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How to make the move from big-business employee to small-business owner

Follow these six steps to help make the transition from corporate employee to entrepreneur.

Within just three months, Avi Yashchin went from helping manage a $42 billion Lehman Brothers portfolio to working out of a makeshift office wedged between two of his four roommates’ beds. After the Lehman Brothers collapse left him jobless in 2008, Yashchin started CleanEdison, a New York-based job-training company that focuses on the green-building industry. It was a move that forced him to revamp his approach to business. “You always have someone else to do things for you in a big corporation,” he says. “The pendulum really quickly [swung] the other way.”

To avoid running into his roommate’s girlfriend in her towel, Yashchin interviewed potential hires at the Starbucks across the street from his apartment. He became a pro at assembling furniture and replaced the legal counsel he’d had at his beck and call at Lehman with a $200 database of legal documents. “We did everything on a shoestring,” he says. But over three years, Yashchin grew his revenue to more than $3.5 million last year and hired 22 full-time employees.

To make the move from corporate employee to entrepreneur, you need to develop a new mindset. Here are six steps to help ease the transition:

…to read this article in full, visit leading US entrepreneurial resource, Entrepreneur.com

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Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur Magazine has been inspiring, informing and celebrating entrepreneurs since 1973. Entrepreneur.com offers real solutions to the challenges faced by entrepreneurs, including tips, tools and insider news to help build – and grow – businesses.

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