You're contemplating a late career move. Should you launch your own business or consultancy?

If you consider starting a consultancy, don't think you will be automatically successful because you had an important position. Your former clients were often interested in the position and the benefit for their business not in you. Keep in mind. Wish you all the success.

It will not hurt to start your own business or consultancy. You were your own consultant even if you were working for another employer - just picture it that way. Consultancy requires calculated risk at the expense of playing several scenarios of what will work. You have got this. However, key to this journey is also taking informed decision even if you dive in head first. Hence it is important to research, network with the right crowd, put in the work on getting people to subscribe to your services-very important before you go broke and you shatter your dream, you need GRIT because you will start over and over again but make sure you are learning and adapting. The risk is always high nonetheless. Start and you will grow.

Interestingly we forget about the non-upfront elements we do not consider as costs. For example, making calls, traveling for events, giving out free advise just to convince a potential client, research time online, etc. These cosst creep in when you are unaware. In your financial planning consider these in there. Cost of acquisition of clients is more often overlooked but usually could be the drain. When you are confident to have high patronage of paying clients, then you are confident that your fixed and liquid assets are safe in your financial planning. No one misses out on these components in their financial planning that is why I focused my insight on things you may not consider.

Focus on the threat of substitution and innovation within your market for your product or service in your market research. Its solves a great deal of problems as that is usually not obvious. They are usually the unforeseen forces that battle your business. For example with innovation what if your service got replaced by the OEM, for example, if apple devices invented their own contact exchange technology on their iphones and you were operating a networking exchange service through business cards, then you will be out of business. Secondly by substitution, then what if instead of people purchasing hardware studio products for generating motion graphics resort to using Generative AI engines to generate animations. Add all obvious areas too.

You have a FLOW state when your energy is matched on the ends of personal goals and what the impact and financial returns are worth it. Most times when when your passion becomes work, you may want to give up. I advise that you have an accountability partner and a mentor who you talk to often. The journey may be rough but you need to have that support system. You also need to build habits, where you are able to rejuvenate and get back your groove for example, incorporate meditation, take a walk, go on a vacation, etc to recoup.Finally healthy relationships go a long way to ensuring you are stable and aligned with your goals. Ensure that you are cultivating ones that are beneficial to your personal goals and career satisfaction.