5 ways to start a company (without quitting your day job)
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Business 2.0 (via CNN Money) has some great suggestions about how to start a new business while working for someone else. These are all suggestions about building your own business in a similar business to what you are already doing. Tread carefully when going behind your employer’s back to enter the same market. Lawsuits and blackballing can (and do) happen.
- Use Your Salary as Funding
- Turn Common Complaints Into a Business Plan
- Make Your Boss a Beta Tester
- Take Advantage of Your Company’s Reputation
- Convert Your Employer Into a Business Partner
Use Your Salary as Funding
This is good advice whether you are entering the same market or not. Use as much as you can afford to build your business while still drawing a normal salary from someone else. If you are not going into a capital-intensive industry, put this money in a savings account to “pay” yourself while you are gearing up the business.
Turn Common Complaints Into a Business Plan
If you here the same complaints over and over from associates or customers, there is an untapped market there for someone to do the job better. First, go to your current employer and document the response so that they cannot claim that you stole the idea. If they seem ambivalent, go for it. You’ve done what many entrepreneurs have done before: identify a market and exploit it.
Make Your Boss a Beta Tester
This is another one you have to be totally up front about. If you come up with an idea for the company you are working for and they decline to follow it, use the service at your current job. It’s a paid way to test the service/good to see if it will work in the real world. If you find success, then you can begin offering the service/good on the side to other companies and build the business that way.
Take Advantage of Your Company’s Reputation
This only works if your company has a good name, but can be very valuable. In my chosen profession, it’s not uncommon for those that go out on their own to talk about their prior experience as a way to assure their first customers of the quality of their work. This is somewhere to also tread carefully. You don’t want to hang your reputation entirely on your (former) employer and you may not want to use that employer overtly for fear of retaliation.
Convert Your Employer Into a Business Partner
This is a very good idea if it’s a customer complaint that you can’t necessarily solve on your own. If it’s a compliment to your (former) employer’s business, it’s really best to convince them to use your good/service that trying to completely replicate the business. It may be best to get a patent/copyright if possible so that your (former) employer doesn’t just take the idea and run with it.
So, there you have it. Five more ways to get closer to the American dream of working for yourself.