I am planning to leave a decently-paying corporate job with benefits, to start my business in 2026. I am totally freaked out, but I still feel 60% Yes, 40% no on this choice. Here are my reasons to leaving the job / starting new business, and my concerns. I’m curious what people think.

(Please keep in mind that I went back to school and changed careers at 33, so I’m a little behind age-wise to where you would expect me to be, but I am aware of this.)

Reasons to Leave Job / Start business:

1. I’m turning 42, and it has always been my goal all along to start my own business in this field (precisely why I went back to school), and it’s probably not going to get any easier to do so. Working for this corporate office has always been a stepping-stone, and not my ultimate goal.
2. I don’t like the way work is conducted at my company – I see so many inefficiencies, bad ideas, wasted client dollars, etc.
3. I feel like I have outgrown my role and constantly have to “make myself small” to survive in this office, preventing me from moving up at the rate I want, making more money, and doing my best work.
4. I finally feel like I have just enough experience to start handling projects on my own.
5. I want to have control over my daily schedule – I want to work different hours, not necessarily less hours – but I want to control it more.
6. The rate of salary increase / growth at my current company is very slow and I don’t stand to grow much unless I stay another 5 years.
7. In my heart, I’m just really unhappy there, a lot of the time – which doesn’t couple well with my ambition, work ethic, drive, etc.
8. Some experts say that the BEST time to start a company is in an economic downturn or lull, since it let’s you grow slowly and then absolutely kill it when the economy is strong again.
9. I’m married, homeowner, shared income, not in debt – so in other words, I won’t be in financial danger per se, at least for a while, if I do this.
10. I know I still need more experience in my profession, but I’m not learning the things I need to at this current job, where I am pigeonholed – I kind of need to get out of the frying pan and into the fryer, to start growing where it is needed. I’m willing to put in the work to strengthen skills.

Reasons I am afraid to leave in 2026 to start my own thing:

1. “Looming economy threat” – my work is a service based, “Nice to have,” NOT a “Need to have” that targets people of middle-high income. Are they going to want to hire people like me next year?
2. Generally accepting that I can’t get everything running exactly the way I want until I leave the full time job – all the things I need to do to set up my business, and especially networking for clients – I can only put in SOME effort until I leave my job. My current job is extremely demanding and leaves little time or energy to do all the business moves, although I am doing little things every weekend.
3. Accepting lack of income at the beginning and trying not to get depressed or paralyzed with anxiety.
4. Not sure about backup plan if the business fails.
5. AI – like many many many service industries, people are trying to replace people like myself with AI. Its not apples to apples, and so far I don’t see that AI is going to take away all the work, but it definitely seems like it will make it more competitive to PRICE my services.
6. Everything I don’t know, yet: In my industry, you can never be an expert on every single thing. The longer you’re in it, the better you are. So there are definitely going to be things that come up that I might not be 100% sure how to handle, not only in the project side of things, but the business of it as well.