How to Start a Business While Working Full-Time

Hey, it's Dan Perry here and in this episode I'm going to talk about how to start your business while working a full-time job. Hello and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Hanimans startup podcast. Now I'm recording this episode because I know there are a lot of people out there who are currently working a full-time job. They want to start a business, but they aren't ready to just quit their job like I did. Now maybe you're one of them. Maybe you have a family to support. Maybe you don't have enough money in your savings account to support you for six months or a year while you get established. And maybe the fear and uncertainty is just too much for you to take that leap of faith. So in this episode I'm going to lay out a process for starting up your business on the side so you can get your business established without taking such a big risk and without overwhelming yourself. Now I've helped hundreds of people, maybe even thousands of people do this and I want you to know that it's totally doable. So here's what I'm going to cover again. First, I'm going to walk you through the strategic process for starting your business while working full-time so you can avoid overwhelming yourself and burning out. Then I'm also going to talk about how to leverage the fact that you have a job to accelerate your business growth. So how to leverage the advantages of having that job to accelerate your growth. Then I'm going to share the number one biggest reason why people fail to get their businesses going while they're working full-time. And finally, some thoughts on when it's better to quit your job before starting your business and when it's better to start on the side. Now if this is your first time tuning in, this is a monthly podcast. My goal with each episode is to get you one step closer to running a profitable handyman business or other home service business. If you'd like to learn more about starting a profitable home repair business, then I recommend listening to my past episodes or visiting my website at handymanstartup.com where I have hundreds of free articles and other resources. If you're ready to get going and you want to get on the fast track to growing your business, then I recommend investing in my online courses, which you can also find at my website handymanstartup.com. All right, so let's jump right into this topic, which is how to start a business while working full-time. And this process is all about leveraging the advantages and overcoming the challenges. Because here's the situation. When you have a full-time job, you usually have limited time and limited energy. You might only have a couple hours a week to dedicate to your business. And you're not going to be necessarily so fresh because you're also working this other full-time job. So you need to be more strategic with your time and energy because everybody has limited time and energy. Those are two limited resources. If they're already spent up, there's only so much you're going to have left or you're not going to have any to grow your business. So the process I'm going to share is going to be all about overcoming those challenges and leveraging the advantages of having a job. And the first step in that process is to figure out where you can conserve some energy that you can then use to grow your business. Again, since you have limited energy, you need to conserve it in other areas of your life. So what you're going to want to do here is sit down, write down all the other things that you're focusing your energy on. Maybe it's work, maybe it's a sport that you play on the weekends, maybe it's some hobbies, maybe it's some other obligations you have with family. But sit down, write those things down and decide what you're willing to stop doing or focusing your energy on so you can save that energy and again, use it to grow your business. And one of the biggest places that most people are going to be able to do this is within their actual job. Okay, you're going to want to conserve your energy at work. And I'm not saying that you don't want to do your job. You should definitely still do your job. But stop trying to over-achieve, stop showing up early, stop going home late, stop caring about office politics, stop worrying about impressing your boss or getting a promotion or other steps within growing yourself in your career. Stop worrying about all of that. Just show up, do your work and maintain a zen mindset where you just kind of let things float on past, go home and then use all that energy that you saved to grow your business. And the funny thing about doing this is you might even find that you become more effective. Your boss likes working with you even more and you're happier in the process. It's amazing how much energy we can save when we stop taking certain things so seriously, just show up and do the work. And I know this can be the case because I've seen it happen with my wife. When my wife and I first started having kids, she had to quit a demanding job because it was just too much for her to do both, have kids and have this job. So she quit that job but she still wanted to work. So she got a less demanding job and we decided from the very beginning that this was just a job to give you something to do to get you out of the house and interacting with people. But the moment it becomes too stressful and too demanding, you're going to quit. And I told her like and she agreed to say yeah, okay, we're going to do this. But over the last five years there have been several situations where the job starts to creep in and get more demanding. She'll get a new boss. That boss will have higher expectations. And then we'll have to have a talk and sit down and decide consciously like hey listen, remember what our goal here is. Okay, we don't need this job. This is optional. And by her just kind