Don’t Quit Your Day Job… Yet
Build something of your own without gambling with what you’ve already built.
Use Your Job as Leverage While You Build
You may have spent years building your career, income, benefits, savings, retirement, and the life those things help support.
And you can still want something more.
You can want another source of income. More control over your time. Something that belongs to you. An asset you can build over time. Or a business that could eventually give you choices your paycheck alone can’t provide.
Wanting to become a business owner doesn’t mean you have to give up the foundation you already have.
In fact, that foundation can give you an advantage.
Your paycheck can continue paying the bills while you figure out what customers actually want. Your benefits can remain in place while the business develops. Your savings and retirement don’t have to become the first source of funding every time the business needs something.
Most importantly, your business doesn’t have to immediately carry the weight of supporting your entire life.
That gives you room to learn, test, make decisions, change direction, and build something stronger.
But having financial breathing room doesn’t automatically tell you what to do with it.
That’s where Backbone America’s Business Lab comes in.
The Business Lab gives you practical guidance, courses, books, worksheets, tools, and resources you can use to work through the business while your job continues providing the safety net underneath you.
$29/month or $299/year
First 50 Annual Members: $174 for Your First Year
Save $125 on the regular annual membership and get your first year for just $14.50 a month.
Use coupon code:
First50BusinessLab
30-day money-back guarantee
What If You Want More… But You Don’t Hate the Life You Already Have?
Maybe your job is actually pretty good. You have a steady paycheck, benefits, retirement, and a career you spent years building.
And you still want something of your own.
That can make entrepreneurship feel complicated. You want to build, but you also have something worth protecting.
So the question becomes less about whether you want a business and more about how much you’re willing to risk before the business has proven itself.
I didn’t always think that way.
At one point, I believed that if I gave my business enough time, effort, and money, I could eventually make it work.
That belief cost me more than I ever expected.
I Went All In on My Business.
I’m Renee Davis. I’ve worked as a financial advisor, SBDC business advisor, teacher, systems support analyst, and business process automation engineer. As a business advisor, I helped entrepreneurs work through the practical pieces of turning an idea into a functioning business, including financial projections, funding decisions, and business planning.
But I’ve also been on the other side of the table. I’ve been the person trying to make my own business work.
At one point, I decided I wasn’t going back to work as an employee. I had faced enough disappointments in employment that I no longer wanted to keep playing the employee game and letting someone else decide my future.
I was going to give my business a real chance. I was going to go all in, pour my energy into building something of my own, and prove that I could make it work.
So that’s what I did. For almost two years, I poured my time, energy, attention, and money into trying to make it work.
I believed some version of build it and they will come. If I worked harder, learned more, tried another strategy, invested in another program, improved the offer, or gave it just a little more time, I believed I could eventually break through.
I spent thousands of dollars on professional training and certifications, including a program to become a certified coach. I poured even more on advertising and other attempts to grow the business. Some things helped me learn. Some produced very little return. But I kept going because I believed persistence had to eventually pay off.
Meanwhile, the business wasn’t bringing in enough money to pay my bills.
The bills kept coming. My debt kept growing. My available cash kept shrinking. Eventually, there wasn’t enough money to cover basic necessities, much less keep feeding a business that had become a money pit.
I ran out of runway.
There was no more money for the business. There was barely enough money for me.
I couldn’t keep up with the mortgage, and eventually, I lost my house.
By then, I was at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I wasn’t thinking about marketing strategies, sales funnels, or what I could try next to make the business work. I was calculating how much food I could buy with what was left on my credit card.
That was my wake-up call.
So I Went Back to Work.
That wasn’t the ending I had imagined when I decided to give entrepreneurship everything I had.
But it gave me something I desperately needed: a financial foundation again.
I went back into the workforce. I rebuilt my income. I rebuilt my finances. I kept learning, developed new skills, and created a life that didn’t depend on my next business experiment working.
And eventually, I started building again.
But this time, it felt different.
I still had ideas that didn’t work. I still made mistakes. I still spent money testing things that didn’t produce the result I wanted.
But a failed experiment didn’t determine whether I could pay my bills.
My paycheck gave me room to learn. It gave me room to test. And it gave me the ability to ask a question I hadn’t asked often enough the first time:
What evidence does this business need to give me before I give it more?
That question changed the way I think about entrepreneurship.
Your Job Can Be Part of Your Business Strategy
I used to see employment and entrepreneurship as opposing paths.
Now I see the advantage in building while you still have a paycheck.
A job can buy you time.
Time to find customers before you depend on their purchases. Time to test an offer. Time to learn your numbers. Time to discover that something isn’t working and change it without that discovery becoming a financial emergency.
Your benefits can keep covering expenses the business isn’t ready to carry.
Your income can allow you to make business decisions based on what makes sense instead of what has to generate cash by Friday.
