Part-Time Business Owners Need Not Apply

As I was looking for a networking group to join, I came across one that basically advised start-up and part-time business owners to look elsewhere. I can’t say I totally understand their motives, but hey, it’s their group. So I’ll just move on.

But it got me thinking – is it even possible to have a part-time business? Let’s say, to be a full-time stay-at-home mom during the day and a successful entrepreneur for a few hours each evening and maybe some weekends? And what, in a situation like this, would be a measure of success.

It didn’t help that I got an e-mail from one of the most successful women in the virtual assistance industry, Danielle Keister, aka the GrittyVA, that said

Most of them [virtual assistants] are barely scraping by and making under $10,000 a year.

I mean, here’s someone very knowledgable about all things VA, someone who is the driving force behind annual virtual assistance industry surveys, who says that even working full-time, “slaving away”, I’d be lucky to break the 10K mark. (Yes, I’m not a virtual assistant, but I do use essentially the same business model).

Then I calmed down and said to myself that $10K a year, while not much for someone working 40 hours a week is not all that bad for someone working only 10 hours a week. It is also not bad if the main goal of this someone’s business is to provide reliable supplemental income for this someone’s family.

But is it possible for a part-time business owner to reach even this modest goal? I mean, the 10 (or ideally, 20) hours each week that I can spend building my business include client (billable) work, searching for more work, selling and marketing, and personal and professional development.

Clearly, some time budgeting is in order. Thankfully, I found a well-worn copy of Susan M. Drake’s Freelancing for Dummies at a library with a whole chapter deveoted to Budgeting Your Time.

Selling - all the activities associated with getting more business. For me these include following up on leads, usually via e-mail; sending proposals to requests for bids on online freelance boards, such as Elance; social media marketing, including this blog; and occassional good old face-to-face networking. According to Susan Drake I should budget approximately 25% of my time to spend selling. With my part-time schedule of 20 hours weekly, that’d be 5 hours.

Administration – that’s all the work necessary to run my business. For me it’s primarily project tracking and invoicing. This require about 15% of my time or 3 hours each week.

Personal and professional development – networking falls under this category as well as reading, learning new skills and attending any teleconferences, etc. While the estimate varies depending on “the requirements of your profession”, I find that I spend roughly 1 hour each day (or 25% of my time) on it.

Working for clients – aha, the meat and potatoes of my business. After subtracting all of the above from my weekly 20 hours, I’m left with … 7 hours?! Wait, that’s like less than 50% of my time is spent actually making money!

Seems like I have two choices – either spend more time working for clients (pushing my part-time business into an almost full-time one) or resign myself to making almost no money. Neither one of these options sounds good. So let’s look for it from another angle:

Let’s bring time-tracking into the picture. Turns out that my administrative expenses (of time) are much lower than 15%. In fact, I spend only 1 hour or 5% of my time each week managing projects and invoicing clients. Things are looking up now with 9 hours weekly for working with clients.

Next task – re-evaluate the selling budget. Over the next month, I will keep track of time that I spend on all the selling-related activities as well as the ROI from each. Then I will eliminate the under-performing ones, replace them with the high-payoff strategies and consider how I can do those later ones more efficiently.

Related posts:

1. 9 Benefits of Working with Virtual Assistant
2. Pros and Cons of Business Networking
3. Avoiding Virtual Assistant Outsourcing Disasters