Did you leave a good job to start your own business?

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strollin

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I'm curious as to how many here left a good job with good pay/benefits to go out on your own? How long did it take (if ever) for you to reach an income at or above the job you left?

I have a pretty good job as a software engineer with a large software company. Six figure income, benefits like medical, dental, life insurance, etc... Unlimited sick time, 4 weeks paid vacation, work from home, flexible hours and so on.

I do computer repairs on the side more or less as a hobby, if I can make a few extra bucks at it that's great but I don't depend on income from it.

I doubt I would ever leave my current job to strike out on my own unless I was laid off or otherwise lost my job.

How about you? Did you have a decent job with a good future but left it behind to become your own boss?
 
Yup, I was in a senior IT management position here in the UK but the US owned company I worked for consolidated their european operations back into the US at the start of the resession and we laid off all IT staff across Europe. After 20+ years working in an office working for 'the man', I couldn't face the politics of it any more and took the plunge to go it alone.

While I'm only earning a tenth of what I used to earn and I don't have the corporate benifits of pension, healthcare, company car, bonus, gym etc etc, I have adjusted my lifestyle and now I have control of my life back. The work and the people I do it for are of my own choosing and I have no-one on my back (except myself!) constantly trying to own my sole for the promise of a monthly wage. I get to spend quality time with my wife/kids and life is generally ok. Sure, it can be a struggle financially and I can't remember the last holiday abroad or the last time a bought a new car or gadget but then life/work is all about choice and compromise and getting a balance.

Trying to compare working for yourself and working for 'the man' is like comparing oranges and lemons... sure they are both fruit but they look and taste very different.
 
Good post, I have a long reply but I hope it helps some out there with their dreams and wish list.

I didn't leave a job, I left a career for my business. I was making $65,000 a year as a 3rd level HelpDesk/Outlook specialist before I went on my own. I went on my own because every job I had, I treated like my own business and gave way too much energy to only get it sucked away by mergers, acquisitions and bad management.

We just celebrated CTG's 4th bday and I am personally still not bringing home the big bucks, but am growing and that's the whole purpose of this, to build what I want to do for the rest of my life. I have dreams to grow an enterprising business model and with that eventually, will come the luxuries. I am willing to wait. I gave up extensive travel, 401K, nice savings, zero balance credit cards and expensive products (miss my old $90 moisturizer!) for this life. Now I rarely travel, killed my 401K, maxxed out many of the credit cards, buy Aveeno moisturizer ($8) and work just way too much and sacrificed my personal life and gained 30 lbs to boot! It was a balancing act I didn't know I would have to do 4 years ago. Would I give this up for what I had? Never. I am enjoying this way too much.

For you my friend, I would not recommend leaving your position right now unless you were fired or laid off. That's what I did, I was fired and gave it the one shot I never had the chance to do--that's why I said I left a career, I opted to not get back in their game, but create my own game.

Luckily for me, I was off unemployment in 5 months.

Hope this helped.
 
TechguyUK said:
Yup, I was in a senior IT management position here in the UK but the US owned company I worked for consolidated their european operations back into the US at the start of the resession and we laid off all IT staff across Europe. After 20+ years working in an office working for 'the man', I couldn't face the politics of it any more and took the plunge to go it alone.

While I'm only earning a tenth of what I used to earn and I don't have the corporate benifits of pension, healthcare, company car, bonus, gym etc etc, I have adjusted my lifestyle and now I have control of my life back. The work and the people I do it for are of my own choosing and I have no-one on my back (except myself!) constantly trying to own my sole for the promise of a monthly wage. I get to spend quality time with my wife/kids and life is generally ok. Sure, it can be a struggle financially and I can't remember the last holiday abroad or the last time a bought a new car or gadget but then life/work is all about choice and compromise and getting a balance.

Trying to compare working for yourself and working for 'the man' is like comparing oranges and lemons... sure they are both fruit but they look and taste very different.
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I pretty much mirror that. I was working as a systems consultant, company cars for 38 years, expenses blah blah blah. Travelling 40k miles per year working all hours supporting clients one way or another. Had enough and luckily got redundancy and, with my mortgage already paid off, I was in a great position. Took 6 months off to work on the house and then decided to work for myself doing anything in IT I can get that I can do. Laptop repairs, networks etc. Am loving it, don't earn anywhere what I did but don't need to. :) Instead of getting to the airport for an early morning flight or driving 250 miles to a call I get up and walk downstairs to my workshop. I book appointments at the earliest for a 10am start and generally please myself.

