Serving Two Masters – Will It Work?

I have been running Rocket Hangar for about a year now.  When I started the company, I had two primary goals:  1. Do interesting and valuable work. 2. Don’t go broke

For #2, I lined up a series of consulting gigs that I still work on to this day, more or less.  Smaller gigs have come and gone, but I continue to have a decent stream of work from those initial clients.  This work has provided funding for me to do #1 without really having to spend much of my personal savings.

For #1, I envisioned jumping into the mobile application space and doing interesting and cool things there.  I built two or three really cool applications, but none of them have had any success commercially.  This wasn’t a surprise.  I expected to stub my toe a few times while I figure the whole thing out.

The tension for me in this whole thing has been determining whether my approach is the right approach.  I have spoken with several people who are very successful starters of companies, and almost all have said that the focus of not having consulting or other work was immeasurable.  On the other hand, I know of others that have used consulting as a way to find what the market needs and then fill it.  I have leaned this way, for sure.  I like having money coming into my company, and after the first six or so months of building things that no one really cared about, this rang more true for me.

The need for clarity around this has become more acute for me recently, as I have started to get a lot more inquiries on the consulting front.  I also have hooked up with a business partner here in Raleigh and we are doing some really great things together with new products.  I am starting to feel the need for help with the work I am doing, but don’t want to take on overhead without something more sustainable than consulting work.

Every day brings a seemingly endless stream of decisions to make.  I will no doubt screw some of this up, but I am loving the process.

Question: What has worked best for you if you were in a similar spot?  I would love to hear from anyone / everyone out there on the best lens to view this through