of letting go of caring so much and not worrying about being promoted or being the highest performer. She just shows up and does her work and does a good job without really having to worry about it. And as a result, she ends up being one of the higher performers within her coat, within her peers. And so she's doing great but she's not, she's not putting hundreds of hours or working or trying to stay late or trying to take on all these extra projects. And as a result, she's been able to be a really good mom. And then once our kids are in school, then she can start focusing on her career, start making more money and all that good stuff if she wants to. So again, that first step is to conserve your energy. And this is your first step even if you don't know what kind of business you're going to start, even if you're unsure. But once you've decided that you're going to start a business and that's your goal and you know for sure that that's what you want to do is start a business. Conserv your energy is the first step. Okay, then you can move on to the second step, which is to carve out some time in your schedule. Again, it's going to be very hard to work on your business when you have so many other things going on in your life. Unless you actually schedule this in your schedule and protect that time like you would protect a doctor's appointment or another important engagement that you can't miss. It's very unlikely that you're going to maintain the momentum that's going to keep you going and keep you motivated throughout the journey to get this business going. So figure out when you're going to work on your business, actually sit down and look at your schedule decide what days schedule it on there again like an appointment. And even if it's only 30 minutes, even if you can only schedule 30 minutes a week reliably, but you're just going to try to work on it other times, at least do that just so you can consistently work on your business because that is so important and it's very hard to do if you don't schedule it. And just by doing these first two steps, you're setting yourself up with the space to grow your business, with the space to think about what business you're going to start, with the space to decide how you're going to start that business and start working toward that. But if you're just constantly doing the same things you've been doing, you're stuck in your old habits and you're kind of thinking about starting a business, but you're never actually taking any kind of action, you're just going to stay in that space, you're never going to move forward until you create the time to give yourself to work on that business. And once you've done that, the third step is to choose a proven business, a proven business. If you're starting your business with a full-time job, you don't have time to change the world. You don't have time to come up with some super innovative tech product that's going to make you a billionaire. That is just way too competitive. Frankly, I think that's a bad idea in general, but it's especially a bad idea if you're working full-time, a full-time job and this is just your side business because that's like trying to make it to the NBA and practice less than all of your teammates. It's just not going to happen unless you're like seven feet tall and just insanely talented. So again, step number three, choose that proven business. The less sexy and exciting, the better, the more common, the better. that is going to dramatically improve your chances of success. And that leads me to the fourth step, which is going to be to follow a mentor. Find a mentor and follow their advice. So this is going to be someone who can guide you and help you avoid common mistakes and allow you to understand what best practices are, so you can skip a lot of the learning mistakes and just get straight to what works. Now this is probably one of the most powerful tools that you could possibly use to grow a business. Because there's so many things available to you. There's online courses. Maybe you can find a friend who has done it. Maybe there's another business person you know that you can reach out to who works in the exact same industry that you're thinking about getting into. And this is going to save you months or probably years of frustration. It's going to make it more likely that you'll overcome the challenges because you'll have somebody to kind of guide you through them. And it's going to help you maintain the right perspective. So you can actually enjoy the process and not feel so lonely in the journey to starting your business. So again, find that mentor. Figure out what's working so you can duplicate it. Now obviously I'm biased because I have online courses that help you start a profitable home service business. And I've invested hundreds of hours creating resources that I know are going to save you time and help you get much better results than you would without them. But regardless of whether you invest in my programs or somebody else's, the important thing is that you find a mentor. You find a proven system and you follow that. And one thing that people kind of mess up here when they're thinking about finding a mentor is they think that their situation is different somehow. They think that maybe their market is more competitive and that there's too much cheap labor in order to run a profitable service business. I'm here to tell you right now that there is cheap labor in every city. Okay, it's always the same. Just like there's rich people, there's always poor people. Pretty much every city you go to, there's really nice neighborhoods, there's poor neighborhoods. There's people who pay $1,000 a night to stay at a hotel room and there's people that don't even want to pay $50 a night and so they'll sleep in their car. So that's a big mistake is thinking that your situation is somehow unique or different so that a