Get Your Passion Project Moving Without Quitting Your Day Job
FEBRUARY 19, 2015
You’ve finally figured out what you want to do with your life — start a company, launch a website, design an app, or found a nonprofit. The only problem is that you can’t afford to quit your job (and lose your benefits) in order to pursue it fulltime. So, where should you start? What’s the best way to get your passion project moving? And how can you tell when you’re ready to strike out on your own?
What the Experts SayKnowing where your professional passions lie puts “you in a good position,” says Dorie Clark, the author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. Lots of people don’t know what they want to do. “They’re struggling because they know they’re not happy doing what they’re doing, but they don’t know what else is out there.” An idea is certainly a promising start, but executing it while holding down a busy fulltime job is undoubtedly a challenge. “You’ve nailed the one percent inspiration, now it’s time for the 99% perspiration,” says Daniel Gulati, the coauthor of Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders. “If you are committed to making it happen, there are ways,” says Clark. So, whether you want to start a company that could become The Next Big Thing or you have a hobby that you’d like to spend more time on, here are some ideas to get your idea up and running.
Create a strategy
“Begin by sketching out exactly what it is you want to achieve,” says Gulati. Is it a large, scalable company? Is it a small company? Is it a charitable organization? “You want to have specific, concrete goals to shoot for, including revenue targets and [desired] social impact.” Next, make a timeline based on what you think you can reasonably accomplish toward your project in the time you have. “Your biggest constraint is how many hours you have to devote to this side project, so commit to an end-date [when you’d ideally like to leave your job] and solve backward from there,” he says. As you chip away on your project, continue to give your job the attention it needs. “Your day job takes precedence,” says Gulati. You must also be willing to extend your timeline if your proposed end-date doesn’t seem realistic the closer you get, adds Clark. “Be prepared to make adjustments.”
“Begin by sketching out exactly what it is you want to achieve,” says Gulati. Is it a large, scalable company? Is it a small company? Is it a charitable organization? “You want to have specific, concrete goals to shoot for, including revenue targets and [desired] social impact.” Next, make a timeline based on what you think you can reasonably accomplish toward your project in the time you have. “Your biggest constraint is how many hours you have to devote to this side project, so commit to an end-date [when you’d ideally like to leave your job] and solve backward from there,” he says. As you chip away on your project, continue to give your job the attention it needs. “Your day job takes precedence,” says Gulati. You must also be willing to extend your timeline if your proposed end-date doesn’t seem realistic the closer you get, adds Clark. “Be prepared to make adjustments.”
Save money“Having financial security gives you the opportunity to build your business on your terms,” says Gulati. But if your ultimate goal is to one day leave your job and devote yourself fulltime to your project, “you will need a financial cushion” — particularly to get you through the early stages of your new venture, says Clark. Your timeline, she says, should include clearly defined savings targets for each month or quarter and — if necessary — a plan for raising money from investors. “If you don’t have sufficient funds [when you leave your job], you will make bad business decisions out of fear.”
FURTHER READING
Take control of your schedulePerhaps the biggest challenge is finding time in your busy schedule to work on your project. A good starting point, says Clark, is to begin keeping a time log. “Look at how you’re spending your time, and make sure you’re using it the way you want to,” she says. The log will ideally help you discover valuable stretches of “free time that you’ve either missed or not accounted for” that could be channeled into your new endeavor, she adds. If after looking at your log, you’ve uncovered very little wiggle room, you might explore the idea of outsourcing parts of your project to a paid helper, says Gulati. For instance, can you hire someone to help you code? Or pay a freelance consultant to do market research? “If you’re cash-rich and time-poor, look for opportunities to trade money for time,” he says.
Patch weak spotsClark recommends listing the “concrete skills you need to develop in order to be successful at pursuing your passion full-time.” Once you have a list of necessary skills, figure out how to acquire them. Perhaps you need to take a class; maybe an internship or apprenticeship is in order. Clark suggests identifying ways to “stretch your job description” to learn new skills. For example, if knowing how to build websites will be important to your new venture, see if your current job will subsidize a class in web design that will also help you in your current job. “It should be win-win for your company,” she says. Your goal, adds Gulati, is to make the case: “This side project is a form of learning that helps me do my day job.”
Ask for flexibilityIt’s not out of the question that your boss may even give you leeway to work on your venture, according to Clark. “Read the culture of your organization” to get a feel for whether or not people would be supportive, she says. “If others have flexibility for personal reasons” — say they coach their daughter’s soccer team, they take guitar lessons, or they are writing a book — “you may be able to have flexibility to pursue a vocational passion, too.” And you may have more leverage if you’re a valued employee and your boss is concerned you’ll leave. “It’s a judgment call,” says Gulati, as to whether you alert your boss and peers to your intentions. Another option is to see whether you can take an unpaid leave of absence without losing your benefits, he says. “Being able to work on [your project] for a big block of time is an opportunity to really accelerate the pace of your progress and get it to the next big milestone.”
