I read this from a Chicago Business Article. I thought it was quite interesting. For as long as I have been in direct sales, they always pushed doing your business full time when in reality that does not fit for everyone. So enjoy the post!
Quit your job and devote all of your energy (and finances) to starting a business: That once sounded like the best formula for entrepreneurial success. But at times like this, when jobs are scarce, would-be entrepreneurs are gravitating toward a safer and, in some ways, more challenging path: moonlighting—keeping a full-time job while nurturing a startup in their off hours.
“In the end, it's probably the smartest thing,” says Barry Moltz, a Chicago-based business consultant and contributor to Crain's small-business blog, Enterprise City. “Because you don't know if you're going to be successful and you don't know if you're cut out to be an entrepreneur.”
Tiffany Kurtz started a cupcake business in 2009 with her husband, who works in automotive retail management. Ms. Kurtz, a marketing executive in the Chicago office of New York-based OmniCom Group Inc., had been thinking about starting a side business for a while. Last fall, she finally decided the time was right.
“The economy was really going south,” Ms. Kurtz says. “And especially in advertising and marketing, people were losing their jobs left and right. . . .You just never know what's going to happen.”
Their business, Flirty Cupcakes, sells baked goods out of a van that cruises downtown Chicago. Because the location and hours of the van (known by customers as “Big Blue”) change daily, its whereabouts are updated through social media. Flirty Cupcakes has more than 3,600 followers on Twitter and 7,300 Facebook fans.
Ms. Kurtz, 40, and her husband saw Flirty Cupcakes as a small venture they could start with their savings. They expected to invest about $20,000 to outfit the van; it ultimately cost $50,000. That included the addition of a generator, a second air conditioner and replacement of the van's floor and walls—twice. (The first time, the city's health department said the van's interior wasn't smooth enough.)
Ms. Kurtz and her husband drive the van on some nights and weekends, but they've hired two bakers and two drivers to help carry the load.
Tricia Gott, meanwhile, is thinking about beer—when she's not working as a lead systems analyst for OfficeMax Inc. With Rich Szydlo, head bartender at Chicago restaurant onesixtyblue, she has launched Big Shoulders Beer Co.
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