About 10 years ago I was thrust into self-employment when the company I worked for as an independent contractor pulled out of my state. I couldn't get unemployment payments because I'd been a 1099, not an employee. I had only 2 months living expenses saved, so I knew I had that much time to make a business of my own work (doing the same thing I'd done as a contractor). I went to all the clients I had and offered to go direct with them for less than they'd been paying for me (which was more than the company had been paying me out of the funds). Just two said yes, but that was all I needed to get started. That gave me the time to learn how to make a website and logo (and make them) and get a marketing blog up and running to bring traffic to the site. I wound up getting my first $20,000 client off that site within just a couple months of putting it up, and within another 3 years I was making a half million a year. Now I'm retired.

I had tried my hand at businesses before, but I didn't know what I was doing. That time it worked because it so happened that the work I was doing as a consultant was business consulting, and the company had trained me to do it the year before. There really is so much of success that is simply teachable and not intuitive. But once you learn, you see it isn't rocket science.