Starting My Business as a Side Hustle Helped Me Succeed, But I Wish I Had Gone All-In Sooner
The origin story of my business will be familiar to so many entrepreneurs: I was tired of my full-time job and had an idea I just couldn’t let go of. At the time, I was working for a design firm and was frustrated that everything we were selling was so expensive. I had a vision for luxury-quality home goods at a more accessible price point, and the spark of Inglenook Marketplace was born.
I set up a website and started filling it with products, shipping handmade candles from my apartment in Brooklyn and drop shipping a curated selection of goods that I bought wholesale from other brands. I reached a point where I wanted to move on from my current job because they weren’t paying me enough—but I wasn’t ready to go all in on my business, so I interviewed for a new full-time role. My brand started growing on the side, and I was getting more and more orders every week that I would fulfill on nights and weekends. Once again, I left my current day job because of lack of growth opportunities, but started another one for fear of losing the stability of a salary. Meanwhile, my vision for my business was getting bigger and bigger, and I got my first storefront in a small town in upstate New York, only opening it on the weekends and commuting during the week to my full-time job in the city.
Finally, nearly five years after starting my company on the side, I opted to stop working for other people and give my business my all in 2019. And I’m so glad I did. Today, we’re doing better than ever, with a new storefront in a bigger town, a thriving e-commerce and white label wholesale business, and a brand that’s so beloved that we were recently voted the best candle maker in the Hudson Valley.
In some ways, I think this time spent slowly developing my business on the side was instrumental to today’s success. But I also often wish I had believed in my idea and taken the leap sooner. Here are a few of the ways building my business on the side helped me—and some of the ways I held myself back along the way.
How Building My Business On the Side Helped Me Succeed
I Got Revenue to a Stable Point
The biggest benefit of building my business on the side was getting my finances to a more stable place.
When I first started Inglenook Marketplace, my life (and bank account) looked very different. I was living in Brooklyn where the cost of living was extremely high, and I was relatively young in my career so didn’t have any savings to rely on. If I had gone full-time from the start, I would have either needed my business to start making meaningful money immediately (which is challenging for any business that needs to grow a customer base, but especially for one with as much overhead as a product-based …read more
Source:: Buffer Blog