mentor isn't going to be able to help you. And 99.9% of the situations that is not the case. So again, step number four is to find a mentor and follow their advice. And I can't emphasize the importance of this enough. And that leads me to step number five, which is to build the foundation of your business before you start to take on customers. So set up your systems and your marketing that are going to make your business far more profitable and enjoyable to run over the long term before you start taking on customers. Now a lot of people, when they want to start a handyman business or any kind of service business, really, their first thing is they just want to start making money. They want to start providing that service in exchange for some cash. However, when you're starting your business part time on the side, hopefully with the intention of going full time with it later, you're going to find the situation much easier, more effective and more profitable. If you set up your systems and your marketing before you start packing your schedule with jobs. Now even if you are going after your business full time and you've already quit your job, I still recommend that you do the same process where you build the foundation of your business before you try to make money and take on customers. However, when you're doing this part time on the side and you have a full time job already, this becomes even more important because you have such little time. And there's no way that you're going to be able to both provide services and do the things that are going to set you up for success in the future. So one of the best ways to do this is to implement your marketing system and build what I call an automated lead funnel before you even start taking on work. So in my course, handyman marketing machine, I walk you through building an online presence, building a website, getting traffic to that website, and then turning that traffic into leads who pick up the phone, call you, they're ready to hire you, they already have a certain amount of trust in your business and they want to hire you specifically because of that marketing system has built so much trust with them. So in handyman marketing machine, which is kind of my flagship course. Okay, that's one of my main programs that I offer. I teach you how to do this. And what I recommend is that you do that before you even try to fill your schedule and try to start paying for leads and trying to make money. Because if you build that system out, eventually you're going to get to the point where your website is generating a consistent and reliable flow of high paying customers and leads to your business on autopilot without you having to work on paying for leads or doing any advertising. And that's going to put you in a very powerful position to fill your schedule on demand. That's going to put you in a position where you could easily quit your job and feel secure enough because you're generating and getting so many leads coming in, so many people are asking you for your services. And ideally, you want to get to the point where you're turning down jobs, where your schedule is full several weeks in advance and you're turning down jobs because that is going to allow you to choose your most profitable jobs, not have to take on work that you don't want because you need the business and it's going to give you that freedom and security in your business. So that's step number five is to set up your systems and marketing first before you take any customers and in that process, just turn down most of the work you're getting. Maybe you'll take on a couple of jobs here and there just to kind of test the waters and have a little bit of fun with it. But in general, you want to get those systems and that foundation built first. And once you've done that and you start taking on customers, the next step is going to be to perfect the formula and to stay in test mode. So at this point, you still have your job, but you have your business established. You've established your LLC, you've built your website and your online presence, you've got your invoicing and quoting system set up so you know how to communicate effectively with customers. You have your pricing set up and you've created that pricing strategy. Ideally, you followed my courses to do that because it's going to save you time and get you much better results. And you're still working a full-time job though, but you're starting to take some customers or starting to make some money. This is the time when you want to take some risks and test higher prices. Because if you don't get a job, no big deal. You can get the next one. But if you don't test that higher price, you're probably going to limit yourself. You're probably going to undercharge. And here's the deal. When you're starting this business, you're trying to replace your income in a way where you're not going to have to work 90 hours a week in order to do it. You still want to have a battling life. That's probably why you want to start a business in the first place is to have more balance and control over your schedule. So when you're starting this business, shoot for the ideal and only test ideas that are going to support that reality. And this is specifically going to be with a handyman business, your pricing strategy and the services that you offer. You're probably not going to want to offer every single service that you possibly can. And you're probably going to want to charge more than you think is justifiable. And this is the time to figure that out and to test it and not let your limiting beliefs get in the way. Because if your pricing model isn't going to support your lifestyle, what's the point of starting the business? So this is the time to test that. Don't be afraid to lose a customer because your price is too high. You have no need to make short-term profits. You can focus on those