Entrepreneurship Is Fun. Then There’s the Day Job.

During work breaks at KHWB, a television station in Houston, most of Annette Rainesalo’s colleagues would relax with a cup of coffee or a
cigarette. She would head to her car and call prospective clients for her fledgling voice-over business.

By MAGGIE JACKSON NY Times

"It felt like a double life," she said. "It felt like my mistress was my new business."

After months of juggling two jobs, Ms. Rainesalo, 36, quit her position as an executive assistant at the station last year. She now devotes herself
full time to her company, Get Me That Voice, which she runs out of her home in Stafford, Tex. The company provides vocal talent for television
and radio commercials, multimedia projects and sales presentations.

Starting a business has always been part of the American dream, but more entrepreneurs like Ms. Rainesalo are hedging their bets these days,
preferring to keep their day jobs as they gain both confidence and business. Many are waiting for the economy to fully recover.

The safety net of a day job is important during the risky start-up period, ordinarily about a year, yet the resulting balancing act poses challenges.
How do you handle two workloads, plus family responsibilities? Should you tell your boss or colleagues? When do you quit the day job?

"People think of entrepreneurs — certainly this was true during the Internet boom — as a whiz kid who comes up with a business plan, visits a
venture capitalist and goes for broke," said Patrick Von Bargen, executive director of the National Commission on Entrepreneurship, a public
policy group in Washington.

"Instead, the typical entrepreneur is someone who has an idea, maintains his day job and brings his idea through various phases," Mr. Von
Bargen said. "The line of when you have to decide to leave your job and actually do this — it’s very gray."

A growing number of people are poised to take that chance. Last year, roughly 8 percent of working-age Americans, or 13.5 million people,
started businesses, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an index of entrepreneurial activity in 40 countries that is compiled by
Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., and the London School of Business. In 1993, about 4.5 percent of working-age Americans started
businesses, according to Paul D. Reynolds, a professor of entrepreneurship at the two institutions and coordinator of the project, which last year
surveyed 3,000 Americans ages 20 to 64.

During the start-up stage, about 65 percent of entrepreneurs have full- or part-time jobs, Mr. Reynolds said.

"Most people starting businesses do everything they can to avoid risk," he said.

The challenges, however, hardly end there. Some 90 percent of businesses survive their first year in operation; only half are still around after five
years, according to Mr. Reynolds.

MS. RAINESALO knows that the odds may be against her, but she started the business because she wanted to earn more money, to be her
own boss and to have a job that she was passionate about. "You’ve got to feel good about what you do," she said. "Otherwise, why get up in the
morning?"

She was willing to do plenty of footwork to help her business succeed. For nine months, and while still working full time at the television station,
she rose at 4 a.m. almost every day to conduct Internet research and leave voice mail messages for clients.

In his studies of people with sideline enterprises, Thomas A. Bryant, associate professor of entrepreneurship at Rutgers University, found dozens
of reasons why people work at two careers. They may be worried about the security of their current jobs or may just want extra income or the
chance to work alone. But one motivation stands out: "It’s some sort of personal outlet or personal expression," he said.

That may explain why many people start businesses in lines of work far afield from their earlier jobs. Only 9 percent of entrepreneurs had a day
job in the same field as their new business, according to 1998 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the most recent numbers available.

At a time when many laid-off workers are landing in new jobs they may not like, more entrepreneurs are starting businesses to recover their
sense of fulfillment at work, said Jim King, director of the New York State Small Business Development Center in Albany.

"They’re looking more and more at starting their own business as a means of getting back to something that is more satisfying and rewarding,"
he said.

Once someone decides to start a business, the juggling act begins. At home, the entrepreneur’s family may have to cope with long absences
and financial stress. "If you ask entrepreneurs what they risk most in those early years of the business, most of them say it’s their family life,"
Mr. Von Bargen said.

At the day job, the balance can also be difficult, as entrepreneurs try to deliver a new product or service in the time squeezed in at night or on
weekends. But even if they work on their new ventures strictly after hours, the appearance of divided loyalty or possible conflict of interest may
anger some bosses.

Two Syracuse women were dismissed from their jobs last fall, they said, after they were interviewed in a local paper about their completion of a
nine-week course on starting a business.

"We were going there for information, to see what it took, what was needed," said Nancy Furbeck Hernandez, 44, who took the course last fall
with a friend, Marcella Burnell, 47. As part of the course, offered by Appleseed Trust, a nonprofit community group that assists small
businesses, they wrote a business plan to start their own medical billing company. Both women said they had told colleagues at work about the
course.

Ms. Hernandez, who was a supervisor at Statewide Independent PPO Inc., a company in East Syracuse that reviews union medical claims, said
the company’s chief executive and president, Judith A. Conroy, told her that taking the course had constituted a conflict of interest. Ms. Burnell
said she received a similar explanation for her dismissal from CNY Medical Group Management, where she handled insurance bills for a doctor’s
group. Ms. Conroy and Jolene Fitch, Ms. Burnell’s boss, did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

Peter Zawko, program manager of Appleseed Trust, said, "Their business didn’t directly compete with their previous employers, but it was
perceived as being direct."

Since then, Appleseed Trust has added a new component to its course on business start-ups: a discussion of when, or if, to tell your boss about
your plans, Mr. Zawko said.

Tessil J. Collins, 49, a teacher at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Boston, says he had always been open with his bosses
about the sideline television and radio production businesses he has run during his 18-year teaching career. In fact, he said, his two careers have
complemented each other. His outside contacts have helped his video production students get jobs, and the schedule and pay package of
teaching have helped support his current venture, the Spectrum Broadcasting Corporation.

"It’s sort of like a good marriage," said Chuck McAfee, headmaster at Madison Park. "You’re working during the day with young people showing
them the craft and how to get there, and at night you’re back at your craft."

The situation is so comfortable that Mr. Collins has found it difficult to quit his day job. "The biggest decision for me is making the decision," said
Mr. Collins, who plans to leave teaching in the next year.

For many people, however, giving up the financial lifeline of a day job is frightening. As a result, they never take the plunge into full-time
entrepreneurship.

"It’s a big dream to quit the job and walk out the door, but most people don’t get to that stage," said Margaret Somer, director of the Small
Business Development Center at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

In some cases, they decide that the new ventures will never match their day jobs in salary and benefits, and that no other source of funds — a
spouse’s pay or a second mortgage, for example — is available until the venture pays off.

LINDA HICKS, 55, a social worker in Wichita, Kan., had to rely on her own resources to start her business. She had long enjoyed making
pottery, and about 10 years ago she started selling some of her creations at craft shows and fairs. But it was not until her employer, Lutheran
Social Services of Kansas and Oklahoma Inc., began a round of layoffs in 2000, that she began to act seriously on her dream to make her
pottery a full-time business. She lost her job in May 2001, but by then had started 11 product lines and begun developing a business plan for her
company, Cat’s Paw Pottery. Since her unemployment benefits ran out in November, she has been living off her savings, but she is confident
that her business will soon become profitable.

"I could get a full-time job," said Ms. Hicks, who is single. "But then you have to be creative at 10 o’clock at night."

Ms. Rainesalo was more fortunate. She had only a handful of new clients when she decided to quit her television job, but her husband, David
Rainesalo, a news director at a local radio station, backed her decision, and his earnings supported them in the early days of her business. It
was a financial squeeze, but she knew she would have to work on her client roster full time if she wanted her voice-over business to succeed.

"If I ever planned to be serious, I’d have to quit and give this a try," she said. "At this point, I have over 100 clients. I’m voicing just about every
day in the week. I found something I love."

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company