Are you a closet entrepreneur?

Have you been dissatisfied with your job, but unable to put your finger on the problem? If some of the criteria below ring true with you, perhaps it’s time to jack it in and go it alone!

You’ve been unable to find satisfaction working for someone else.

You’ve tried to throw yourself into a career, and work hard to impress your managers and colleagues. You’ve really tried to be excited about the prospect of climbing the ladder and progressing in an existing company. But your heart isn’t in it, and you feel like you’re not learning as much as you could. You get frustrated at having to do things a particular way, and you don’t find any fulfilment striving for someone else’s vision. You really wish you had the right attitude and state of mind to work towards someone else’s vision, but you just don’t know how to get motivated by that concept.

You secretly always think you’re right.

You’ve grown tired of being directed by someone else, and you can’t help resenting being told what to work on, and how to approach it. It’s an internal struggle: you don’t want to have a bad attitude, and you genuinely want the company to succeed and for the team to work well together. But when it comes down to it, you just don’t know how to respond well to being managed. Worst of all, you find yourself being increasingly critical of your colleagues and your boss: why aren’t they a better leader? Why are they so unadventurous and set in their ways? Why don’t they try harder at communicating? And you start to feel uncomfortable that you’re not being a positive influence on the company. Probably it’s a character flaw. But you have to work with the skills and strengths you possess, so you find yourself considering the prospect of not having a boss at all.

You’re bored by a repetitive 9-5 routine.

You’re not the kind of person that likes getting up and following the same schedule, day-in, day-out. You crave excitement and you want to be pushed and to push yourself. You want to set your own agenda, and choose your own workload, and you want the option of working outside of normal office hours.

You’re good at what you do.

To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be a good all-rounder: starting a business will inevitably involve some sales, marketing, product design, administration, and anything else necessary to turn your dream into a reality. But the chances are that you’re passionate about a particular discipline: perhaps you have a skill to sell as a service, such as design or writing. Maybe you’re a product person and you want to create something from scratch and sell it to people, whether that’s tangible goods, or a software application.

You’re excited by your idea.

The kernel of a plan has been germinating at the back of your mind for a while, and when you think about it, you get really excited. You wonder if it would work, if you could be successful at it. You want to spend more time working on your idea and your plan, and you start to resent having to go to your work every day when you’d much rather be doing your own thing.

You’re scared, but you’re not too scared.

The prospect of giving up the security of a regular salary is daunting, and you’re nervous about making the jump, especially if you have a mortgage and kids to provide for. You worry about how irregular and unpredictable your income might be, especially at the beginning when you’re starting out. But when you really think about it, your ambition outweighs your fear, and you’ve come to realise that you’re not much good at being someone’s employee, so what other options do you have than to go it alone?