long-term goals because you already have a consistent income with your full-time job. So again, step number six is to perfect the formula by staying in test mode to really dial in your business. So let's review quickly that process again. The first step is to conserve your energy. Decide what you're going to stop caring about, stop over-achieving at work and save some energy so you can invest that in your business. Step two, carve out some time, schedule that so you can maintain that momentum and progress in your business. It's going to keep you motivated. Step number three, choose a proven business so you actually have a chance to succeed. Step number four, find a mentor and follow their guidance so you can dramatically accelerate your results and make the process more enjoyable while avoiding huge mistakes. Step number five, set up your systems and your marketing first so that you have a solid foundation for your business so you're not trying to work for customers and build your business at the same time because that is very ineffective and slow and stressful. And then step number six is to stay in test mode so you can dial in your pricing and and your service offerings so you can make your businesses profitable as it can be without limiting yourself by those limiting beliefs. And if you follow that process, you have patience and you work consistently, it's gonna take some time, but you will build a profitable and enjoyable business that you can take full time whenever you have the confidence and you're ready to quit that job and experience a higher level of freedom in your life. Okay, now that we've covered that process, we've got the step-by-step process for starting your business while having a full-time job. Now I wanna talk about how to leverage the advantages of having a job to accelerate the growth of your business. And there are three main advantages that I wanna talk about that you can use to make the process of growing your business both more fun and faster. The first advantage is very obvious. It's that you have more money. You have that cash flow from your existing job. Now if you were to quit your job and try to start your business full-time, then you're gonna have to rely on your savings. You're gonna be living on your savings and you're gonna have a lot less money to invest in growing your business. You might not have any money. You might have to bootstrap the whole thing like I did when I started my business. And I had to do everything. I literally did everything from accounting to designing my logo, building my website, filing for LLC documents, everything. And it took me a lot of time. And while I learned a lot in the process, which helps me teach other people these concepts, it slowed me down a big time. Now if I had more, would I had more money than I could have invested in somebody designing a logo for me? I probably would have got a better logo, you know, things like that. So with that cash flow, use that advantage and invest in your business. Invest in consulting with mentors. Invest in hiring help and hiring freelancers to do stuff that you're just not very good at that aren't going to pay off long term by learning them. You know, one thing you could do is certain aspects of your marketing, like your website design. I wouldn't recommend outsourcing all of your marketing because your website design isn't gonna get you customers. It's gonna help you turn traffic into leads, but it's not gonna get traffic by itself. So you still wanna learn how to do those things, but you don't necessarily have to waste all your time designing your website. And you don't have to do everything. So utilize that cash flow. And one of the best places here is obviously going to be investing in resources that are gonna help you save time and accelerate your results. So mentors, freelancers, courses, use that cash flow to accelerate your business. The second advantage that you have because you have that job is you have no time pressure. Okay, there's no rush. And this is a huge benefit if you can maintain the patience, which I understand is pretty difficult. But if you can maintain that patience and think longer term with your actions and do things that are gonna set up your future self for success, that always pays off in business. So if you do think long term and you think, okay, I'm going to build this marketing system that's going to position me as a professional that people respect and that who want to pay, they're willing to pay higher rates to me because I look like a professional and I have these trussed building things online. You take the time to build that out as much patience as that takes. It's going to pay off for the next several decades of your business if you're in business that long. It's also going to lead to a more profitable and enjoyable business because you're not going to have to take on jobs you don't like. You know, let's say a job comes your way and it's not profitable. It's working for a customer that you can tell you don't really like that much. You can just turn it down or you can quote higher prices for jobs. This can make a big impact on how you end up being positioned. So let's say you start this business full time, you quit your job, you really need the money. So you got to get going on this, okay. Every single job that comes your way, you're going to feel like you have to take that job and you're not going to be able to price your services in a way that's going to be profitable because you don't want to lose the business. That's not a very good place to be. But if you're only taking on jobs that you really want that are profitable because there's no time pressure, that's going to lead you down a much more enjoyable and profitable path. So benefit number two again is there's no time pressure so you can take that long term mindset approach. And the third obvious benefit is that it's