Setting Up Your New Business without Giving Up Your Job

July 24 2011 by Ellie Opas in Loan Analyst |No Comments

In other words: manageable moonlighting It’s been done before and it’s not a new invention: keep your old job going while setting up your new one after hours. Be sure not to tell your boss about your new venture.

An idea Often someone working at a job, maybe even a great job, has an idea about a new type of business which he or she thinks will be more profitable, or more interesting or more challenging, so without missing a step they begin to put the new ideas into practice. It means working nights and weekends and in the end nothing may come of it, but at least they tried to make something out it of it. If it fails their old job is still intact and if it works, they can stay on at the old job until the new one is up and running.

Example Sara Blakely spent two years doing double duty as both a loyal employee and an intrepid entrepreneur. During the day, she sold fax machines for the firm Danka. On nights, weekends and during lunch breaks, she took steps to launch her new body-shaping hosiery business, Spanx. “I had been thinking about a product I could come up with on my own,” says Blakely, 40. “I liked to sell and I was good at it. But I wanted to sell something that I was really passionate about.”

The idea It was a 1998 fashion dilemma that helped her find that product. Blakely hoped to don a pair of white pants for a party, but she couldn’t figure out what to wear under them so she would look svelte and not have visible panty lines. Her solution: Wear a pair of control-top pantyhose, but cut off the feet so she could wear skin-baring sandals.

The work Blakely, then 27, kept her day job, but hunkered down to create a figure-flattering product, get a patent and research hosiery manufacturers. “I would be on the phone making calls at night and on the weekends, and e-mailing and researching,” she says. She wrote her own patent and convinced an attorney to give her a discount on filing the claim. In 1998, she received a patent for “footless, body-shaping pantyhose.” She thought of the name Spanx, and trademarked it online.

Making sense Patricia Greene, entrepreneurship professor at Babson College, says it often makes sense for budding entrepreneurs to retain outside jobs. “You have to live on something,” she says. “You’re bringing in an income while you’re organizing the resources to really launch your company.” Those receiving a paycheck should practice discipline, and sock as much money as possible away, says Melinda Emerson, author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months.

Be prudent It might be tempting to use the company copier to print a brochure or send e-mails on the firm’s laptop, experts stress that a worker should never do their entrepreneurial planning on company equipment. “Nothing from your employer should be used for starting your business,” says venture finance expert Susan Schreter. “When you’re being paid by an employer you should be doing their work.” The personal use of company resources could lead to an untimely pink slip.

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