By Cindy Krischer Goodman, Work/Life Balancing Act
It’s one of the biggest decisions that entrepreneurs must make — when to quit their day jobs.
Chantale Trouillot has been debating that question for the last five years. She dreams of when she can permanently exchange her nurse uniform for a business suit. For now, she juggles caring for patients with selling decision makers on her innovative product, a more functional hospital gown.
The balancing act, she says, “hasn’t been easy,” but from a practical standpoint “we have to pay the bills.”
Although U.S. business startup activity has jumped above pre-recession levels during the last four years, entrepreneurs like Trouillot still are hesitant to take the full-time plunge. Making the decision requires a tricky calculation: weighing passion and persistence against financial stability and viability.
If you’re too poor or too unsure, you can start a company while employed — no investor will knock you for that, says Violette Sproul, founder of Femfessionals, which organizes events in U.S. cities to help businesswomen connect. But starting a company and holding down a day job takes time management and focus. “You quickly discover it is not as easy as you think it will be,” says Sproul, who started her business while working a full-time job before making the leap.
A few months after Trouillot secured a patent for her
innovative hospital gown, her husband, Eric, left the souring real estate
business to take over marketing and sales. Together, the two (pictured here) have taken Peak
Textiles in Coral Springs to the next level — finding a financial partner to
manufacture and warehouse the innovative, less revealing hospital gowns. Eric
does the heavy lifting — cold-calling, attending trade shows, negotiating
contracts, and meeting with prospects — while Chantale makes the high-level
presentations to hospital decision-makers about the clinical benefits of the
gowns. The Trouillots sold 100,000 hospital gowns in 2011, and they expect to
double that this year. “It would have been impossible for us to get to this
level without one of us devoting ourselves to it full-time,” Chantale says.
By becoming an agency rather than hospital staff nurse, Chantale says she has managed to get some flexibility in her schedule. In some ways, her work has been good for business. It allows her to further build relationships in the hospitals and speak authoritatively on need.
“Our goal is we want our gown to be the standard hospital gown,” Eric says. Chantale says it might take another five years before the business generates enough profit to make it her full-time job.
Read more about how the Trouillots and other entrepreneurs with day jobs are balancing the demands and how they are deciding to make the leap to all-in entrepreneurship in Cindy’s Work/Life Balancing Act column here.
(Photo of Chantale and Eric Trouillot is by Miami Herald staff photographer Walter Michot)