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Not sure if this is the right place, but I see a lot about goals and clarity here, and I'm trying to get clarity on this, so I figured I'd share it here.
I'm trying to decide (if a decision is even the right thing here) where to focus my time over the coming months. I see a few options centered around my job, the business my wife and I are starting (documenting that here) that's based on her own abilities (baking really tasty stuff), and a potential business I could start that's based on my own skills (I have experience working in data, and in sales, which, don't kill me, might translate to copywriting).
Some details - I have a full-time job in a technical field. My wife works on more like a teacher's salary, and I make 2-3x what she does. Together we can and do save 40-50% of our income. Both of our companies are somewhat fragile right now, but they're stable enough. I work remotely, have been a high performer, and therefore have it relatively easy in my work. I can work 35-40 hours a week and get more done than peers. I usually need to be close to the battle station for things that come up throughout the day, but I have a lot of flexibility to take calls or run errands (especially for the business!) as needed. My wife on the other hand has to commute and be at her desk for what ends up being a total of 11-12 hours a day when everything is factored in.
Right now, I'm holding the line at my job, and putting all my extra energy into helping get the baking business started. I see a clear path to replacing my wife's income by selling at farmer's markets. Eventually our goal is to outgrow the farmer's markets and make it Fastlane. Even if we didn't replace her income in the near term, she could leave her job, have far more time to work on accelerating the business, and we'd have more time together while still easily covering the bills and invest in the business. Seems like a no-brainer for her to leave soon to me (welcome any advice on that too)
For me though, I see 2 different paths I could take with my own attention and energy:
Would love to hear folk's take on whether I should keep my job while working on entrepreneurship, and whether I should focus on the one business, or split my time working on my own freelance/agency/human resources thing while helping the baking business. My dream outcome would be to convert my current job into a part-time role, which they've done for other people. That would essentially make them my first client, then I could go all-in on either the baking business or a combo of that and getting more clients via freelancing.
I'm trying to decide (if a decision is even the right thing here) where to focus my time over the coming months. I see a few options centered around my job, the business my wife and I are starting (documenting that here) that's based on her own abilities (baking really tasty stuff), and a potential business I could start that's based on my own skills (I have experience working in data, and in sales, which, don't kill me, might translate to copywriting).
Some details - I have a full-time job in a technical field. My wife works on more like a teacher's salary, and I make 2-3x what she does. Together we can and do save 40-50% of our income. Both of our companies are somewhat fragile right now, but they're stable enough. I work remotely, have been a high performer, and therefore have it relatively easy in my work. I can work 35-40 hours a week and get more done than peers. I usually need to be close to the battle station for things that come up throughout the day, but I have a lot of flexibility to take calls or run errands (especially for the business!) as needed. My wife on the other hand has to commute and be at her desk for what ends up being a total of 11-12 hours a day when everything is factored in.
Right now, I'm holding the line at my job, and putting all my extra energy into helping get the baking business started. I see a clear path to replacing my wife's income by selling at farmer's markets. Eventually our goal is to outgrow the farmer's markets and make it Fastlane. Even if we didn't replace her income in the near term, she could leave her job, have far more time to work on accelerating the business, and we'd have more time together while still easily covering the bills and invest in the business. Seems like a no-brainer for her to leave soon to me (welcome any advice on that too)
For me though, I see 2 different paths I could take with my own attention and energy:
- Decision 1 - Keep my job or leave it. We have 1-2 years of savings if we didn't make a dime off the business, and a lot more if I truly needed to dip beyond savings. Burn the ships and put 60 or whatever hours a week into leaving the rat race and going fastlane and see what we can do. I'm confident we could both get jobs in our fields again if we needed to. And again, we don't necessarily have to go a long time not making any money with the business we're starting. On the other hand, my job isn't too demanding, and it does give us money we can invest into the business, not to mention not having to worry about paying the bills.
- Decision 2 - Split my time between freelancing and the baking business. I am seeing so much pro and anti-freelancing on this forum. Not sure what makes the most sense in my situation. The thing is, with the tech skills I have, I think freelancing could be a great way to get started learning to serve clients and make money on my own. I also think it's something I could start leveraging the value of my time with. Long-term I could see turning it into an agency/human resources system as some people suggest if I got good at selling work and could find other people to work on projects I win. On the other hand, putting everything into the one business would probably take it further faster, and the baking business could be quite a bit more passive than a human resources system could be.
Would love to hear folk's take on whether I should keep my job while working on entrepreneurship, and whether I should focus on the one business, or split my time working on my own freelance/agency/human resources thing while helping the baking business. My dream outcome would be to convert my current job into a part-time role, which they've done for other people. That would essentially make them my first client, then I could go all-in on either the baking business or a combo of that and getting more clients via freelancing.
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