paid job at this point, but a critical one nonetheless. We will still be able to take advantage of extending our runway by operating without a payroll.

And now, for the first time we will now have someone coordinating what Russ, Maggie and I do for the business. And who better to keep us all on task and hold us accountable than Mom!