My advice is if you need the money stay where you are, you won't earn it for a long while working for yourself. If you can afford it if give it up, with money comes stress, the more you earn the more stress you have generally(you might not realise it)
 
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One of the reasons that I would hesitate to go out on my own right now is because I am closer to the end of my career than the beginning since I plan to retire in less than 8 years. I may consider continuing doing repairs on a part-time basis after I retire but can't see doing it as a full-time job.
 
strollin said:
One of the reasons that I would hesitate to go out on my own right now is because I am closer to the end of my career than the beginning since I plan to retire in less than 8 years. I may consider continuing doing repairs on a part-time basis after I retire but can't see doing it as a full-time job.
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You're right. I was 7 years from retirement and thought I was there for the duration. I didn't think I would get out at all early and wasn't going to walk away from the job with nothing. Stick it out but if you get the chance to take a decent payoff and a pension then I would take it. Not sure what benefits you get in the US but ours(my company) was quite good. Looking at your bio and you are pretty much the same age etc as me and 38 years married now :D
 
I did it because four months on the rock and roll was cracking me up. So I started a web development company, but to get my foot in the door I started doing PC repairs as it was easier to get that work. In the mid naughties the web market has saturated so decided focus on the repair side of things more.

I did do a few websites, but I found I enjoyed the computer repair/support side of things a lot more.

So it was either continue on doll, work in McDonalds or do this :)
 
I was a senior clinical social worker in mental health for many years, involved in managing programs and staff for non-government organisations, and also some clinical work.

Over time I got "work-related burnout" (became quite ill - very stressful work) and decided to leave - with no particular ambition in mind, other than to have a rest.

Took a year off, and took stock of what interested me. In that time I racked up something like 6000 posts telling people how to fix various computer problems (I had been involved in IT as a sideline for about 20 years), and then one day had a lightbulb-moment.

"Hmm.. I could be charging for this" :)

I had a conversation with my kids recently, who asked me to count out all the jobs I have had in my 25 year work history. It came to just over 50 (!). Having said that, I think I have found my spot now - very happy with this line of work, and particularly with not being in an organisation and the freedom of working for myself.
 
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Well I guess I'm a little of an oddity here then... lol

I learned HTML off the Netscape site, specification 1.0. (quit laughing) Started doing the HTML by hand, learned a little here and there as newer versions came out. Picked up programming languages, CGI/Perl/PHP, a few programs (e.g. Photoshop, Premiere), etc. My interest always centered on security and I can now testify in court as an expert witness in computer security. I've literally done IT stuff for years but I have never -- ever -- had an actual work-for-someone job in IT. Never found reasoning in getting a bachelor's degree or certification if they're just going to pay me ridiculous amounts of money to fix the guy they did hire's mistakes anyway. :D

I'm still working in a non-IT-related field... 911 Dispatcher! lol Been there for about 7 years now (oh God what's wrong with me?!). I do my 40 hour job with rotating shifts, do computer repair and programming projects with my IT business and somehow find time to be a volunteer firefighter for the only fire department in 60+ miles. I've personally found that if you cut out sleep completely you get an extra 40 hours a week! lol

But seriously, where I live, it just can't support anyone doing anything in IT full-time unless you're specialty is telephone networks for the phone company (and they already have that guy). While I would LOVE to have the ability to branch out on my own, it's just not happening unless I started doing out-of-town programming projects or something on a regular basis. And with the competition of foreign "pizza programmers" (lol), good luck on that one.
 
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I quick my job last April, I was making about 68k year. I worked for the government, and anyone who works with the military learns that common sense and logic has no place there. It to the point that nobody trusted anyone, and people keep creating new drama. Everyone hated everyone.

A girl who I had worked with for 3 years whom I told some personal things to decided to start telling other people, and bad mouthing me. We just had our first child when this really got bad. Once I found out she had done this I chose not to talk to her unless it was about work, to which one day she came it blabbering about how sick she felt, and I was ignoring her. To which she blew up and told me to F*** off because I wouldn't pay any attention to her. And I looked up and said...ok, I sure will. Packed my stuff up and told my supervisor I was done and left.

