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Starting my own company

wazzel

wazzel

Dec 27, 2007
1,981
1,815
55
Cypress, TX
#1
I have decided I am no longer interested in fighting my way up the corporate ladder. I have decided to punch out, go contract and work on my own. Company paperwork is being filed tomorrow, insurance quotes will be gotten this week, logos and business cards next week. I already have a draft contract with terms and conditions drafted and reviewed by a lawyer. Once all that is in hand all I need is the right moment and a contract.

It is scary and exciting all at the same time. It would be nice to just be able to work and not play office politics.

How my boss takes the news will be interesting. We talked several weeks ago, when I told him I was not interested in management, which is my current career path. The response was there would be no guarantee of a position for me once the current projects were completed if that was what I really wanted. He also told me he did not believe that I really wanted out of the management track.

He has also been told more than once that I wanted to hang out a sign and work for myself.

I know it will not be the greatest thing in the world and it will have other issues than what I have now. Also, I do not have the delusion I will be rich by doing this. My reason are not money based.

I'll let you know how it goes.
 
#4
TheDarkReaver said:
What will you be doing?
Click to expand...

I am a Mechanical Engineer working in oil and gas, specifically sub sea construction. I create procedures for installing equipment for the industry in deep water. My deepest project to date is 10,000 ft. In addition I design specialty installation tooling and tooling for ROV's. Some of my better items is portable ballast system for spar (a type of floating production platform) installation, a specialty guide for a production riser and a ROV winch rated for 4,000 m. I have also done quite a few oddball things that I can not describe with out pictures or drawings.
 
#8
It's scary and rewarding. There is a lot of time spent on the business side of things, such as taxes & reporting to various government entities, chasing accounts receivable, and other mundane tasks. Managing health insurance costs and your cash flow are the big challenges.

If you keep your overhead low and have a list of potential clients/projects available, you should be in a good position. Do you have a business plan yet?

You can plan on much longer hours as an owner, rather than an employee.
 
#9
Good luck to you. But you always don't escape office politics. I'm in the accounting / business consulting field. One client keeps my busy 20 hours a week. The salesman decided he wanted to just pick up and leave and take his customers with him and lied to customers and vendors about it not being amicable. He tried to take me with him too. This prompted the owner to tell the salesman he will sue him and not pay certain vendors. Now I have to deal with more politics than I ever had to in my life.

In some ways I feel like I have to pay attention to politics more. If the customer says jump a lot of times I have to say how high for fear of loosing the customer's business and having a bad reputation.

But you do get to do different things all the time. It is definately a lot more interesting than working for the same place all the time. So for me its been worth it. don't know if I'll be saying that in 5 years, but its been fun.
 
#15
wazzel said:
I am a Mechanical Engineer working in oil and gas, specifically sub sea construction. I create procedures for installing equipment for the industry in deep water. My deepest project to date is 10,000 ft. In addition I design specialty installation tooling and tooling for ROV's. Some of my better items is portable ballast system for spar (a type of floating production platform) installation, a specialty guide for a production riser and a ROV winch rated for 4,000 m. I have also done quite a few oddball things that I can not describe with out pictures or drawings.
Click to expand...

That is really cool. Sounds really interesting. As a lifeguard, I actually have to do work underwater quite often. It's a totally different way to look at diving. It would be really cool to work on something like this.
 
#17
The only bad thing about starting out as a one man operation is that you end up spending more time handling all the business, legal, and management side of things and less time from doing what you do best (your field of expertise and the reason you want to be your own boss).

I know because I wear all the hats in my one man shop business and have not made it to the point yet to hire other people to do the day to day work.
 
#19
Richland123 said:
The only bad thing about starting out as a one man operation is that you end up spending more time handling all the business, legal, and management side of things and less time from doing what you do best (your field of expertise and the reason you want to be your own boss).

I know because I wear all the hats in my one man shop business and have not made it to the point yet to hire other people to do the day to day work.
Click to expand...

I have a lawyer and accountant who have taken me on as a client for reasonable rates. I really do not want to spend lots of time on the things I know are not my strength. Better to pay a lawyer $200/hr for two hours than for me to spend all day on the same task and loose billable hours. I fell the same for an accountant.

I will focus my time on doing the work and finding clients.
 

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