So as years go, I think we can all agree that 2020 simultaneously blows goats and sucks donkey balls. I think that’s a given. And while starting a new business is tough at the best of times, starting one this year has been just epically hard. Personally, I founded a new creative agency along with a couple of co-workers when we were all made redundant together.
Who else here is doing this right now? Have you tried to start a new business this year? How are you finding it?
Kudos to you if you are. Let’s commiserate and bitch and moan here together.
I was part of team founding a hand sanitizer company this spring. Many of our competitors have dropped out and we’re still alive but we just went through a restructuring that dropped our staff from 22 down to 9.
We’ve got really good product unlike many of our competitors but people were burned by crap early in the pandemic and its a lot of work convincing people to give us a try. We’ve got almost 80% placement once we can get someone to trial our product. It’s been a weird year and they have been a lot of adjustments in the market and it seems we’re constantly pivoting. I’m still not sure if we’re going to make it I think the next three months will push us over the edge one way or another.
My husband started his own psychology practice in January, which was interrupted by the birth of our son in March and the simultaneous onset of the pandemic. He’s now paying money for an office space he can’t use and doing sessions via telehealth from home. We lost half the year’s income due to COVID-related childcare issues. He’s lucky he can do his work remotely, and he’s also lucky that he’s so well-regarded that people are clamoring to see him. We finally got child care in place, so now we’re slowly starting to stabilize, but it’s pretty safe to say we’ve been set back about five years financially.
When he decided to leave his job at a family practice, he projected that he would make 25-50% more in income even after business expenses. At this time we’re not even making what he made at the old job. A lot of the initial holdup, besides all the time he had to take off for child care, was that setting things up with insurance companies took up way more time and energy than he anticipated, and that was time he couldn’t generate income. He’s still wrestling with some insurance issues eleven months into his new business. He’s slowly been adding on more clients so it looks like things are getting better, but man, this is not how it was supposed to go.
The worst part is there’s not a lot I can do. I work part-time and we’ve flirted with the idea of leaving my job for me to be a SAHM, but it’s not what I want out of life. I love my job and my income is almost exactly what we’re paying the nanny on the days I work, so it wouldn’t save us any money. I just have to stand by and watch him work and trust he knows what he’s doing. My husband is a brilliant man, much smarter than me at these things, but it feels so stereotypically gendered that I’m just taking care of the baby and hoping everything turns out okay.