Suggestions? Switching from "hobby" business to full-time job

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s a short preamble to my question.
Big corporate gig I’ve been on for 8 years was dependent on bankers buying stuff.
Bankers aren’t buying much now, and honestly won’t need more stuff to build more bank branches with for most of a decade going forward.
So, layoffs amounting to 18% of the staff at headquarters included me.

Now, in the past I’d been running a home-based business centered around online retailing. I’d effectively shut it down some months back due to stress reasons, focusing on letting my wife run the business and continuing operations in order to burn out our remaining inventory.
Overwork has ceased to be a problem.
While I’d like to get back into information technology and video security, I’m skeptical of that occurring in the near term.

Thus, I find myself thinking about moving the business from part-time ‘liquidation’ mode into full-bore hell-bent-for-leather mode.
The other option is sitting around on unemployment, but the benefits from that are almost certainly less than I can make running my own business.

Any entrepreneurs have tips for me?
If I do this, the business will be home-based for the foreseeable future, with some fulfillment and warehousing duties farmed out to a trustworthy firm I’m acquainted with.

I have an inexpert grasp of business accounting for this kind of enterprise, and I understand my product lines and online retailing fairly well.
What I don’t quite have a handle on is whether I should be waking up, showering, having breakfast and then “going to work” on the same 40-hours-per-week schedule as I used to.
Any clues on how to avoid burning myself out?
Staying focused? Productive for the whole time? Do I give myself the two 15-minute smoking breaks and 1 hour lunch I used to get?

Thanks for any help, anecdotes or reading suggestions you might offer.

2

Come on, no one?

3

I’ve wondered just how much enjoyment I’d get out of productionizing my hobbies. I can fix nearly everything on a C4 era Corvette. I’d hate to have to do it for customers, though.

I can give you web hosting, a forum framework, and IDS system, or pentest-evaluate your web infrastructure. I’d have to have to do it for customers, though.

I built a number of different forum based websites to do a variety of things. Couldn’t beg, borrow, steal or buy customers, though. :frowning:

4

I got just about nothing for you as far as the OP goes. But I do have one bit of advice.

Home office deductions. Unless things have changed in the past 10ish years you have to use the portion of your home you’re deducting **100% of the time **for the business. The classic example given in the tax class I took a good while back was where the IRS disallowed the deduction for someone who let a friend spend the night on a couch in their office.

5

No sweat. The only part of my house I deduct is the floor space directly underneath boxes and shelves completely devoted to storing my inventory.

6

The two biggest stresses you’ll have in transitioning to self employment is

  1. Health Insurance. Usually COBRA will cover you for 18 months, but you’ll have to make up the cost with extra money from your business.

  2. The cost of failure. You have to make sure if the business fails, are you going to fail and wind up in bankruptcy as well? If this can occur then you need to seperate your business credit from personal credit.

  3. Cost of getting a job. Self employment isn’t good on a resume. A lot of times people use it as a cover for unemployment. So if you again decide to go back into the “corporate” world of work you have to convince the employers that you did in fact have a business and come up with a good reason why it failed. Failing at a business is similar to being fired for a lot of H/R managers.

7

I have been a recording studio engineer and producer for a lot of years and a lot of companies. Almost 13 years ago, I got down-sized out of my engineering day-job. I had been doing free-lance work on my own all along, and decided to make it a full-time gig. I had been working in the motivational and sales recording business, and one of the programs described most small business owners as “technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure.”

Made sense to me. I got OVERWHELMED by the sea of paperwork soon after beginning, and hired a business manager to help. She doesn’t do everything, but not being alone with the paperwork has been a godsend.
The first few years, I kept quite busy with word-of-mouth clients, the work ebbing and flowing. The little promotion I did fell totally flat.

The studio business has changed a lot in the last few years. Anyone with a Mac thinks they can make an album with Garage Band, and they do. Many sound pretty crummy, but crummy is OK to some people.
I came into the field from an audiophile listener background.
I wanted to make albums sound as good as they could be. Now with so much music on mp3 and I-tunes, over earbuds and computer speakers, or Autotuned and dynamic range compressed to extremes, most folks don’t know how GREAT recorded sound can be.
The current economy has changed the business, too. More and more former clients are telling me they can’t afford to record with me. They wish they could.

It has been VERY hard to keep a 40 hour week mentality for me.
I have had too much idle time, and it hasn’t been good for me. Too much time not working has sapped my energy and spirit.

I’m looking for a day job for the first time in 13 years. I’m tired of paying a frightening sum for my private health insurance each month.
Getting a regular schedule will be good for me as well.

I don’t have any particular wisdom to impart, other than have a back-up plan in the back of your mind.

But, after saying all of this, GO FOR IT !
Don’t let fear of the unknown hold you back.
Give it a shot, and good luck.

David, at 2:00 in the morning