re: Anyone ever leave a great job to start a business?

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In my opinion you have to love the idea of working for yourself over loving what your doing in order to be successful.

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See this is what is driving me right now, I know there are a few things I can do to be successful, and would do my due diligence to puck the right one. I am just coming to the realization now that I would thrive in a situation where I call all of the shots.

If you need some motivation to make the jump, watch this.

Do It

Product
Process
People

1.What product or service are you going to offer?
2. How are you going to turn raw materials into a finished product.
3. What kind of people do you need around you to be successful.

I think a lot of times, people feel like there is a mysterious aura around owning a business. "only people like bill gates can be an entrepreneur."-It's not true

If serious about leaving job and starting something "test" yourself first.

Today, start living on your wife's income alone. Don't cheat. Take your entire check and put in savings and pay all of your bills on her check. Chances are when you start on your own you won't have money coming in but will have it going out. You will get a taste of it this way. In meantime you will be starting a savings account to start your business on when you do quit your job. While living on her paycheck spend every waking moment working on a formal business plan. You need it for your business anyway but you will get an idea of how every minute of every day you will be thinking about your own business and feel some of the stress that comes with it. While doing all of this be looking for another job somewhere else to replace the one you have now. In case your business fails and you have to find another job you will know what that looks like. You might find one to replace one you have now that you might like more than idea of starting company on your own.

If at all possible though start your business while you have a job and try to do both until new biz replaces income you will give up.

You might also just consider doing volunteer work to give you some satisfaction current pay job doesn't provide.

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I was in a mediocre job when I decided to do it so it made it a relatively easy choice, but still made me nervous nonetheless. That was about 9 years ago and it was the best decision I could have made.

If you can live off your wife's salary you really have nothing to lose. If you have a great job in finance, you got there for a reason. Worst case scenario is this business falls flat on its face and closes in a year or two, and you go and get another job in finance. At least that way you won't second guess yourself.

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Thanks to you and everyone for the responses.

I would be starting a be starting a brand new service based business, with a small capital investment. Its really not a question of making money, its more about working on my own. But what you say aligns with my thought process; my only risk is the business fails, I wasted some resume building time, but I would have very high confidence in finding another 9-5 if I needed to for any reason, hopefully with a new appreciation of having an employer.

Golfer, is this for PTs starting outpatient clinics? Remember in the past you talking about it in another thread.