Exhausted from your 9-to-5 grind with no end in sight? That desperate feeling trapped in your job while dreaming of something more is all too real.
The thought of starting a business while working full time could seem impossible at first, especially if you are already stretched thin with your time.
I’ve been exactly where you are. I started my blog a few months before starting my full-time job and have been steadily growing my blogging income, working mostly on weekends.
The desire for financial independence, flexible schedules, and control over your time can finally drive you to make that decision. But how can you start your business without burning out?
I’m here to share everything I’ve learned on this online business journey (starting my blogging business) so you can start your dream small business this weekend without sacrificing your secured income.
Why Start a Business While Working a Full-Time Job?
The thought of working at a job until I’m 70 honestly scares me!
I couldn’t imagine decades more rushing out the door, missing my kids’ important moments, and counting vacation days like gold coins. Maybe you feel the same?
Here’s why starting a side hustle changed everything for me:
- Take control of your schedule: No more explaining to your boss why you need to leave for your child’s soccer game! With your own business, you work around family needs, not the other way around. Imagine being the one who picks up your kids from school without the guilt trip.
- Achieve financial freedom: Make money decisions based on what’s best for your family—not what your employer demands.
A growing side business could help replace your salary, pay off debts faster, or save for your kids’ college. That peace of mind, knowing you’re not dependent on just one paycheck, is amazing! - Be your own boss: No more begging to work from home when your child is sick. You make the rules and decide when and how you work!
What would this kind of freedom look like in your life?
Start With Your Why
Yes, I know. You might think you don’t really need this step because you already know why you are doing this (so you can go proudly to the office one day and say with a smile, “I quit!” and never look back).
Although the ability to quit your job is priceless, there’s no doubt about that. If you think about it, you’ll find many other reasons to start a side business.
Before you start planning how to start a business, I highly recommend writing down all of these reasons so you can refer to them later, which will motivate you to keep going.
12 Powerful Strategies for Starting a Business While Working Full Time
1. Start by Tracking Your Time!
If you are constantly trying to figure out how to get more done in a day, you must start by tracking everything you do daily so you can have a clear picture of what you spend your time on and how long it really takes.
Try to record everything you do for a week (yes, Monday to Sunday). Take a notebook and write down everything you do from the minute you wake up until you go to sleep, with the exact hours and how long it took you.
Don’t criticize yourself when you do that. Be honest, and remember that this is your opportunity to create more time for the things that matter to you.
2. Give up on Something! Start Outsourcing!
The most important thing to do before you start thinking about how to get more done in a day is to look at your tracking journal and ask yourself, “What activity can you give up on?”
It could be watching another episode of your favourite series on Netflix or scrolling endlessly through Facebook to see what your friends are doing.
Some things must be done (like cleaning, cooking, or doing the laundry). Think carefully: Are there any tasks you could outsource? If you can afford to outsource and the expense is less than your hourly rate at your day job, start doing it today.
3. Combine 2 Activities Together!
This is one of my favourites! Let’s say that you are chatting with your friend on the phone and you haven’t seen her for a long time (this most definitely will take more than 15 minutes…, so why not go for a walk at the same time?)
You have a doctor’s appointment that you have to go to and drive for 20-30 minutes and even have some waiting time in the waiting room – why not listen to one of the lessons inside that new training you’ve just enrolled in?
Find the 2 activities that you can combine together and get used to finding creative solutions to make the most of your time.
4. Find the Most Productive Time in Your Day
What is the time of day that you are the most productive? Are you an early bird or a night owl?
Whatever time of the day it is, you know you can focus and complete things much more quickly – this is the time that you’ll work on your side hustle.
It could be at 5:30 a.m. before you go to work or from 8 – 10 p.m. after the kids are already in bed. Over the weekend, this can also be in the early evening after everyone is tired from the family activity or early in the morning when everyone is still sleeping in—there is no one right answer.
The right answer is what works best for you and when you are the most productive and not too tired.
5. Divide Your Work Time Into Learning and Implementing
The first one is learning, and the second one is implementing. It’s good to remind yourself and be aware that as much as it’s fun and exciting to learn new skills (especially skills related to something you are passionate about), the results will only come from you implementing what you learn.
6. Turn Commute Time Into Learning Time!
This will save you hours and will most definitely will help you get more done in a day.
If you take the train or drive to work, you will want to use this time to learn and develop the skills you need by listening to audiobooks.
Check out “Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too,” by Gary Vaynerchuk (which I’ve already listened to twice in 4 months on Audible), podcasts, or the training you’ve signed up for.
You can also do some research to help you make a decision on something you are struggling with. Let’s say that you need to decide on accounting software for your side business, and you have 2 that you have heard of but need more information to decide on. You can listen to YouTube videos reviewing these 2 while you are on the train.
When you are at home, sitting in front of the computer, the best use of your time is to implement the new things you’ve learned (as much as possible).
7. Be Flexible With Your Working Hours
Are you wondering how to get more done in your new side business? Remember to shift your focus and consider how you can best fit your side hustle work into your day.
If you can, change your day job hours according to your productive time slot (a tiny change that will help you be more productive).
Let’s say your most productive time is between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. Are you able to start working at the office at 9 a.m.? If so, you can work one hour in the morning, then get dressed and still catch the train on time to arrive at the office by 9 a.m.
However, if your most productive time is late afternoon or evening, you might want to ask your manager if you can start working earlier.
If your children are old enough to go to school alone, your partner can help with that in the mornings. You can quickly start working at the office at 7:00 or 7:30 so you can be at home in the early afternoon with your kids and run some errands before working on your side hustle in the evening.