So, now i'm making about $1500-$2500 per month and its slowly growing each month. It hard not having health insurance, paying for diapers, formula, medicine, but we are making it happen. My parents are helping me out letting us rent a house for low cost.

I can't believe how much easier it is to handle customers now that i have more time. I have the ability to take on high end clients since I can get up and go all day if I need to.
 
callthatgirl said:
LOL--I learned HTML off the Netscape site

I learned on Composer. No HTML.
Click to expand...

Truthfully, I was still a complete newbie when it came to the Internet. I didn't technically learn it from the Netscape site so much as someone printed the entire specification (yes, seriously) and handed me a giant book-like thing of papers. lol I used Notepad to make my sites, still use a text editor (gEdit -- Linux) to do it now. My site was created 100% in gEdit and Photoshop. That's it. I kick my HTML old school. lol ;O)
 
I have been working in the entertainment field since high school as a theatrical technician, working on lighting, audio, and a bunch more different categories. And as a theatrical tech you usually work for many different companies and become a work alcoholic. Currently I mainly work for one corporation making about 75K a year and do very little work some of the time. Well back in 2004 i was getting asked to look or fix people's computers. So i decided to setup my own business and start charging for my time, Especially if they wanted it in some sort of a deadline.

Unfortunately, i closed my business a little over a year ago because planning for my wedding was so time consuming, it left very little time to even consider my business. I do however plan to reopen my business once again, but i just haven't decided on when.
 
I worked for a small IT company here in South Florida for about 4 years as an entry level Network Tech. I was only making about 49K, eventually management was too much for me to bear and i quit. I now work in the Health care field as a Radiologic Technologist RT(R) (MR), but my love for IT had never faded. I now manage to find the time to run my company and work at the hospital. I would not quit if i were you, wade in the IT field little by little.
 
I did leave a good job with good pay (nearly six figures) and good benefits to go out on my own. 2004 to be exact. I was able to exceed my corporate income by the second year in business. I do not have any employees and do everything myself from home (that lowers your overhead). I am in a major metro area here in the US and serve a part of town that has a very high average household income and there are a lot of small businesses.

----> Whether or not anyone could make a good living starting their own PC repair business is most certainly a function of where you live. Your demographics will determine what kind of income you can produce. So studying your demographic is a critical step in deciding what to do (stay employed or quit).

I was a career mechanical engineer that had always enjoyed PC's as a hobby since the late 70's. Started on a Radio Shack TRS80, then DOS, then Windows. When the Internet rolled out in our area - friends and family started getting PC's and surfing the net - and then my phone started ringing (everyone knew I loved PC's): "my computer won't print. Can you come fix it?" or "my PC won't bla bla bla ... can you fix it?" So at night after work and on weekends I was always helping someone with their computer.

It was not long before people I did NOT know started calling me saying: "hi John, Marge Smith said you fixed her computer and did a great job would you mind taking a look at mine?"

It was then that I knew this was probably a good business to be in. I took a look at my daily corporate income (annual take home divided by 260 work days per year - for me was about $365/day) and I said to myself: "I think I can do that". The first year I made 50% to 60% of that and the next year I was even. Since then I hit my cap and have hovered right around that number.

A key to my success has been low pricing (below my competition) and word of mouth advertising. I do very little advertising (less than $2k per year). This saves $10k to $20k per year in advertising costs.

I love doing this and would NEVER trade back to the corporate world.

I define my success as:
  1. Knowing my demographic
  2. Being skilled enough to accurately repair 3 or 4 PC's a day with a low rate of return
  3. Taking care of my customers like they were my family
 
Yes I had a good job managing my brothers IT company and he did not want to sell half of it to me so I gave 30 days notice and left to start my own company targeting a different customer base so that we were not direct competitors.

I started my business when the economy was on an up swing so it was not that hard. I too treat all my customers like my best friend. I charge a bit more than the going rate compared by competitors but I am shooting for a slightly higher clientele.

I don't think I could ever go to work for anyone again, not even as CEO or upper management. I've become very spoiled.
 
I've become very spoiled.

no kidding bro. In the corporate world you have to help everyone, doing your own thing allows you freedom to pick and chose. I happen to let all clients in, but fired my first one last week, after 4 years, yay!
 
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