Becoming your own boss is one of the most exhilarating – and daunting – things you can ever do in your work life. So how can you ensure you maximize the benefits while minimising the risks before, during and after taking the leap?

Leaving your job in the best way possible can provide invaluable help, particularly in the early days of running your business, and establishing and maintaining a database of useful contacts will not only provide practical assistance but will also deliver a ready-made support network to provide a much needed boost when the going gets tough.

You will also need to establish a clear vision for your business, create a workable business plan and road-map with realistic targets and problem-solving strategies, and decide how you are going to measure its progress over the next year, three years, five years etc. You will need to create a robust framework for maximising the potential of your business and achieving the optimum work/ life balance, including deciding on such factors as whether or not you should rent an office space (private or shared) or perhaps work from home, and how best to combine your work life with your home life. Learning how best to motivate yourself in the short, medium and long term will be crucial to your success as a soloist and it’s important to remember too that while being your own boss can be hard work you should also learn how to enjoy its many benefits, not least the flexibility your new working life affords you. As you become more established in your solo work life, you will need to concentrate on developing and growing your business, learning how to leverage the advantages of being your own boss, and how to identify and negotiate the myriad potential pitfalls. What are the best practices for dealing with clients? How should you structure and manage your finances? How will you avoid becoming isolated while at the same time ensuring family and friends do not encroach on your work time and space? How can you grow your business through the employment of mobile technologies? And for those times when the going gets tough you will need to have strategies in place to inspire you and to ensure you keep moving your business forward, in the desired way and at the required rate. So whether you have decided to become your own boss to escape the rat race and keep all the rewards of your hard work, whether redundancy has forced you to rethink your options but also provided you with the opportunity to do something new and exciting, or whether early retirement has afforded you the chance to start the career of which you always dreamed, now is your chance to maximize your work/life potential.

People believe an entrepreneur’s life is much simpler, since he works for himself. The truth is working for others are simpler than working for oneself. One thinks 24 hours a day to make his venture successful and thus, there would be a punishing schedule.

This is a place for all the doers... people who believe they can change their life and this world.

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Arun chaubey is a writer and entrepreneurial coach, and blogs for a number of large sites. If you’re struggling to keep up the motivation to start your own venture leave a comment and let's see what we can make out.

This is a place for the DOERS, the GO-GETTERS... FO