Why side-builders survive and salary-jumpers don't: The Two-Year Wall.

Take everybody who ever traded a salary for a business of their own, line them up by what they earn, and look at whoever is standing in the middle. Ten years on, that person was down roughly thirty-five per cent against having simply stayed put. Not the ones who went under. The middle of the pack. The survivors you would point at during a wedding speech as living proof that it can be done.

From the introduction

One job. A university in Boston, a good salary, decent people, and nothing worth telling you about ever happened to me there. I left it. So I have never had the thing this book is about, and I have never sat inside a job I could not afford to leave, with a mortgage and a person who depends on me and a number in a spreadsheet that quietly says not this year.

From the introduction

That is how the book looks at “why side-builders survive and salary-jumpers don't”: one idea at a time, with a step you can take right away. Of course, this is only one idea from the book. So, if this passage speaks to you, the full chapter goes further, and it ends with an exercise you can do the same evening.

In short, the book has 14 chapters, and each one ends with a practical exercise. Therefore, you can read it in order, or you can go straight to the part about “why side-builders survive and salary-jumpers don't”.

1. Only one kind of self-employment pays
2. The forty-five-year-old founder
3. The salary is not a number
4. What you are actually buying
5. Stuck is not the same as ready
6. You are guessing how it will feel, and the guess is wrong
7. Why you have not decided already
8. The job might be the problem, and a business might not be the answer
9. Do not leap. overlap.
10. What the double life costs
11. Buy the business instead of building it
12. One stranger, one payment, while you still have the job
13. Staying is allowed, and it can be the win
14. A decision you can defend later

Finally, you can get The Two-Year Wall: Why Side-Builders Survive and Salary-Jumpers Don't in the stores below. Because every title of this book shares the same text, you can simply pick the one you like best. Also, the book is available in 19 languages.

In addition, each title below highlights a different idea from the same book. So, pick the one that speaks to you.

• The Side-Business Validation Plan: Keep the Wage, Test the Dream, Then Jump
• I Want to Be My Own Boss, but I Need My Salary: Test First, Quit Later
• Your Paycheck Is Not the Obstacle: How to Build a Business While Employed
• The 96-Hour Business Test: Validate Your Idea Before You Quit Your Job
• Before You Hand In Your Notice: How to Test a Business While You Still Have a Job
• The Job You Can't Quit Is Your Cheapest Startup Lab: 14 One-Evening Tests Before You Risk Your Paycheck
• Keep Your Salary, Build Your Business: The Employed Person's Guide to Testing a Startup Before You Quit
• Don't Quit Your Job to Start a Business: Build It on the Side, Test It, Then Decide
• I Can't Quit My Job: Test It Before You Quit It
• Test It Before You Quit It

See all 19 titles. Go to the book page.