8. Plan Your Weekends Carefully
Here’s my game-changing secret: work on your side hustle FIRST thing on weekend mornings!
As a busy mom, I know weekends fill up fast with meal prep, cleaning, family time, friends, and maybe even squeezing in that Zumba class. Without a plan, your business gets pushed to “whenever I have time”—which usually means never!
I used to work on my business from 4 to 7 p.m. on weekends—a huge mistake! By then, I was drained from family activities. I’d be too tired to focus if we went to the park. Things would run late, and suddenly, it was dinner time with nothing accomplished.
Now I wake up before everyone else on weekends. The house is peaceful. My mind is fresh. By 9 am, when everyone needs mom, I’ve already finished my most important business tasks!
This early work gives me such a sense of achievement. I can fully enjoy making pancakes with the kids without that guilty feeling of neglecting my business.
Try it! Those quiet morning hours might surprise you with how much you can accomplish.
9. Find Your Pockets of Time
There’s so much hidden time in your day that you probably don’t even notice! As a busy mom, I’ve learned to spot these golden opportunities.
Remember those kid birthday parties? Instead of driving home and back (wasting 30-40 minutes), I bring my laptop and work from my car during the 2-hour party. I’ve gotten so much done this way!
When my son had guitar lessons, I’d bring my computer, coffee, and favorite granola bar to enjoy 45 minutes of uninterrupted work time. I found a quiet parking spot where I could focus without distractions.
My favorite pocket of time is my morning train commute. Since I need to park at the station by 6:45 am for free parking, I arrive early, grab an almond cappuccino, and sit in my car working on my business for a full hour before catching the 7:45 am train.
You’ll fall in love with these time slots! They become your special moments when nobody can interrupt you asking where their shoes are or needing a snack. These small chunks of time add up to big progress in your business when used consistently.
Try it this week – look at your schedule and find just one waiting period you can transform into productive time!
10. Apply the 80/20 Rule
Apply the 80/20 rule to get clarity on your most important tasks. When you run a business, 20% of the things you do will bring 80% of the results and 80% of your profits will come from 20% of the customers.
When you plan what you are going to complete in 2-3 hours that you have – it’s better to be aware of the 20/80 rule and think, will this task that I want to do will really make a progress in building my side hustle or can I do something else with my time that would be much more beneficial.
That means that you only work on tasks that will really move the needle for your side business and that you spend very little time on things that are not that important to create results in your business (like creating the perfect logo design).
11. Eat That Ugly Frog First
When you start working, always start with the most complicated task, this is the task that will take a lot of brainpower and that you don’t want to do, start with eating that frog!
As Brian Tracy says in his wonderful book Eat That Frog! –
“If you have to eat a frog at all, which we all have to do, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for too long. In other words, just do it. Get on with it. Make it the first thing that you do.”
What are these frogs? You don’t want to do these tasks, and you can’t bring yourself to focus on them, but you know you need to do them.
This could be writing the content for your new website before you even start looking at website design templates or investing the time in planning your week/ your day before you start working so you can create progress towards your goal instead of wasting your time watching YouTube videos to learn something new.
3+ Tips to Start Your Own Business While Still Working
1. Invest in a Good Course
Take a course to learn how to bring your idea to life. I know it’s tempting to watch a bunch of YouTube videos and start because there is so much information available out there for free.
But there are some benefits of a paid course that you wouldn’t get from YouTube videos:
- You get the whole plan. ALL the steps to building a successful business in your niche (and in the right order so you can follow along).
- You get detailed instructions on how to do everything – it will save you so much time! Imagine that you only have 4 hours a week to invest in building a business, and you waste at least 2 hours just looking for information, getting overwhelmed by the endless options, so you end up doing nothing.
- It will SAVE you money because your time is too precious to be wasted, especially when you have so little of it. Also, training will prevent a lot of costly mistakes (everyone makes mistakes, but you will definitely be able to prevent some of them if you follow training).
I purchased Sophia Lee’s blogging course just at the beginning of my blog and I am SO happy I did that, it absolutely shortened my way to start making money with my blog.
2. Set Clear Financial Goals
It is very important to set a clear financial goal of how much you would like to earn from this business idea.
First, it will help you choose the right business for you. Some types of businesses allow you to make an extra $1000 a month, but it will be very difficult to build that up to a $10,000 a month business.
Second, if you have a goal then you would be able to create a business plan to get there. Without a specific goal in mind, you would never build the business you want.
3.Make an Achievable Plan
At the beginning of starting a new business, everything looks very exciting so you might be tempted to create a very stressful plan that is, unfortunately, unachievable.
Examples of unachievable plans can be working 10 hours every Saturday or completing too many tasks that you have never done before in one day.
4. Implement What You Learn Immediately
The easiest thing to do is enroll in a course or training and just listen to the lessons. It’s exciting and it’s interesting but it is 100% passive and will not give you any results if you don’t act on it.
If you wait until the end of the course to start doing the first step, the chances of you really starting are very, very low! Because you will feel too overwhelmed!
The longer you wait, the harder it will be for you to actually start.
Final Thoughts About Starting a Business While Working Full-Time
Starting a business while working full-time isn’t easy, but it’s definitely achievable!
The secret is simple: Find hidden pockets of time in your busy schedule and use them productively. These two strategies combined will help you build something amazing without quitting your day job.
I know it gets overwhelming sometimes (trust me, I’ve been there!), but stick with it. Those small weekly steps add up to incredible results over time.
If I had to start over, these are exactly the steps I’d follow again. They work for busy moms who need practical solutions, not just nice theories.
Ready to change your life? Don’t wait for the perfect moment—it won’t come.
Start today with just one small step!
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