Don’t be sneakyIn most cases, there’s no need to be overly secretive about your project at work. Clark says that being honest makes what you’re doing “less suspicious and more legitimate.” When talking to others, “frame your project in a way that shows value to your company because you are learning new skills that you can apply to your current job,” she adds. After all, your current coworkers represent a “ready-made network of colleagues who can help you think through your idea and give you feedback,” says Gulati. They are also “your biggest allies” and the first port of call for reference checks from potential investors. “It’s in your best interest to be transparent,” he says, adding that “externally committing” to your project increases accountability and “ups the ante for you.” That said, many people at work will naturally “be skeptical,” he says. “There is a default assumption that this [project] is going to take up time and hamper your performance. You need to make sure it doesn’t impact your day-to-day work.” If you think that your boss or colleagues may be less than supportive, talk with family and friends about the project instead.
Be braveThere comes a time when you have to ask yourself, says Gulati: “By virtue of doing your project on the side — and not spending all of your time on it — are you robbing yourself of success?” It’s a question only you can answer, of course. “Following your passion might seem daunting,” says Clark. “But if you’ve planned your transition well, you’re not taking a heedless risk.” Instead, she says, you’re making an “investment in your happiness and in your future.”
Principles to Remember
Do:
- Build up a financial cushion before you leave your fulltime job
- Look for creative ways to make headway on your project either by making better use of your free time, taking a leave of absence from your job, or outsourcing some tasks to others
- Seek out training opportunities to help you develop the skills you need for your project
Don’t:
- Let your primary professional obligations slip — your day job takes precedence
- Be overly secretive about your project — current colleagues could help you think through your idea and give you valuable feedback
- Leave your job without a strategy — plan your transition so that you’re not taking a heedless risk
Case study #1: Create financial flexibility for yourself and commit to an end dateKate Blanchard had a great job at PerkinElmer, the Massachusetts-based multinational, but she was eager to build something of her own. “I wasn’t unhappy at PerkinElmer — I had a resources, infrastructure, a good team, and the opportunity to really influence — but I felt inspired to create something new and be in complete control of my own path,” she says. Kate had had a taste of entrepreneurial life — she was on the management team of ArtusLabs, the North Carolina-based software company that was bought by PerkinElmer in 2011 — and knew how “exciting it was to work at a start-up.”
Thanks to her own foresight, Kate had financial flexibility to start a new business. “The only reason I could even think about doing something like this is that early in my career was because I was living beneath my means,” she says. “I knew I wanted to be free to make these big decisions.”
In 2013, she and Robin Smith — a former colleague from Artus Labs — began exploring ideas. They “carved out time on nights and weekends” to do research and market analysis. And Kate soon came to the conclusion that she couldn’t continue to work fulltime and focus on her side project. “I couldn’t service my day-job if I was always thinking about something else.”
Kate committed to an end-date six months down the road. While she chose not to tell her colleagues about her future plans, she spent that time shoring up her team at PerkinElmer so that when she ultimately gave notice it would be a seamless transition. During those six months, Kate admits doing an occasional “gut check” about her decision. “I wrote out a list of pros and cons, and I thought about what I liked about [PerkinElmer] and my next move.”
Kate left her job at PerkinElmer in February 2014; the next month, she and her business partner started ORIGƷN, a Boston-based biotechnology company. It currently has nine employees and will have 12 by the end of next month. “It’s an exciting time,” she says. “I made the right decision. I have no regrets.”
Case study #2: Solicit ideas (and maybe funds) from others and maximize free timeDan Hogan was working in technology sales when he got the idea of starting a home healthcare agency — a company that sends nurses and therapists to a patient’s residence for rehabilitation. A former colleague of Dan’s had made a similar move. “Watching him do it gave me confidence that I could go ahead and make the leap too,” says Dan. He made up his mind that within nine months, he would leave his company. It was a trying period, he recalls. “Ultimately you’re serving two masters by working two jobs.”
He mainly worked on his project on weekends but he also spent time on it during lunch breaks and in the evenings. “Rather than spending time on Facebook or goofing off surfing the web, I realized I could use that time to focus on my idea,” he says. “I did 15 minutes of market research here and there, and squeezed in five-minute calls while walking around the block. I was shocked at the progress that I made.”
Dan says he constantly talked about his business idea with family and friends. “Talking about it made the idea visible and that created a momentum of its own,” he says. “It also made me accountable.”
Some of these conversations revolved around money. Dan was saving money on his own, but he knew he needed more funds to launch his business. The day he quit his job he had lined up 18 investors — including his college roommate and his cousin—for a total of $150,000. “I didn’t want to disappoint them,” he says. “It made everything all the more real because I had all these people who were on the line with me.”
Five years later, Dan’s healthcare company — Doctor’s Associates — had 500 patients and over 100 full- and part-time employees. He sold that company and started a new one. Today he is the CEO of Medalogix, the Nashville-based health IT company, that has raised just under $7 million in financing.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.