Starting a business has been your goal for the past year, and
now it's time to make this dream a reality. You've
researched your market and the viability of your product or
service; you even have some startup capital and savings put away
until you can turn a profit. You're also leaving your company
on excellent terms after years of being a dedicated, conscientious
worker. In fact, your skills in your new venture will still be
useful to your employer. So it's natural to want to bring your
employer along as that all-important first client to get you off
and running.
But approaching your boss and persuading top brass to approve
such an arrangement requires finesse and careful planning on your
part. You have to show how contracting with you will save the
company time and money, and why you will do a better job of
completing certain tasks compared to how they're currently
being handled. It'll take more than just a quick conversation
and a firm handshake to strike such a deal.
Timing Is Everything
For Kathy Carrier, 46-year-old president and CEO of Briljent LLC, a Fort
Wayne, Indiana, company that does technical writing and training,
it took a 30-page written proposal and a 90-minute presentation in
front of eight top executives to persuade her former employer to
become her first client in a new venture back in 1998. Carrier, who
was director of training for a large financial services company and
had been there for 15 years, was tired of the corporate life. She
had been looking for a business to buy, but nothing seemed to be
the right fit. At the same time, her company had a restructuring
that resulted in all but six of the 52 people she oversaw in her
department being let go.
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"They didn't need someone at my level to manage what
would barely be a staff anymore," Carrier says. "I
suggested they eliminate my job, give me a year of severance, and
outsource training to me in my new business. I knew the needs of my
former company and this type of work inside and out."
Carrier gave her employer 90 days' notice. She also checked
with her employer's legal division to make sure there would be
no potential conflict or competition issues. From her days in the
training arena, Carrier knew what to charge. Instead of the usual
daily fee of $1,000 to $1,500, she enticed her former employer even
more by charging a bargain price of just $750. Her former employer
even paid her fee in advance to help with cash flow issues during
the early days of her business. The relationship got Carrier's
venture off to a good start; today, her company has 32 employees
and annual sales of more than $2 million.
As with Carrier, timing is everything when approaching your
employer about becoming a client. Often, a company will be more
open to this kind of arrangement when it's laying off
employees. New consulting firms, in particular, lend themselves to
this type of work arrangement. In fact, up to 50 percent of such
ventures are launched with a former employer already onboard as an
initial client, says Michael Stull, director of the Inland Empire
Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Business and Public
Administration at California State University, San Bernardino.
"If you're planning to start a business anyway, and you
see that your job may be eliminated, this is a perfect time to
approach your boss with such a proposal," says Gene
Fairbrother, lead business consultant for the National Association
for the Self-Employed and also president of Dallas-based MBA
Consulting Inc., which advises entrepreneurs. "Make the case
that giving you a department to run is cheaper than having it done
in-house [because] you don't have to be paid
benefits."
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