Can You Work and Start a Business at the Same Time?

The idea of every entrepreneur working day and night to bring their vision to life is inspiring, but it’s also pretty unrealistic. Most people aren’t so financially independent that they can quit their jobs to dedicate their time to launch a business.

Although creating your own company from the ground up is as demanding as a full-time job, most of the entrepreneurial process doesn’t come with a paycheck. So, you may feel like you can never start your business because of your necessary job.

That’s not true. It may require some creativity and extra hours after your shift ends, but you can still achieve your goals without missing a paycheck. Here’s how to do it.

Start Your Business as a Part-Time Operation

Rather than trying to immediately take the leap from employee to self-employed, you might want to scale back. When you work part-time in your company, the startup costs and stress drop significantly. You also still get to have the peace of mind that stems from a stable job with a salary and all its benefits.

If you don’t have the savings to supplement your income for several months, then you shouldn’t be handing in your resignation letter just yet. A company is more likely to succeed when its founder has stability and security in their own life. Just imagine trying to juggle all the stress of launching a company with the added anxiety of unpaid bills and housing insecurity.

Don’t Work on Your Company at Work

Using a work computer to work on your business could violate your contract. In most cases, anything that is developed on-site and on company time falls under intellectual property.

This means you could lose ownership of your own creations if you spent your time building them instead of doing your job. When you’re at work, be present and perform your duties to the best of your ability. Leave your entrepreneurial genius for after-hours.

Time management will become your best friend. You may decide to wake up one or two hours earlier, which means going to sleep sooner if you don’t want to be a zombie all day.

You don’t have to sacrifice your health to become a business owner. However, you should be willing to put your hobbies and leisure on the backburner for a while. Between getting jobs done, running a household, and working on your company, there won’t be a lot of free time for Netflix.

Find Ways to Get Capital

Beyond your own savings, look for opportunities to get capital. The more money you have, the sooner you’ll be able to say goodbye to the 9-to-5 hustle. In addition to applying for a personal loan or home equity loan, you might want to sell your life insurance policy.

When you settle your life insurance policy through a life settlement, you can get four times more than when you surrender to the insurer. Read more about the process of choosing a private buyer and getting the most for your policy in this guide. Don’t qualify for any of the above? That’s okay. Consider opening a high-yield savings account or asking friends and family to contribute to your business fund.

Keep Working Until Your Business Is Sustainable

You don’t need to quit right away because you’re earning money from your company. Even if you manage to get sales or clients, most businesses go through stages. The lifecycle of a new business can pick up rapidly and collapse just as suddenly.

You don’t want to put all your hopes and means of survival into one source of income yet. Play it safe, save as much as you can, and wait it out until you’re certain you can keep your success going.

There are some lines of work that require you to go all-in, though, which can make the balancing act moot. For example, if you dream of opening a bakery, then you can’t put in 40 hours at a desk job and still get your food establishment to take off. There will have to be trade-offs, but you should only take calculated risks when it comes to your financial security.

In some cases, you may not need to quit your job, but you will have to be available at any time. Clients won’t want to wait four to six hours to get a response to an email, and customers won’t be happy if you don’t ship their order for days at a stretch. You have to build your business around your current life, not contrary to it.

Be an Employee at Work, Not an Entrepreneur

You do not have to forget the importance of entrepreneurship in your life, just find a way to compartmentalize it and be an employee while at work. Sharing your ideas and plans with colleagues could come back to haunt you. Someone may decide to let your employer know that you’re working on something, and this could give the impression that you plan to leave soon.

If the company suspects you aren’t fully committed to the position you’re in, it can create tension and possibly even threaten your career. Make sure you also avoid utilizing any company resources to build your own brand. This means no suppliers, vendors, or other professionals you have access to for your job should be made aware of your personal professional ambitions.

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