>Michelle:
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>After reading through some of the replies, some thoughts come to mind that I have personally experienced.
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>My wife and I started our side-business out of hour house about 8 years ago. We had been married for 4 years and had no kids at the time. We did it because her hair dresser was very business oriented and wanted a better way to manage his business. I was doing FoxBase developing at my current job at the time, so she *volunteered* me to talk to him about a computer program.
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>Eight years later we have a thriving independent side-business providing custom software to 1 major wholesale beuty supply company. We also have an almost 4-year old daughter and my wife quit her full-time job to take over our business and child-raising duties.
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>I am the developer and she is the promoter, billing agent and collector, tough-gal. I manage the computers (Novell network, a bunch of computers including a BBS for the franchisees). We sacrificed so much that we would probably not start the side-business if we had to do it over again. However, we do have a home that is paid for and almost totally remodeled because of our sacrifices and holding off on a family.
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>I have terrific insurance and benefits where I work full-time. Because of circumstances with our daughter (born 15 weeks early at 1lb 7oz), I must stay where I am for insurance purposes even though she is perfectly normal and healthy now.
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>You should have it easier because you would be the developer. It is harder on us because I am the developer for our business and with a full-time job. Although, being a mom in the future would make it just as tough as having a full-time job [which being a mom certainly is].
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>Make sure you know what you and your husband want. I have learned most of what I know on my own through trial-and-fire. Learn some networking skills as well, Novell or NT or both. Get a computer to experiment on, one to do development on
>and a good [reliable] backup system. Set up a small network because your customers will certainly want these and your apps will have to run on them. Regardless of what anyone says, hardware people blame software people, and software people blame hardware people for problems. You will have to defend yourself and your app when hardware is a problem.
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>My favorite complaints are when some networking component goes belly-up and the customer yells at us because our app won't work. They do not understand that if they have not launched our app yet, that it isn't our problem. Be prepared, most of the jokes about customers and customer support usually are based on true experiences.

Full time job, own business, AND a 4 year old? Are there more than 24 hours in the day where you live?

My husband knows a lot about networks, so I've got a good source of info there. We plan on networking our computers when we build our house.

I know about customer support. I do it now. Not my favourite part of the job, but it goes with the territory.

Thanks for the response,

-Michelle