Larry’s Worst Experience

My Worst New Busi­ness Experience

I was work­ing at a small start-​up com­pany that had got­ten some sub­stan­tial mil­i­tary con­tracts. My first mis­take was approach­ing one of its orig­i­nal investors for some cap­i­tal to open my own new busi­ness. He looked at my busi­ness plan and was very impressed with its thor­ough­ness and pos­si­bil­i­ties. He did invest the amount I was look­ing for and promptly men­tioned to my boss that I needed a raise because I was plan­ning on leav­ing the company.

I was a depart­ment head with six peo­ple work­ing with me. Because my clerk over­heard a cou­ple of phone calls, she went to my boss and com­plained. I want to tell you that I didn’t get to where I was in my career by slack­ing on the job, so my job per­for­mance or atten­tion to the depart­ment was never jeop­ar­dized by my phone calls. There must have been some other agenda in play there, but the phone calls were my sec­ond mistake.

They laid me off before I was fully pre­pared to go ahead with my busi­ness. I was imme­di­ately escorted to my desk to put my per­sonal items in a box and then out the door. I was plan­ning on keep­ing my job for another three months while my new busi­ness got on its feet which would have allowed the new ven­ture funds to go much farther.

Tip:

In start­ing your busi­ness and work­ing your day job, do not under any cir­cum­stance tell any­one, any­one, at work about what you are doing. You just never know in what fash­ion the knive in your back will appear. You would also be smart to keep your day job and new busi­ness ven­ture separate.

Larry

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