Moonlighting Can Be a Tightrope Walk
by Michael Matesic
When a business is a hobby, you usually get the commensurate pay. When business gets treated like a sidelight, that light never shines very brightly. The saying that “Hope is not a strategy?” Well, neither is going into a new venture half-heartedly.
Yet for some entrepreneurs working to launch a new business, it can become extremely difficult to devote the required time, effort, diligence, blood, sweat, and occasional tears to get that venture into the stratosphere. Not because they don't want to, but because they cannot afford – literally cannot afford – to walk away from the full-time job they already have.
David Radin, CEO of Just Between Friends, an Idea Foundry portfolio company that provides an online directory and message delivery system specially designed for school communities, has experienced this phenomenon from a unique perspective – the full-time employer he wanted to break free from was…himself.
“I felt pressure to dive into a new company I had formed but had to constantly resist that pressure and wait until the time was right,” Radin recalled. “The truth was, I needed to continue to generate revenue from my established consulting business.
“When it was time for me to jump, I simply stopped pushing so hard to get recurring project consulting work until I was ready to go with the new venture full throttle,” he said. “The nice part was I was able to gauge and control both sides of the equation. When you're working for someone else, it's a lot more difficult to make that switchover.”
Seconding that motion is a local entrepreneur who, for obvious reasons, asked to remain anonymous for this column.
“You must give full effort to your full-time employer in good faith, I consider it a moral obligation,” said this budding business owner. “At the same time, that means there's not as much flexibility to devote effort to a new startup. But I feel strongly that, even if you don't care about the job, it's still an obligation you need to meet.
“You could bring full-time people on at the startup to provide specialized talent that the venture doesn't have, but the bad part is you can't really be one of them yet,” said this entrepreneur. “Either way, you'll be doing 80 hour work weeks, 40 at your full-time job and 40 at the new venture.”
Say the startup gets traction and you've been able to successfully walk the tightrope between living up to your full-time obligations and building your dream in the off-hours. How does one extricate oneself from the full-time employer? Is it done with diplomatic delicacy, or with a brisk ripping-off-the-Band-Aid chop of the ax? Well, it depends.
“I'm not sure how that will go when the time comes,” said the anonymous subject. “For anybody, it really depends on the boss – how much he depends on you, how much leeway he has in terms of resources and relationships ready to fill in behind you. It could be very amicable and easy, or it could go the other way.”
As with any other aspect of starting a new venture, risk tolerance rears its head at every turn when moving from the apparent security of full-time employment to the funhouse peaks and valleys of self-employment.
“An older person with a family and greater financial commitments can't necessarily take the same kinds of risks as a 22-year-old fresh out of college,” Radin said. “This may help determine where your point of jumping in is. Cash flow is king, so my advice is don't quit your day job until you know you can survive and thrive at the new venture and take it to the next level.”
Start Me Up appears monthly in the print edition of TEQ Magazine.