When should I become independent?

The title of this post, short and definite, is one of the first questions people ask themselves when they work for a company and have the idea of becoming independent and create their own company. Obviously there is not a perfect answer for this question because it is a subjective theme, however in this article I want to share what I think about it, taking into account it is an experience I faced some years ago.

The first thing I must say is that this is a decision you should think over and evaluate on its fair measure. Therefore, I don’t recommend to decide this when you have just fought with your boss or your coworkers, because we are angry, but I also think you shouldn’t stay thinking it forever.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I believe we have two very important variables that will determine the possibility we have to take this decision. The first one is our personal situation. When I decided to become independent I had the perfect scenario: I lived at my parents’ house, I didn’t had any debt and I didn’t have husband, kids or any financial responsibility. This situation made it easy for me to decide I wanted to become independent. However, this is not the scenario of many people that want to work on their own. This doesn’t mean that having financial responsibilities will always destroy this dream but you will have to decide how are you going to face these responsibilities. You can determine to use your savings, that your husband or wife pays for them or even one of your business partners.

The other variable is “opportunities”. The truth is that I am a little conservative therefore I will never recommend to leave a job if we are not clear about what are we going to do, in what are we going to work. However, I think that wile we work for a company we can evaluate our options and once we are clear about this new business is time to decide what are we going to do and leave our job. It is important that this option is realistic and that it has the potential to create us a living. We must also evaluate risks and the actions we must implement in order to be successful. It is also important to be aware that opportunities have expiration date and if we don’t exploit them when they exist, maybe then might be too late.

Image taken from  Flickr.com