I am an avid advocate for starting your business part-time.There are many advantages and few disadvantages. I realize that some businesses are impossible to conduct any other way other than full-time, however, most can be started part-time. I started my business part-time while having a full-time job elsewhere and hired an answering service to field my calls when I was at my full-time job. I would make and return calls to the East Coast before work, the Central Time Zone during breaks and at lunch and to the Mountain Time Zone and the West Coast after work. I took every available sick day, personal day and vacation day to work at my own company. I started my own business on January 2 and by June 1 of that year I had made more money with my part-time business than I would have the entire year with my full-time job. In my book, "How Business Gets Done: Creating Wealth with Your Own Business", I list ten advantages to starting your business part-time: (1). More control and flexibility. Some conceive of a part-time business as being half that of a full-time business in terms of hours spent, expenses, etc. However, this is a misnomer. Furthermore, many think that a part-time business means half in terms of capital needed, half in terms of the number of employees needed, half in terms of overhead, etc. Part-time does not necessarily equal "half." Having a part-time business can be any number of hours you choose, which gives you significant control and flexibility. When starting a full-time business, you relinquish a lot of control to your customers and suppliers since they understand you to and require you to operate full-time. A part-time business is customized to your schedule and customers and suppliers recognize this and don't panic or become as easily irritated when they cannot get in touch with you immediately. Additionally, part-time does not mean the same number of hours every week, whereas a full-time business is a 40-hour minimum proposition week-in and week-out. (2). Lower overhead. When you start a full-time business, you probably will have to pay yourself a salary. Normally, the entrepreneur's salary represents the largest single expense of a young company. Many part-time businesses are started when the entrepreneur is working full-time elsewhere, thus saving the expense of a salary. Additionally, many part-time businesses can be conducted from the home, saving the expense of an office or storefront. Additionally, there are some great tax breaks with working from your home. If you cannot work from home, seek out a friend or acquaintance who has his or her own business and who may have some office space for rent. List for yourself twenty ways in which you can save money on office space. It will get your innovative juices flowing. (3). Smaller seed capital requirements. Many think that a part-time business requires roughly half the seed capital as compared to a full-time business. This is not so. Part-time businesses can start on a fraction of that of a full-time business. Part-time businesses are exempt from many of the start-up costs that a full-time business incurs. These includes deposits and up-front payments on office space, office furniture and miscellaneous supplies. Expenditures on office equipment such as copiers and computers, liscense fees and employee costs. Since part-time businesses normally require less inventory, capital needs for inventory are greatly reduced. (4). A more cautious approach. Starting one's own business, full-time or part-time, is not for wimps. I don't care who you are, the proposition of starting your own business is nerve-racking and the causation of sleepless nights. Some people are naturally more cautious than others and would never start their own business if it had to be done full-time. For those, a part-time business is the ticket. A part-time business affords one the opportunity to get one's feet wet, one toe at a time without submerging one's whole foot at once. (5). Who said you have to operate full-time? Many businesses are started part-time and forever remain that - part-time. I know of several entrepreneurs who started their businesses part-time years ago and are happy with the status quo. These business owners enjoy the steady paycheck from the companies they work for, as well as the extra income from their own part-time businesses. They use the extra cash for an elevated life style, vacations and savings for an early retirement. One entrepreneur I know makes minnow buckets, live bait wells and other miscellaneous fishing gear. He manufacturers his products in his garage after work and on the weekends. He produces a splendid product and has a steady influx of orders and a respectable backlog. His wife and children are involved in the business and it has drawn them closer. It has never been his intention to quit his day-job and he is quite satisfied with his life, just as it is. (6). Reduces the sting of costly mistakes. Let us face it; mistakes are the biggest teacher to the green entrepreneur. Mistakes are always going to be made - it is part of the business package. Real world learning and experience become the best insulation against future mistakes. With a part-time business, the learning curve has the opportunity to happen at a more manageable pace as opposed to the pace that is dictated by a full-time business. With a full-time business, the learning curve controls you. With a part-time business you have more control over the learning curve. As a result, mistakes made with a part-time business are usualy less costly and less devastating as opposed to full-time business mistakes. (7). Part-time businesses write the Business Plan. A significant number of full-time businesses require borrowed capital. Every lender, whether it is a bank, lending institution or venture capitalist requires a business plan and a financial forecast. If a business has yet to be started, all forecasts and numbers included are only an educated hypothesis or conjecture. How can you accurately forecast or project without history? A part-time business remedies that. It is easy to write a business plan for your full-time business based on your part-time history. Furthermore, part-time success in the real world carries more credence when the time comes to start your business full-time and approach a lending institution. (8). Borrowing may be avoided. With the savings in overhead wrought by a part-time business, you may be able to save up the necessary seed capital to start your business full-time and avoid initial borrowing. This is what I accomplished with my own business. I used my low-overhead mission to save up the necessary seed capital and avoided loans. Next to the entrepreneur's salary, debt service is normally the second greatest expense for the small business. Additionally, the expense of debt service is one of the leading causes of business failure. The payments seem to come around faster than the calendar month and can be a devastating drain on cash flow. Additionally, your business will grow much faster if it doesn't have to feed the debt service monster every month. Moreover, too many new businesses are funded via a second mortgage on the entrepreneur's residence, resulting in the family losing its home. This can also be avoided by starting your business part-time. (9). Part-time businesses are part of a natural growth pattern. Full-time businesses are thrust upon the industry with hopes that their profit will quickly catch up to their costs before the money runs out. A part-time business can be started and nurtured for a given period until the operation gradually grows into a business that draws the entrepreneur into a full-time operation. This is the stair-step method and is the optimal growth pattern for a business. When the part-time business grows to where it so overwhelms the entrepreneur, it is time to consider going full-time. (10). The revenue train is already generating. The biggest monkey on the back of a full-time business is getting the revenue train (sales and receivables) generating. By starting your business part-time, that monkey is off your back. By starting your business part-time, you will not only have sales coming in, but you will also have receivables generated when you open full-time.
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