That leap from being paid by others to relying on your own business for an income is a frightening one make sure you are going about it the right way.

I am guessing that you have already discovered that a couple of clients are not going to pay your bills for very long. This is the best way to start your own business but you are going to have some long working days ahead of you.

A word of caution first: Do not undertake your own business work, whilst you are on your paid work time. Do not use their facilities, copier, phone, software etc and absolutely do not chase their clients. This is the quickest way to be fired from your current job.

I would give yourself a reasonable time say 6 months to a year to make the transition. This decided, then sit down and work out the following:

* Plan how you are going to make this move and what you expect to achieve each year. For example you could set yourself the target of obtaining 3 new clients within 2 months and then 1 client for each month after that.

* Decide what your marketing strategy that is where you are going to find your customers and persuade them to buy from you.

* Decide what services you are going to offer and at what price.

* Decide what makes you so special that people will want to buy from you, as opposed to other businesses.

Once you have done all this, and most importantly, you need to work out what your break even point is. That is how many customers do you need to pay your bills and make all the work worthwhile.

When you have all this information, put your plan into action and do not forget to learn as much as possible about your trade, whilst you are still employed.

If you are in a very competive market, competing against many other people and companies, some that can offer very cheap rates. Please be sure that you can succeed before you give in your nice safe paying job. Good luck.

Lee Lister

Lee Lister is Management Consultant and Program Manager with more than 25 year's management and consultancy experience and more than 20 year's program and project management experience in projects for Banking, Finance, Insurance, Leisure and Government bodies. She also have more than 10 years bid management experience ranging from bids for medium companies to large international and infrastructure bids.

British born, Lee received her BA(Hons) Financial Economics from the University of Essex. She went on to work in or for a considerable number of countries within Asia and Europe as well as Australia and the United States. While building a name for herself through helping company restructure, change management and project management consultancy, Lee became a well-known figure for her skills in analyzing, problem solving and trouble-shooting. She has consulted for many major industries, including banking, telecommunications, insurance, transportation, leisure and governments from many different countries. Some of the companies who have benefited from Lee?s expertise are Hewlett Packard, Siemans Nixdorf, Electrolux and the Philippines government.

Whilst working in the Far East she became a recognized expert on preparing and evaluating large World Bank Proposals (infrastructure projects within developing countries). These accomplishments called upon the skills of bid and project management, risk assessment, contract negotiation and supplier management and required dedicated work to very tight time scales. This expertise was acknowledged by an invitation to be the principle speaker at an International Business Development Conference in Washington, USA. She has also consulted at very senior level in several countries.

She owns and manages two companies, Biz Guru LLC in the USA and Biz Guru Services Ltd in the UK as well a considerable number of profitable web sites. She works almost entirely via the internet, visiting clients on site during major consultancies and training. Her Internet skills span from when major companies first started to consider obtaining their own web sites. During these years, she has kept up to date with the rapid changes on the internet, including the dot com boom and the resulting bust ? which her own web based companies survived.

She regularly consults, writes and lectures on business, bid management and marketing and has published numerous courses and books.