How to Start a Business While Working Full-time

If you have a burning desire to start a business, but have a full-time job (and a family), don't bury that passion. Go ahead, start it.

The trick is those middle of the night hours (for planning!) when everyone else is asleep. Remember, the road to success is often traveled alone, and out of plain sight. I remember when I had my first business, in New York City, as a new mother of a beautiful baby boy, right smack in the middle of baby-daddy drama of the worst kind, I built it against all odds. I built a company grossing six figures by getting up in the middle of night and working until I felt like I wanted to die. Yep, me and the fax machine churning quietly in the living room while my new little chubbles slept in the tiny bedroom down the hall.

I was working full-time at a large legal publishing firm in New York when I started my business. I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but always had a job and had just kind of scratched at little businesses here and there. Then, I became pregnant. Some would think all thoughts of entrepreneurship would fly out the window with the pending baby. But the entrepreneurial flicker in me did not die when I became a mother. In fact, it was just the opposite: it became an animal of a different kind, a wild fire, that controlled my every thought.

I started my editorial company while working that job and before I knew it, I had almost 20 freelancers coming to my apartment to pick up work. I quickly outgrew the apartment as my office and moved to modest commercial means a block and a half from Madison Square Garden. I started the business while working full-time, as a single mother, in one of the toughest cities in the world. You can do it.

In my opinion, business is about 10% brains and 90% guts! Most people just don't have the guts to start a business. All that stuff you don't know about starting a business, you can learn. But if you have the determination to start a business, and the drive to keep it afloat when everyone is telling you you're off your rocker, you can make it a success.