I did it. I finally did it. After four years and ten months of working at Factor360 full time and six years of building my business on the side, I’ve finally made the entrepreneurial leap. As of November 7th, 2012, I will have quit my day job to pursue my business on a full time basis. This transition will also allow me to have more time to focus on my seminary education and, most importantly, to spend more time with my growing family.
It was always the plan to be self-employed at some point, but nothing ever seemed to force the issue. I always had enough time to do my work for Factor360 and I was also able to grow my business with the help of a team of virtual assistants and some serious software automation. It worked pretty well until September of this year when my life changed forever, when my son, Micah, was born 10 weeks early.
Between a taxing semester of seminary classes, spending four-to-six hours a day at the NICU with Micah, working a full time job for Factor360, teaching a class for DSU and dealing with my growing business, there just isn’t any time left. I want to be around for my son growing up and know that’s simply not possible with all of the activities on my plate. I will be done with seminary in the spring, which will certainly help, but between Factor360 and American Consumer News, LLC, I still effectively have two full time jobs.
I enjoy the work that I do for Factor360 for the most part, but after five years, the work has become routine and mostly involves supporting the many projects that I’ve built. I’m very happy with what I’ve accomplished during my five years at Factor360. I built a content management system that now powers about 150 different websites and built several software systems for happy customers, but it’s time for a new chapter in my life.
There’s no question that my business is ready to provide a full-time income for Karine, Micah and myself. My company has produced more income for our family than my position at Factor360 since 2009. My business is now diversified and isn’t dependent upon the good graces of Google, Apple or any other big company to remain profitable.
To prepare for the entrepreneurial leap, I took several steps. First, I gave myself a raise so that I would receive a paycheck that covers our monthly expenses. My business now has 12 months’ of expenses saved as retained earnings and Karine and I have a sizable emergency fund. We have no debt. I setup a new health insurance policy with help of a broker (Jesse Haller at Compass Financial Group), since Factor360 is too small to be covered by COBRA.
As part of the transition, I want to leave well at Factor360 and don’t plan on burning any bridges. I provided four weeks’ notice instead of the customary two. I setup plans to provide appropriate documentation for the projects that I had worked on and offered to be available via email to answer questions on a limited basis after my official term of employment is complete. I had a meeting with my immediate supervisor to plan what projects I could finish up in my remaining four weeks. Since I do software development for Factor360, I also set the expectations for what availability I would have for consulting in the future.
As of the writing of this post, I have just under four weeks of work left at Factor360. My plans for the immediate future include spending more time with my wife and my new son and graduating from seminary in the spring. I also have some plans to grow my business, but it won’t be a substantial focus until I graduate seminary.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned.