I met Mildred Walters four years ago when she was the Executive Director of a small business Incubator. I don’t really remember how we met, but our initial meeting revolved around a book she’d written, and she wanted to talk to me about some promotional ideas for it. At the time she was still working at the Incubator, and I was not even a year into a new journey; one that I didn’t really see coming, and hadn’t fully planned on. It was a journey into self-employment without the benefit of the time to make a plan. Though our initial meeting was about PR, we ended up staying in touch  for months (and now years) later, as she shared with me her plans to leave her steady-income, health benefits, retirement package, paid vacation job, and venture into the world of self-employment. I congratulated her, and at the same time thought about how different things might have been if I’d been able to develop an exit strategy; create a plan for launching forward into something I knew I had become more passionate about. But like thousands of other people, I didn’t have that luxury of time. In one moment, an otherwise ordinary day turned into a large clock ticking down, hand moving each second closer to the end of a 13+ year run.

If only I’d met Mildred, now the owner of BizOwner Coach, LLC, two years earlier. I could have talked to her about the advice she shares here in our Newsroom about the 5 Things You Should Do Before You Leave Your Paycheck Job!

Perhaps that’s why I’ve become such a huge advocate and encourager to the women I meet and friends I know; especially single women with no “back-up income,” to become proactive in securing multiple streams of revenue for their lives. As a former employee with a “worker bee” mentality, I was loyal to a fault pretty much everywhere I worked. Now, I am one of the biggest supporters of doing what I can to help encourage my friends to turn hobbies into money making ventures, to develop businesses out of the creative juices that drive them, to reach beyond the 9-to-5 world of generating money for someone else’s business, and start exploring opportunities to make money for your own. That is one of the main foundations of where my passion to start Catching Raindrops in Water Buckets all began, and where my drive for all that will soon develop from out of that, comes from.

But before you quit that day job, and while you still have the benefit of time, a regular income, and financial flexibility, click over to the Newsroom and read Mildred Walters’s tips to help you plan for the next step in your future. And if you’re interested in more of Mildred’s advice, or need her consulting services, visit her website at www.mildredwalters.com.