Don't repeat my mistake, keep accumulating!

[classical_Liberal]

...

[7Wannabe5]

I agree with classical_Liberal. In fact, one of the reasons I ended up on this forum is that I found myself stuck on the slowly eroding curve of owning a once-profitable-enough business. I loved being self-employed so much I vowed to never go back to full-time-employment-by-other. Opening up the option to take on some additional part-time employment really added some resilience and flexibility to my lifestyle.

I think the often repeated truism that "most small businesses fail" is a mostly a cop-out repeated by people who have never made the attempt. The truth is "ALL small (or large) businesses fail eventually", but that doesn't mean it isn't an adventure worth taking or a skill-set worth learning. But, don't fall into the trap of simply switching from the cultural norm of self-defining through career to self-defining through entrepreneurial activities.

Also, you are in a situation where both your investments and your business are based on just flows of information and money. OTOH, this can be freeing, but doing or dealing with something else that involves direct interaction with real goods and real people will likely lessen your anxiety and increase ability to reduce living expenses.

[Jin+Guice]

I think the often repeated truism that "most small businesses fail" is a mostly a cop-out repeated by people who have never made the attempt. The truth is "ALL small (or large) businesses fail eventually", but that doesn't mean it isn't an adventure worth taking or a skill-set worth learning. But, don't fall into the trap of simply switching from the cultural norm of self-defining through career to self-defining through entrepreneurial activities.

This is great advice. I ran one small business in college (my partner still runs it) and I'm about to start a few more. The real mistake I see, reading through this post, is the all or nothing attitude. If a friend asked me about this I would've advised either secretly working on your business at work or changing careers to something with more free time, even if it paid way less. Quitting your job to focus on your business, weirdly the usual advice, is really swinging for the fences. If you're going to build the next Microsoft or whatever than ya, you probably need to do that, but is that really what you want to do? Is that kind of success even available in the thing you're doing? If so, you need to be prepared to risk it all. If you're trying to make an extra 10k a year and maybe in 5 years from now make an extra 20k a year, then you can probably do it in your spare time.

[wolf]

... https://coreyszmaida.com/2017/10/12/spr ... ting-time/
...http://habitest.com

Both websites are down. Unluckily he had not been around since then.
I would be very interested in how things have developed for him.

[tonyedgecombe]

I think the often repeated truism that "most small businesses fail" is a mostly a cop-out repeated by people who have never made the attempt. The truth is "ALL small (or large) businesses fail eventually", but that doesn't mean it isn't an adventure worth taking or a skill-set worth learning. But, don't fall into the trap of simply switching from the cultural norm of self-defining through career to self-defining through entrepreneurial activities.

The statistics are fairly clear on that although I can't help feeling many people go into it with their eyes closed. A friend of mine was complaining to me that since opening her coffee shop she works many more hours and earns less than in her previous job. I just wondered why she expected anything else.

Interestingly it's the people who are mostly motivated by financial gain who seem to have the most problems with it. It was never about that for me, I always saw it as a way out of the traditional career path. If I had come across ERE first I might well have gone down that road instead.

[prognastat]

Well you can assume to be making very little the first few years even in a successful business and much of what you are making will be put back in to the business(if you don't your business either won't grow or it'll fail). You can also assume to be working far more hours than you would otherwise. The reward if successful is either a large financial return or streamlining your business and reducing the hours necessary to make a decent amount.

[Dream of Freedom]

The statistics are fairly clear on that although I can't help feeling many people go into it with their eyes closed.

The statistics are not clear, they are bizarre. They base success or failure off of how long the company exists, which has little bearing on what a reasonable person would consider failure. So, if someone starts say tutoring in college to help pay for it and they are self employed, but it doesn't make sense to keep doing it once they graduate they failed in fewer than 5 years. And if a small pharmaceutical keeps issuing stock to keep itself afloat even though it has no product on the market it is a success because it lasts more than 5 years. And don't even get me started on how many business entities are created and destroyed in the restructuring of existing businesses.

[SavingWithBabies]

I recently created a business entity so I could open a solo 401k for some contracting work. That contract is over so I could shut it down but I'll probably keep it around. It was relatively inexpensive to create ($50 to local government, getting a federal employer identification number was free but mentioning it as requesting and being granted one no doubt created data record(s)).

This is the second business I've created. I was curious about what was required so I did all of the work myself on both instead of using convenience services. It is a little confusing however after making one, I saw how relatively easy it was. And part of creating a business, at least in my state, is to do a name search to make sure you use a non-colliding name. It's somewhat interesting to poke around in that database.

After seeing how easy it is to create a business, I don't doubt using business entity data is going to result in odd statistics.