How do you develop a business while working full time?
How to combine working full time at work and developing my own business from scratch to at least MVP?
After 8 hours at work as a developer, usually I am exhausted and not in the mood for working few more hours with code, dealing with more problems etc :(
What's your trick for pushing business idea forward?
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By not sleeping of course :-) Kidding aside, it's hard, I don't know how folks do it. I tried for many years, and I barely got anything done. I think it takes giving up some social activity, self-care (working out, friends etc). Even the 8hours of work, factor in travel, getting ready, meals etc, working an hour a day just didn't feel enough for me. I made more traction just quitting my job and working on my startup FT. That being said, I know its not a luxury for everyone. Again, I just think it comes down to what you are willing to sacrifice, and determination.
agree 100%
Look, the trick here is to have an employer that is flexible, who's culture is one of a results-oriented nature, and who supports side projects. If you have to sit there and work for 8 hours straight, that's not the right employer.
I've been working full-time for six years and I have two side projects and two books.
Agree! First, find you a flexible employer! I see my coworkers are doing good with their side project even they need to present work at the office (Be honest, they don't contribute full of 8 hours straight). However, my company is result-oriented so they can get all things done.
How do you structure your side gigs around your work?
The company I work for is fully remote and has a very async type of work-culture. This is to say, that there are no certain time that you have to be at work. As long as you are getting your work done, that's all that matters.
The flexibility that this offers was very important to me when leaving behind the indie hacker world, because it still lets me pursue my side projects and interests; only I have a paycheck coming every two weeks.
We also have a four day work week (been that way for many years).
Most days I follow a typical schedule. Sometimes I work on my side projects during the "work" day, but sometimes I do my work, on the weekends. I just work on what I want to work on, being conscious of constantly delivering and keeping the cogs at work running.
That sounds like a great place to work.
It’s not easy. If you have kids, you’ll really need to think about whether the sacrifice is worth it. A happy family is worth more than a business brings in revenue. If you have a significant other, you’ll need to have them on board in order to spend the time you need.
But, if you decide it is worth it, here is some tactical advice:
Basically, the trick is to understand that building while full-time involves sacrifice elsewhere. Figure out how much you can sacrifice without things breaking around you, and transfer that time and energy into the business.
But also, be wary of doing this prior to money changing hands. Don’t build because you’re a developer, first get pre-sales and spend the time marketing to prove there is something there. Diving right into building would be a mistake.
so you are saying purposely cheat your employer that's paying your salary? ethically, that's terrible advice. I don't know how you can keep a stoneface and go to work every day.
Do you spend 100% of your fulltime salary?
If not, ask your boss to scale back your work hours and for example work four days instead of five.
Couple advantages.
One of my buddies at work is doing this right now. He switched to 20 hrs/week and started focusing more on his startup.
TL;DR: Hire someone.
As with most things in life, you have to spend something to get something. You want to spend time but you haven't got any because you are busy earning money. So, perhaps, the logical thing would be to spend money?
Sorry to write such a simple answer here, but...
There's time in the morning, there's time at lunch, there's time in the evening. That's how I'm doing it!
1 hour/day is enough and do it consistently. With shorter working time, you will have better focus.
for inspiration, DHH from basecamp working only 10hour/week when building basecamp in early day. Jotform founder working on jotform before his fulltime job.
Reffrence :
2.https://mobile.twitter.com/dhh/status/1067594468130414597
So... I did this early on for a few years. I think I was able to juggle it because before that I was doing work and graduate school concurrently.
But over time this lifestyle it was driving me mental. Eventually something had to give, and I got fired (super low motivation to work for someone else, I guess they finally picked up on it!) and now I work on our company full time.
Huge improvement in quality of life! YMMV but if at all possible, cut down on expenses, save money, try to switch to part time position; whatever is going to allow you to focus on your company. Until you do, you are dedicating your most productive effort to realizing someone else's dream.
As for part time work ideas, I work as a college professor which has been very good schedule (~ 2 days a week) with good effort/pay ratio. It is enough to pay my bills so I do not have pressure of returning to 8-17 lifestyle. I don't know what would work for you; just throwing these suggestions out there to give you some ideas.
My go to method that has gotten me through two failed start-up attempts is to wake up early and put in the hours then. So, I would wake up ad 4:45 AM then work until 8 AM ish, netting about 15 hours of work time throughout the week and then work almost all day on Saturday and Sunday netting another 16 hours. Hence, got around 31 hours in each week. What I also learned that it is good to spend money to save time, but more importantly after failing I learned that it is more important to do market research and maybe even use no-code solutions for faster idea validation. Rather, than going of and putting hundreds of hours into building something without an engaged target audience, which is great for learning, but not so great for business.
First thought that came to mind:
Nail your MVP. Scale it down with a huge emphasis on providing value vs "ooh this would be a neat feature..." Work on the following and talking to people vs code, so you get actual feedback instead of dev in the dark. Could it be done with no/low-code tools?
But I'm the other way around - living off not-quite-FIRE savings and hoping I'll eventually build something worth what I need to put me over the edge.
You have to block out some time every day set aside for working on the business. It needs to become a habit so that you don't have to motivate yourself every day, save that energy for prioritizing what to work on, not if you're going to work at all. That should be a given.
If getting your business started is a priority, then prioritize it.
I definitely haven't succeeded but I do work on some side-projects that I hope to turn into businesses at some point.
Here are a few things that help me make progress:
Keep it fun. Don’t layer on too much here pressure for yourself or it’ll become another onerous job you don’t want to do.
Be patient. Most successful bootstrapped side-projects that turn into businesses take years—like 4-10—to build up, not months or weeks. Play the long-game.
Make a little progress every day. Try to do something everyday that moves your business forward. If you only have an hour and are tired, do something that doesn’t require a lot brain power or is interesting to you.