And your career can continue supporting the rest of your life while the business develops.
Your job doesn’t have to stand between you and entrepreneurship. It can help support the transition into it.
But a Safety Net Isn’t the Same as a Roadmap
Keeping your job can take some of the financial pressure off the business.
It can’t tell you what to build.
It can’t tell you whether your idea makes sense, who will buy from you, how much money you’ll need, how to price what you’re selling, what your financial projections are telling you, or whether an opportunity fits the kind of life you’re trying to create.
And when you’re already working full time, figuring all of that out through random searches, videos, podcasts, books, and trial and error can become another job by itself.
That’s where the Business Lab comes in.
The Business Lab gives you a structured place to work through the business you’re building while your job continues providing the financial foundation underneath you.
And it was designed with the full-time employee in mind.
You Don’t Need 10, 20, 30 Free Hours a Week
Sometimes you may only want to give your business two hours this week.
That’s enough to make progress.
Most Business Lab lessons are designed to be short enough to work through in about 20 to 30 minutes.
Twenty minutes after dinner. Thirty minutes Saturday morning. A short block of time before the rest of the house wakes up. An hour when you actually have the energy.
Learn something. Answer a question. Complete an exercise. Run a calculation. Make a decision. Then move on with your day.
You don’t have to turn every evening into another shift just because you’re serious about building a business.
You can build consistently without trying to build constantly.
You also don’t have to complete the Business Lab from beginning to end.
Start with the question in front of you.
Work through what you need now. Come back when the business gives you a different problem to solve.
Your job gives you runway. The Business Lab helps you decide what to do with it.
Start the Business. Build Smart.
I’ve spent years around entrepreneurship from several different perspectives.
As an SBDC business advisor, I worked directly with people starting and growing businesses. I helped develop financial projections, researched funding opportunities, evaluated business decisions, and helped entrepreneurs build the financial foundation underneath their plans.
That work contributed to more than $1.15 million in capital infusion for entrepreneurs I assisted.
I’ve also spent years teaching.
Teaching taught me that information isn’t very useful if someone can’t figure out what to do with it. Good guidance breaks complicated subjects into manageable pieces, helps you understand what matters, and gives you something you can actually apply.
I’ve been the entrepreneur making the decisions with my own time and money.
And today, as a business process automation engineer, I look at business from another angle: how the work actually gets done, where unnecessary effort creeps in, and what can be simplified, documented, delegated, systemized, or automated.
Business advising. Teaching. Entrepreneurship. Process improvement. Automation.
Those perspectives come together in the Business Lab.
Each course is designed to help you work through a specific part of building your business, understand the decisions you’re making, and put what you’re learning to use.What’s Inside the Business Lab Right Now
The Business Lab includes resources for different stages of business ownership, from figuring out what you want to build to improving the way an existing business operates.
Start with the resource that matches the question you’re trying to answer now.
Business Clarity Blueprint
$79 Standalone Value
What do I actually want to build?
Turn a general desire to start a business into a clearer picture of the business you want to own.
Work through your goals, available time, strengths, interests, customer, offer, and the kind of business you want to create.
It’s a good place to start when you know you want something of your own but still need clarity about what that business should look like.
Included with your membership
Business Fit & Feasibility Guide
$39 Standalone Value
Does this particular opportunity make sense for me?
Once you have a business or opportunity in mind, take a closer look before making a larger commitment.
Evaluate it against your finances, available time, resources, strengths, goals, and the realities of owning and operating it.
Use it to help separate excitement about an opportunity from the decision to put serious time and money behind it.
Included with your membership
31-Day Business Startup Challenge
$179 Standalone Value
How do I turn this idea into an actual business?
Move through the practical work of turning your idea into an operating business one manageable step at a time.
Work through validation, customers, positioning, legal and financial setup, marketing, and preparation for launch.
The work is broken into manageable pieces so you can keep moving even when building the business has to fit around your work schedule.
Included with your membership
The Business Funding Blueprint eBook
$39 Standalone Value
What will this business actually cost, and how should I pay for it?
Work through startup costs, working capital, financial projections, cash flow, funding options, lender expectations, business planning, and the pieces that go into a stronger funding package.
Understanding what the business actually needs can help you make more deliberate decisions about what you fund personally and what may need to come from somewhere else.
The book also includes practical worksheets, forms, and checklists you can apply to your own business.
Included with your membership
Work Less, Build Smart
$497 Standalone Value
How do I run a business when I already have a full-time job?
When your time is limited, inefficient work gets expensive fast.
Learn how to identify repeatable work, map and simplify workflows, choose tools that support the process, build and test automations, document what you’ve created, and establish a practical way to maintain and improve it.
When you’re already working full time, your business can’t afford to depend on you manually doing every recurring task forever.
Included with your membership
$833 in Business Resources. Already Inside.
