Unlike many of my peers, my heart and mind was always set on being a small business owner for my “career.” I really had no idea what kind of business I wanted to put up (though I’ve always wanted to put up a record label, but I kept my options open since the music industry was in shambles). I moved to Canada to pursue a career in marketing shortly after I graduated university. In my mind, I was going to save up enough money to use as my startup capital, then quit after I’ve saved enough money so I could focus solely on starting my business.

But things don’t exactly work out the way you plan it. During my short-lived tenure as a marketing coordinator, I discovered that it was possible to make money online — building up my hopes that I’d earn enough money from it to replace my salary and eventually quit my day job. However, my situation took an unexpected turn when our entire department staff got laid off due to the recession, and I was forced to “quit” my day job right on the spot.

Instead of polishing up my resume and looking for another job however, I decided to use my “time off” to ramp up my efforts and income from my existing revenue streams. Luckily, I had some savings in my bank account to tide me over. The dedicated focus allowed me to work on my business day in and day out, which eventually lead to me replacing my day job income within just a year of starting out.

With that said, I think that there’s only a few criteria when you should take the plunge to quit your day job:

• You already know what you want to do. Focus is a strong factor of success. It would be foolish to suddenly quit your day job without having any idea of what you’re going to do to replace your income. Before you quit your day job, know exactly what your business is going to be, and put your 150% efforts in seeing that to success once you do hand in your two week’s notice.

• You have enough money saved up to tide you over for a while. It doesn’t really matter what your definition of “for a while” is. What’s important is that you have enough money to pay for your living expenses from the time that you begin until the time that your business is bringing in enough money to replace what you used to make at your corporate job.

• You can’t stand your day job for much longer. People have many reasons for wanting to quit their day job and branch off on their own. You can’t stand your boss, you feel unappreciated at work, you feel like you could be doing much more, you want more time for yourself, etc. Whatever it is that you’re after, that fire needs to be strong enough to fuel you for the next few months because you’re going to need the motivation to keep going when times are tough.