Face it: You’re dangling from the career ladder, and you want to jump off! Your work is boring or has lost its meaning, your boss controls your priorities and your time, you find no place to use your enthusiasm and creativity - you want to scream "I hate my job!".

And this thing you call a job isn’t even secure! The world of corporate employment is full of land mines these days, and you’re trying to dodge them like everyone else. Thousands of blue-collar workers are getting pink slips. If you’re in a technical job, you’re increasingly at risk to that work being outsourced abroad. Even if you’re a manager or an executive, maybe you feel like an anonymous cog.

There’s one more thing: The material payoffs for enduring this kind of career stagnation are diminishing every day. Salaries and wages creep up slowly, if at all. Traditional benefits like pensions and health insurance are eroding. And the notion of company loyalty to employees has become about as old-fashioned as VCRs.

All of this brings you to one conclusion: I want to start a business and stop working for the man. If so, you’ll be happy to know that more than 80% of the people who will be launching a business this month, next month or the month after that, according to a study by Babson College, are looking to leave their jobs, just like you.

We want to do everything we can to encourage you to join the flight from unhappy employment.

Consider that if you take the plunge and decide to become an entrepreneur, you’ll spend more time doing work you love, and less time in meetings. You’ll flourish creatively in an environment of endless possibilities, instead of being silently thwarted. You’ll avoid that long commute!

And, while there’s obviously great risk in leaving behind a regular paycheck and predictable assignments, there also is great risk in staying right where you’re at. The difference is that, in a job, someone else is determining your future – someone who easily could come to see eliminating your position, or frustrating your progress, as a way of reducing the risk to their own performance. But when you start a business, you control your exposure to risk – and do it only on your own behalf.

Now, at this point, we can almost hear other misgivings welling in your mind. You can’t stop thinking about the wonderful psychic payoffs from sticking with your job. Your cubicle mates are more like Drew Carey than Dilbert, and you really enjoy the camaraderie with them in and out of the office. You’ve finally got that business-casual dress thing down to a science. Youve finally arranged your work station just the way you like it. Or, you enjoy the routine of a fixed starting time and the familiarity of your regular slot on the assembly line. And after all, it’s just three more years and you’re fully vested in the pension that you’ve been building toward for a couple of decades.

Just don’t be clinging to those notions because you want a sense of belonging, or stick with your job this year because you did it last year. The corporate environment indeed can be seductive, but it also can be a trap. Life isn’t a dress rehearsal, and it is short. So, do you want to spend all of your working hours in an environment of your own making, one that is positive and creative and thrilling? Or in a corporate holding pen that is routine and even deadening, and only apparently “safe”?

Four ways to a more fulfilling occupation

Just go ahead and take the plunge: You’ve planned, plotted and prepared for your leap into the exciting unknown of entrepreneurship – so just jump! In hindsight, you’ll probably conclude that you should have done it a year or two earlier. That’s what happened to Patrick Gray, who had worked for two companies in two years when he finally decided to devote full time to starting Prevoyance Group, a project-management consulting firm in New York City. “There’s no shortage of people lamenting their current situation and dreaming of going out on their own, but few get to the point where they start knocking on doors looking for clients, taking out loans to fund the venture, and writing checks for startup costs,” Patrick says. “But the only way I could get adequate direction over my career was to go it alone.”

Move “part-to-full” time: If you want to test the entrepreneurial waters but can’t quite risk quitting your job cold turkey, launch your new company part-time instead. Evenings and weekends will never be the same! And if you dedicate yourself to your startup business, sooner rather than later, it will become clear whether you should devote your entire work life to your company.

Position yourself for a later exit: Another way of making a gradual transition is to optimize your corporate position in light of your desire to start a company, says Pamela Slim, owner of Ganas Consulting, a Mesa, Arizona-based outfit that consults on workplace issues with large companies, and founder of EscapefromCubicleNation.com. For example, you could maneuver into a sales-related position that could help prepare you for touting your own company. Also, build your knowledge and skills by taking advantage of the opportunities that many companies offer through education, training and mentoring programs. Given the continued corporate cutbacks these days, even if you feel at a dead end with your employer, you might hang around awhile just to position yourself for receiving a severance package that could then financially underwrite your startup.

Reboot your corporate career: Remember that the decision to leave a company and maybe a career probably isn’t reversible. And becoming an entrepreneur isn’t something you do on a lark; statistically, your business has a much greater chance of failure than success. For those reasons, you might want to consider ways to recharge your corporate career rather than abandon it: switch departments, or even companies. Become “ intrapreneurial ” within the company, a dynamic agent for change and progress. The success of that approach may renew your appreciation of your employer and keep you from becoming a citizen of StartupNation – at least for awhile!

Our Bottom Line

We believe that unhappy employment is only a phase on the way to the true fulfillment that you can find in starting and running your own company. So if youre sounding like a broken record when you say you hate your job, we’re here to help you make the transition. Get going with our 10 Steps to Open for Business.