A LOT of people think being self-employed means having an easy life. I run into this mentality all the time. It's the same b.s. that MLMs are selling: be your own boss. set your own hours. have it easy. don't answer to anyone else. you are your own boss. you are an entrepreneur. it's going to be easy street.
I think 90% of businesses fail because people who start them think it will be easy, because they'll be their own boss.
I won't be very specific, but my wife and I are self employed, selling one single food item.
It started as a side hustle for my wife, she did it for 3 or 4 hours a day after her regular job.
At some point my work was slow, so I started working mornings and she would come in the afternoon. We parked in a public area and used our existing vehicle, making our overhead very low. About 1 or 2 years in, my wife said, "why don't you quit your job and do this full time?
I said I will--- if you will. We started full time and not to long after that we were forced to rent a spot, which worked out very well, because of comfort, heating cooling and a better overall appearance. Our cost increased but still very low by any business standard.
Our nut is about $30 a day, we more than double the price of our product so our break even
point is $60 in sales. We have been at it 15 years.
Now the hard part, we were both working 50 to 60 hours a week, (a little less in winter) more than 10 hours a day, 7 days, 363 days a year and life was all about the business. I remember one year, we dropped down to 362 days, we took Easter off :-) Just the two of us.
Did we make any money, most would say no, we made about $15 an hour, it was a lot of hours. The yearly income was about 2.5 times what we were making before the business.
Even with the higher income we continued to live frugally and are now FI.