How do you combine full time employment with part time self employed business and family life?

[nevergoogle]

I'm hanging in there by the skin of my teeth.
Can't give up the day job until business off the ground.
Working some very long days and getting tired.
Any tips?

I sympathise. I have a very long term plan for my self-employed business. But then CM-ing is self-employed too, so slightly different situation.

I CM five days a week, have one morning a week off.
Small business is jewellery-making, which I do in the evenings, after kids have gone to bed, and if we're at home at the weekend.
Family time - I see kids before and after school as I'm at home anyway, weekends are mostly free for family stuff. I don't take on as many craft fairs and parties as I could do, because it would take up too many weekends.
In some ways I'm helped by the fact that dh works late a lot, so I have a lot of evenings that need filling somehow anyway.
I can't imagine that I'm going to replace cm-ing with jewellery making for a long time, if ever, but I'd like to cut down the cm-ing to part time in a few years maybe, if I could justify it.

What do you do? (Self-employed wise?)
Can we shamelessly promote you?
I started a facebook page for my stuff a couple of days ago, and I've been amazed how much attention it's got already (although that may be a start-up blip of course).

i'm going down to a 4day week in my currently ft job from 1st August in order to give myself time to build up my freelancing.
is that an option for you?

physiotherapy
nhs and private

i asked to drop one day a week, but was told i could only drop 2 as that would make it possible to recruit into the gap.
i can't afford to lose 2 days yet.

Gosh, you have two very demanding jobs then, not a nice sitting-down one like I have. (We've met, btw, I'm not stalking you.) Which I guess makes it harder.
Have you done your sums to know exactly when you'll be able to drop the two days? So that if (for example) you had enough work to fill one of the days, you could spend the other one really promoting your business so that it fills up as quickly as possible too?

yes i remember you.
thing is i'm quite sure i could do so much more.
opened my clinic in october, it's building slowly and steadily but i guess i'm eventually going to get to the point where i can drop the two days, but not yet.
i'm working 2 or 3 evenings a week.
i love my own work, so it doesn't totally feel like work. it's much more relaxed as i can work at my own pace.
it's not just the appointments of course, there's the accounts, the ordering, the emails, the studying, the networking.
where can i find your jewellery page?

I guess what I'm asking is, even if you work all your available evenings, will that ever equal the amount you'd lose by dropping your two days, because if it won't, you'll have to take the (temporary) financial hit at some point anyway? So perhaps you could save up a bit to have a cushion for when you do drop the days, or perhaps you just take the plunge anyway, and enjoy not being so completely knackered? Or, if you wait til you're getting a waiting list for evening slots, you'll have a better idea of how much day you could fill?
Will pm you with my jewellery page, as I've just realised linking it on here completely outs me! Not that I think I really care . . . .

nevergoogle - it sounds like you could do with some market research - do you know if your clients would use weekday, daytime appointments? are there people you're not reaching right now in evenings who will be able to do daytimes? or will you find daytimes quiet for a bit? there's a chance you might find a huge upsurge when you make yourself available at different times.

i'm in a totally different situation as my work is not appointment based so can be done anytime except for the occassional face to face meeting.

i think my own work will be mostly evenings as that is the most desirable times for the working population. i have found the older retired population would rather be seen during the day and i do offer saturday/sunday.
wish my salary wasn't so bloody necessary. grr.