subject: Moonlighting Help You Better In Main Gigs [print this page] Moonlighting help you better in main gigs
Moonlighting help you better in main gigs
Moonlighting has always been part of American work culture, though it's not a lifestyle many managers have encouraged. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about 5% of workers officially hold more than one job. Some organizations have policies against extra hours work, both for liability and productivity reasons. There are 168 hours in a week, and time you're spending at a second job or on your own side business is time you're not dreaming up new ideas for your employer.
But changes in technology and the way people work are leading some to rethink this idea. Certain kinds of moonlighting may actually help you in your main job, and wise organizations can embrace, rather than squelch, entrepreneurial zeal.
The key insight is that while the term "secondball milljob" conjures up an image of commuting to a second site after a long day at the first, these days "I don't have to move my atoms around, " says Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. Platforms like Etsy (where people sell crafts), eBay (EBAY), Zazzle (where people hawk designs) or Quirky (a crowd-testing site for manufactured products) allow people to do creative work from their home computers.
Bloggers can make money from ads and people with special expertise can teach virtual courses. There's no real difference from an employer's perspective between someone sitting in front of a computer until 2 a.m. and a television until 2 a.m. -- which managers have never been able to ban. These side businesses, which Kedrosky calls "fractional entrepreneurship, " should be of "no more concern than having hobbies." Indeed, modern moonlighting often involves things that might once have been hobbies.
By day, Martin Cody is a vice president of sales at a medical software company. By night (and early mornings and weekends), he's the president of a business called Cellar Angels, which uses a Groupon-type model to get members discounts on wines from small wineries while bundling donations for partner charities. He and his wife also own a retail wine store in Chicago. Because he's two hours ahead of his partner wineries in California, he can work on Cellar Angels from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. while preserving the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. predominantly for his day job. While the combined 70 or 80-hour workweeks are long, he notes that he and his wife don't have children, so they can work on their side venture during the time that other people are carting kids to soccer practice. And plus, "I don't watch 'SportsCenter.' I don't watch football games, " he says. He'd rather be thinking about wine.
Some people even find that a second gig offers synergies with the first. Beth Henary Watson is the executive director of the Mineral Wells Area Chamber of Commerce in Texas. She and her husband recently bought a hair salon called All Star Clips in Weatherford, Texas. In her day job, she advises small businesses on problem solving and growing profits. Now that she owns a small business for the first time, her advice has real world experience behind it. One example: Watson knows that most of the All Star Clips clients are male. "Clearly that's who we should be trying to reach more of. I use this knowledge acquired first-hand to tell our chamber members that they should target, target, target, and ignore, politely, everyone else.
