My husband had a startup that sold for our full early retirement capital. It was in 2007. So we invested it all at the height of the market and experienced the FIRE horror story of "What if you retire right before the Great Recession?"
Despite intellectual faith in the market as a whole, I decided to get my CPA and work as an accountant. By the time I was finished, the recession was basically over, which made my full-time big firm job seem pretty silly. I started my own business with the initial idea of working part time and keeping a foot in the industry so that if we got scared again, I could jump back in.
It doesn't really work that way though - my firm quickly became a full time gig. I'm not really retired anymore, as a result. But I work for fun, because we don't need my income. I'd have to sell the firm if I wanted to retire for real.
I still believe in the "X-factor" that a small business can bring, but I now think of a business like an expensive lottery ticket and treat it accordingly:
* You must pay for the privilege of playing
* You shouldn't play if you can't afford it
* Even if you win, it may not be enough to cover your costs
* You shouldn't put more into it than you're willing to lose (both time and money)
* Don't chase your losses. If your business is not working, move on.
I kind of agree with this. The most successful businesses I've been involved with or have observed as a CPA have been low-overhead, low-start-up cost businesses. We have dabbled in businesses with high licensing costs, high inventory costs, and they weren't really worthwhile.
What does a CPA do when a big client doesn't pay their bill? Learn from it, improve billing practices, move on.
What does a small manufacturing company do when they've got all their capital tied up in inventory and a supply chain problem makes it impossible to get the inventory to market on time? They go bankrupt. We owned that business once, too. We exited, but our partners chased their losses and ultimately spent more than they could afford trying to save the company. They destroyed their financial security. It caused them to take greater investment risks to try to recover, but they lost there too.