Should You Quit Your Job To Work For Yourself?

You've probably thought about quitting your job at least once or twice in the past few years (if not, congrats — we love our jobs, but we're all a little jealous). And, in those moments, if you're like us, perhaps you've thought to yourself, "Wouldn't it be nice if I were the boss?"

Seriously, though, what if you called the shots and you were the one who got all the credit for all the amazing stuff you worked on every day? What if the by-product of your daily efforts was something that belonged entirely to you? Pretty tempting, right?

And, also, pretty scary. Because the flip side of owning all of the success is taking the fall for all the failures. It's not having a real safety net if the business doesn't turn a profit (no severance package, nobody to pay into your benefits and life insurance — the list goes on).

Yeah, the rift between the pros and cons here is pretty wide. So, we chatted with a former magazine editor who recently took the leap into entrepreneur-dom. Rachel Mount Hofstetter just wrote Cooking Up a Business , a book rounding up the very best wisdom from the women behind all of our favorite foodie start-ups. And, she says, "By the time I turned in my book manuscript, I was so inspired that I then left my job and struck out to work for myself, launching my custom mini-mag company, Guesterly. You could say I’m a food editor gone rogue — and I’m an enthusiastic believer that every woman should work for herself at some time in her life."

It's tough to doubt that kind of enthusiasm. Ahead, her list of reasons why this might be the most appealing risk you'll ever take.