lower risk. There's lower financial risk, there's lower risk of getting stressed out and having constant pressure on you. And there's lower risk of getting stuck doing something you don't want to do. So let's say you start the business so you realize you don't like doing it. Well, you can just, if you still have your job, you can just stop doing your business and continue doing your job, no big deal. So there's lower risk. And with that lower risk, why that's an advantage is that it allows you to have more fun with it. So be a little more lighthearted, stress less. And a lot of studies have shown that having fun and being less stressed allows you to be more creative. So use that, be creative, have fun, enjoy the process. There's no reason you can't enjoy it. Sure, it might be a lot of work. Some of it might be very boring, but it doesn't mean you can't have fun with it and enjoy certain aspects of it. The other reason this lower risk is beneficial is that you can afford to make mistakes. So you can shoot for the ideal with your pricing and your services that you offer. You can try to build a business, maybe in a way that you don't think is possible, but you can shoot for that and think, okay, I'm only gonna install custom cabinets. Not gonna do that for less than $100 an hour. But if you invest that, there's no risk. See if you can shoot for that ideal. Use that advantage and you might find out that it works out better than you think. So again, leverage those advantages because you have them at your disposal. You have that cash flow, you have no time pressure, and you have that lower risk. The next thing I wanna talk about is the number one biggest challenge that you're gonna face when growing your business while working your full-time job. This is why most people fail to start a business while working full-time, and why sometimes it's better to quit your job. And that challenge is that it's very difficult to follow through consistently because there's no pressure and there's no risk. So people simply don't follow through. Why don't they follow through? Well, when you decide to start a business, your motivation is at a high point. You're usually deciding because maybe it's the first of the year or maybe something really bad happened at work and you're fed up, but eventually that motivation is gonna wane. And then if that happens at the same time where progress is really slow or you come up against a roadblock that's kinda slowing you down in your business, then your motivation is gonna drop, things are getting hard. The pain of continuing to work on your business is it gonna overcome the feeling of joy and progress that you get from working on it and the future anticipation you have about having that business, plus there's no accountability and you have all these other things going on in your life. It's so easy to give up because you have to make the decision thousands of times to keep going, but you only have to make the decision once to give up. And the fact that following through is so hard is the reason that most people who wanna start a business never do it. It's not because businesses fail or it's too hard or they're not smart enough or they wouldn't be able to figure it out if they tried. It's because following through is so hard. But luckily, there are ways to overcome this challenge and do it reliably. And the best way to do that is to build in accountability. And there are several ways that you can do this. One way is to join a mastermind group or find some other friends who are also building their business and meet with them regularly, hold each other accountable. Personally, that's not an effective method for me. I just don't for whatever reason, I'm not motivated by that. But the thing that I find most helpful by far is to use what I call an accountability contract where I basically write out what I'm gonna do over a given period of time, commit to those tasks, say I'm gonna do this, exact thing, make it very clear, and then have a clear negative outcome that I have to do if I don't follow through. That negative consequence could be something like DIY project around the house that my wife wants me to do, but I really don't wanna do or giving money to somebody that I don't wanna give money to. And then I print out that contract, I sign it, and I give it to my wife, and I make her hold me accountable so that I follow through on these things that I want to commit to. And as silly as this sounds, it is extremely effective just to maintain that progress and allow you to push through the resistance enough to get that work done. Now one of the biggest challenges within this challenge is the fact that most people think that they're always gonna be as motivated as they are right now. So maybe right now while you're listening to this podcast you're thinking, "You know what, I'm super motivated, I'm tired of my job, I'm definitely gonna do this, I don't need to do waste my time with accountability contracts visualization practices. and all that stuff. But the reality is that your motivation is going to diminish over time and you're not going to be as motivated. So I definitely recommend creating some sort of accountability up front. Worst case is it does nothing for you. You were going to take action anyway. Best case is it's actually going to help you maintain that consistency. And in six months from now, when you've done a bunch of work that you otherwise wouldn't have done, you're going to be very happy that you created that accountability contract. So again, don't overestimate your ability to follow through, put into place things that are going to guarantee that you follow through. OK, so now that we've covered the advantages and how to leverage the advantages of having a job, and then I've talked about the major challenge, which is following through, now let's talk about when it actually makes sense to quit your