If purchased separately, the five products currently included would cost:
| Resource | Standalone Price |
|---|---|
| Work Less, Build Smart | $497 |
| 31-Day Business Startup Challenge | $179 |
| Business Clarity Blueprint | $79 |
| Business Fit & Feasibility Guide | $39 |
| The Business Funding Blueprint eBook | $39 |
| Total Current Value | $833 |
$833 in Current Resources. $174 for Your First Year.
The first 50 annual members get access to the current Business Lab for $174 for the first year.
Active members also receive access to new Business Lab resources as they’re added.
Use code First50BusinessLab
The Business Lab Has to Fit Your Life Too
It’s easy to design an entrepreneurship program around the assumption that building a business is the most important thing someone has to do all day.
That’s not the reality for many people.
By the time you open the Business Lab, you may have already put in a full day at work.
You may have a commute, dinner to make, family responsibilities, appointments, errands, a house to take care of, and days when you’re simply tired.
That doesn’t mean you aren’t serious about your business.
It means your business has to fit into a real life.
That’s why the lessons are designed to be manageable.
You don’t need to disappear for an entire weekend to make progress. You can spend 20 or 30 minutes learning something useful, complete the related work, and stop.
Some weeks you may have five hours.
Some weeks you may have two.
Some weeks, twenty minutes here and there may be what you realistically have to give.
The Business Lab is designed to meet you there.
So, you keep making useful progress on the business you’re building.Guidance Makes the Transition Easier to Navigate
Having a job can reduce some of the financial risk of starting a business.
Good guidance can help with another kind of risk: making important decisions without understanding what you should be looking at.
Should you pursue the idea?
Does the business fit the amount of time you have?
Are the numbers realistic?
Are you ready to borrow money?
Are you solving the right problem?
Could a process be simplified before you spend money automating it?
The Business Lab doesn’t make those decisions for you.
It gives you frameworks, questions, examples, worksheets, calculations, and structured lessons that help you work through them.
That’s an important distinction.
You remain the person building the business and deciding what makes sense for your life.
But you don’t have to approach every new question with a blank page.
Your job gives you room to build. The Business Lab gives you guidance while you do it.
And the Business Lab Keeps Growing
I’m continuing to develop new Business Lab courses and tools, and active members will have access as they’re added.
Choosing Your Path to Business Ownership
Starting from scratch is only one way to become a business owner.
This course explores starting a new business, buying an existing business, and buying a franchise so you can compare the costs, flexibility, control, risks, advantages, and tradeoffs of each.
Currently in Development
The Business Funding Blueprint Course
The Business Funding Blueprint eBook is already included with your membership.
I’m expanding the material into a more interactive course so you can work with the financial side of your own business as you learn.
The course will include electronic resources for working through financial projections, cash flow, profit and loss, balance sheets, business assumptions, funding calculations, loan comparisons, and funding readiness.
Currently in Development
Choose How You Want to Join
Monthly Membership
$29/month
Pay month to month and stay as long as the Business Lab continues to be useful to you.
Annual Membership
$299/year
Twelve monthly payments would cost $348. Pay annually and save $49.
That’s about $24.92 per month when paid annually.
First 50 Annual Members: Save an Additional $125
For the first 50 annual members, I’m reducing the regular $299 annual membership to $174 for your first year.
Regular Annual Membership: $299
Your First Year: $174
That’s just $14.50 per month for your first year.
| Membership Option | First-Year Cost |
|---|---|
| Paying monthly for 12 months | $348 |
| Regular annual membership | $299 |
| First 50 annual member price | $174 |
You Save $174 Compared With Paying Monthly
That’s 50% less than the cost of paying $29 per month for a full year.
Use coupon code:
First50BusinessLab
The $125 promotional discount applies to the regular $299 annual membership for your first year. The coupon is available to the first 50 annual members. Once all 50 offers have been claimed, the code will no longer work.
Come In and Put the Business Lab to Work
Your membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Start with something you’re already working on.
If you’re still figuring out what you want to build, start with the Business Clarity Blueprint.
If you have an idea and want to determine whether it makes sense for you, use the Business Fit & Feasibility Guide.
If you’re ready to start putting the business together, begin the 31-Day Business Startup Challenge.
If you’re trying to understand how much money the business needs, build financial projections, or explore funding options, open The Business Funding Blueprint.
If you’re already operating and need to make better use of your limited time, start with Work Less, Build Smart.
You don’t have to explore the entire Business Lab in your first 30 days. Pick the resource that fits where you are and start there.
If you decide within those first 30 days that you don’t want to continue, contact us and I’ll refund your membership.
Come in. Pick your starting point. Put it to work.
Backbone America’s Business Lab
Build Smarter. Start Stronger.
$29/month | $299/year
First 50 annual members: $174 for the first year
Use code First50BusinessLab
