Success Happy

To anyone who works for themselves or owns a successful business. How do you live until your business profits?

My lifelong dream in life is to work for myself, or own a business doing something I love related to design and fashion and to earn a salary of at least $150, 000 a year. My question is, let's say you are working for someone else to learn skills in your field (in my case, I would be working for a fashion designer), and you make a salary of about $65,000 to $90,000 ; how do you live when you are waiting for a business to take off and profit? Three years time is the least it will take, but how do you go from a comfortable salary to none while you are working for a goal? What if you have kids, or a mortgage? I want to ultimately make at least $150,000 a year, when the business has grown. I know I will have to work up to that point. I will own a home by the time I start a business. How could I use that to my advantage? It may be a rental property that I will take over ownership from my mom.

Public Comments

1. Save up enough to scrape by for a year. If it doesn't work, give up after this point.
2. My opinion... You need to concurrently start saving money for the day you will leave the comfort of being an employee and while you are doing this, on the side, get your business started while you are still employed. I am not a big believer in taking out loans or getting investors. If you take this approach, you are still working for someone else.
3. I started my own business two years ago. I planned for the move I worked very hard at my day job and started planning and working on my own business while still employed. I paid off my debt and got my expenses as low as I could so that the first few years of my start up would not kill me. Then I just took the leap and quit my job. I am soooo much happier and making the same money I was making at my job but I only work about 1/2 the time, I love my boss, no bullshit with stupid committee meetings etc... Oh I also took a home equity line of credit to have something to fall back on and now I'm paying that off with the money I am making with my business. Its a gamble but go for it. I found it easier than I had expected and now wonder why I waited so long.
4. Yes Three Years seems to be the magic number. I have had two small businesses both took three years to get to a profitable stage.Your ideal salary is way out of range. Expect to take about a fifty percent cut in pay for your first three years (and thats working your butt off) If you do not accept the pay cut you will probably sink before you get launched. Sorry to be so blunt . But starting on top is impossible unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. (and i wasn't)
5. I agree with what the others have told you. However, unless you are already working with a designer AND making $65,000 - $90,000 I wouldn't count on making that as a starting salary.
6. I never entered any business where I would have to wait for considerable cash flow more than 6 months. If you are anticipating three years time and you need i.e. $65K a year to live on then you better have $195K behind in savings or some kind of residual income. Providing you do have this amount of money to your disposition you are much better off to buy an existing design and fashion business and gradually converting it in accordance to your own image.
7. This question is asked all the time. The other answers are all giving you a little of the information. If you are already in the same business field then try to start a small side business. You need to establish a track record so that you will be considered by other potential clients. Word of mouth is by far the best advertisement there is. One happy client goes a long way to helping you become successful. You didn't mention if you have a non-compete clause in your employment contract. If you don't know check it out before you start to market yourself. You will avoid potential legal trouble. A good rule of thumb is to have a least one year of salary in the bank before you start your own business. If you can't do this then I would stay where you are until you have less financial obligations.