re: Folks who left their employment to pursue their own company/self employment .....

Upstairs - exactly. I get this every year. You penalize the top performers by moving the goal line on them while refusing to cut bait with the shite staff who produces a 1/3 of what you do. I too am sick of it but nothing I can do at this point in life and with the responsibilities I have personally. I did have a very firm conversation this year at bonus time as I thought I got screwed and it got me an additional $10k in my bonus. Same total bonus as last year even though I produced 1.5 times what I did in 2021.

It was what I always wanted to do. I did work for other people until I was 31.

IMHO the bigger risk is working for the other guy---big or small. I have seen countless 50 year olds out of work because of corporate reorganizations or closures. They find work but rarely at the wages of the job they had.

You will make mistakes in your own business but you can do things to make up for it.

All good responses

quote:

---

Best thread I’ve read on here in a while! Great responses by everyone. I too am ready to take the leap, away from the daily grind working in the oil field 7 days a week. Yes I make a great living, but with two children and a wife, at this point I just want time. And to everyone who shared their experiences, thanks for the motivation!

---

The hardest part is taking that first step. Having a stable income to jumping into the unknown is very scary especially when you have a family and people that depend on you. The satisfying part of that is knowing that failure is not an option and when you realize that, everything starts to fall in place. I worked for the same company for 15 years before I took that first step. I’ve been on my own for the last 9 years and I should have done it sooner. You can accomplish much more than you think you can when when everything is on the line. I now make more and work less and have more time with my family.

The large video production facility that I worked for went out of business, but I inherited many of the clients when I did my start up in computer animation.

Now all of those types of facilities are long gone. The editing and production rooms used to cost several hundred thousand to over a million bucks. Now, I have it all in Adobe Creative for $57 a month running on my sooped up $2k home computer.

Left a mid six figure job (IT) in a Fortune 250 to start my own company two years ago doing the exact same thing. I work less than half the amount of time, and closed out last year at a little over triple the highest amount I left my prior job at. Trending similarly this year so far; but I recognize that two years into the game this isn't common.

There were a couple factors that led Mrs. Cotten and I (made the decision together as a family) to make the decision that it was time for me to make the leap. The company I was at was beyond dysfunctional and abusive. I was working nearly 90 hour weeks (again, in IT). Along with that, one night we were looking at pictures from right when I started at my prior job and from the 5ish years I was there to that point...I literally looked 15 years older from the stress and burnout. Literally saw my old self and thought how incredibly shitty I look now. The last determining factor was when Mrs. Cotten and I had our first little one and they called me WHILE SHE WAS IN ACTIVE LABOR (and I was on leave) to tell me my role was no longer remote (with no justification as to why other than that it's better for "company culture"), they couldn't allow me to take the 6 weeks paternity leave I was promised in writing, and that they needed me back in the office fulltime starting pretty much immediately. I went into the office one day about a week later and it was only to physically turn in my notice that I was leaving. They flipped out, tried everything they could to keep me, and ironically enough they're a client of mine now and I billed them more than they ever paid me in a year, in the last 6 months.

TL;DR my company thought they could treat me like dog shite and I was tired of it. It was pretty much the biggest frick you I could do to them as payback.

quote:

---

What was the deciding factor to make you take that jump?

---

Just didn't like having a boss.

Also, I don't like wearing slacks, don't like shaving every day, I hate "meetings", and I don't like waking up before 9 AM.

Money was way down on the list of reasons I started my own company.

Scary AF to jump off that ledge, because there are no safety nets, but to me, it's 100% worth the risk and has paid off incredibly well, and I'm not talking about the money part. I wish everyone could have the feeling of a kind of freedom you get from doing your own thing.

I own three businesses now. Started my first (law firm) seven years ago out of necessity since I couldn't find the type of job I was looking for and hated my corporate gig.

It has all worked out, but the stress is still very high and I work all the time.

Don’t let life pass you by without doing it. You can always go back and get a salaried job if it doesn’t work out. Why would you NOT start your own company?!?! There’s definitely 2 types of people in the world…those who enjoy taking life by the balls and those who cling to “safety”.

Go find a business to buy and structure it with owner financing so you aren’t putting a bunch of $ on the table. There’s a lot of ways to skin the cat.