job before you start your business. So in some cases, I believe it's actually a much better idea to quit your job now. Now for me, that was the case. I was in a situation where I absolutely hated my job. I was depressed. My health was declining. I was just in a really bad state mentally and physically because of how bad I hated my job. That's just the reality of it. And I really couldn't get any traction on any business ideas while I was in that state. I knew that I needed a reset. I needed time to recalibrate and recover before I could even think of doing something else on top of this job I was already doing. I would have just never followed through. I couldn't even get started. So there were some very good benefits for me to quit that job, even though there's some disadvantages. I had to use my savings and live off my savings for a while until I got it going. But there were a lot of benefits to quitting your job before you start. One of those is lots of time. So when you can dedicate all of your time to your business and work 10 hours a day to get it started, that's very helpful. That gives you a lot of progress very quickly. And it still takes some time to get going. But you get a lot more progress and a lot more momentum that way. The other benefit is there's a ton of motivation. Okay, because even when things got hard and they got hard a lot, I wanted to give up many times. I couldn't give up. I had no safety net. I needed that income. And I even thought about getting a bartending job at one point, but I didn't. But because I had to do it, I just kept on going through, kept pushing through challenges and doubts and all these things. And eventually I succeeded. So not having an income is a very good motivation to keep you locked in and focused. The downsides of that are obvious. Like it's more stressful. There's more risk. And one downside that I haven't mentioned is that you're more short term focus. Like you need to make concessions on which jobs you take because you need that money. So you can't necessarily risk. You don't feel like you can risk quoting higher prices. And you end up working for a lot of customers and jobs that aren't ideal. It's a learning experience, but it's less than ideal in that case. So you may want to quit your job before starting your business. If you have at least six months worth of living expenses in your savings account, at least, I would say ideally at least you want a year, but if you had at least six months, you could make it happen. If you really hate your job and it's just absolutely crushing your spirit, stressing you out and making you depressed, and you know that you'll never put in the work unless you have to. Unless your back is up against the wall and you have to put in that work, you know you're never gonna do it. Those are good reasons where you might just want to quit now, okay, because everybody's different. Not everybody can take this slow, methodical approach and work proactively when they're comfortable and happy. Sometimes people need to be uncomfortable to get to work. And if you're willing to take on that extra risk, knowing that it might not work out very well and you might end up in a worse situation, then maybe that's the right choice for you. But you're gonna wanna think through this carefully and make the best decision for you because I'm just a guy over here behind a microphone right now and I can't tell you exactly what you should do in your situation. Now, if you're the type of person who tends to be more patient and methodical and your job isn't all that bad, it's kind of stressful, you don't really like it, you're bored but it's not that bad. And you don't have a lot of money in savings. Then it's gonna make sense to start your business on the side while you work your full time job 'cause that's gonna give you that cash flow, that lack of pressure, that low risk and allow you to have that long-term focus and build your business that way. So really, I think it depends on kind of assessing your own situation and figuring out what's gonna work best for you. I think for most people, it's probably best to start the business on the side. Try to start it on the side first. If it's just not working, you're getting stressed out and you know that you need that full time effort on it, then consider quitting if you have that money in savings. But the last thing you wanna do is put yourself in an even more stressful, worse situation by quitting your job and then having to start a business and just struggling there. So to sum all this up, starting a business while working full time has its challenges but it's totally doable and it even has some pretty good advantages. But the key is gonna be to conserve your time and your energy and other areas of your life. So you can apply it to your business, find a mentor, choose a proven business model, set up the foundation of your business before you take customers and then test and refine your business and shoot for the ideal with your pricing and the jobs that you take on. It's gonna take time in patience, but showing up consistently will give you a sense of progress which is gonna feel good and it's eventually gonna get you to your goal. Now I hope you found this podcast helpful and it moves you just a little bit closer toward your business goals. Now to learn more and to get step-by-step guidance on starting your business from scratch, visit handymanstartup.com and definitely consider investing in my online courses. I've spent hundreds of hours developing and refining these courses and they've been proven to work by hundreds of others. I actually just got done updating handyman marketing machine, which I've been offering now for close to nine or 10 years now, it's hard to say. But I continue to refine these courses and improve them and try to make them world class. So definitely check those out and thanks for listening.