Last week, I was fortunate to be invited to present at the Lean Startup Meetup in Berlin and Leancamp Stuttgart – “Corporate Entrepreneurs meet Startups”.
I met a lot of passionate entrepreneurs with very inspiring B2B (and B2C) projects and gave a talk on How to Turn a Full-time Job Into a B2B Business Opportunity. You can view the slides from my talk below:
Here’s the talk I gave in Berlin this past October:
UPDATE: To help entrepreneurs apply these ideas, I’ve shared my framework on how to find B2B business opportunity in your workplace. Check it out!
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Thanks for the brilliant presentation.
How do you (and the people you have interviewed in the book) find time for working on your business when you are in a full time job?
I have tried a few approaches that definitely did not work for me:
Spending 1hr a day 5 days a week before work. This did not work for me. Most probably because of the context switching. I got little done compared to how tired I was after 3 months working this way.
Spending 1hr a day lunchtime. Same as above. Too much context switching that is unsustainable. (Creating a business is like running a marathon, it is not a sprint.)
Spending 2-3hrs a few days after work. This is good when you do it once in a while but not sustainable if you have a girlfriend, friends and family and you would like to spend time with them as well. Also, it is not the best time of the day to be creative, it is better to schedule only the repetitive tasks in the afternoon.
What I have seen work is working only 4 days a week for your employer and 2 days a week on your business. That leaves a day a week and the evenings free for leisure, socialising and maintaining your relationships with your relatives. The problem with that is that I find it difficult to find employers looking for Java developers willing to pay market rates and happy for them to work only 4 days a week.
Do you have any ideas how to go about this? 🙂
Thanks for the great comment. I’m glad you enjoyed the presentation. 🙂
It’s always a challenge trying to balance full-time work and business ambitions. Some people can pull off context switching better than others, not me.
For me, what has worked well was locking in 3-4 days of consulting and doing 1-2 days business as you suggested (first and third startups) or working a full day on Sunday and an evening during the week (Lean B2B). To me, momentum is key.
Interviewee/entrepreneur, Ben Yoskovitz, details his work schedule here:
http://www.instigatorblog.com/a-week-in-the-life-of-a-parent-entrepreneur/2012/02/10/
With 4 kids, several side projects and a full-time job, Justin Jackson probably has good insights on the challenge. See his AMA:
http://www.bootstrappers.io/posts/vcKieoHbbNbWGYZp5
There’s many ways to approach this, but I think it will always be challenging.
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