There’s a moment many aspiring entrepreneurs recognize: you’re earning a good salary, performing well, moving up, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re wondering if there’s something else.
Maybe you have a business idea you keep returning to, or you’re tired of building someone else’s revenue. Maybe you simply want more control over your own trajectory.
But then the paycheck hits, and the moment passes.
Tom has seen this pattern play out dozens of times. And in his experience, the single biggest obstacle between a high-earning W2 professional and business ownership isn’t capital, timing or a lack of the right idea. It’s what he calls the pull of the easy money.
What “Easy Money” Actually Means
That phrase isn’t meant as a criticism. W2 professionals work hard. They perform, they deliver and they earn what they’re paid.
But there’s a structural difference between that kind of income and what a small business owner experiences. A salaried employee gets paid for showing up and doing the job. A business owner gets paid only when the business performs — consistently, over time, with no guarantee built into the arrangement.
Most W2 professionals don’t fully appreciate that difference until they’re on the other side of it. From inside a salaried role, the work feels demanding enough. It’s only after starting a business, once you’ve carried the full weight of your own revenue that you understand what the comparison actually means.
Why Most People Wait
Tom’s honest observation: most high-earning W2 professionals don’t make the leap while the income is still flowing. They wait, because the trade-off is genuinely difficult to make voluntarily. Walking away from predictable, reliable income requires a level of conviction that’s hard to sustain when the immediate financial pressure to act isn’t there.
What tends to actually move people is when the W2 income goes away. A layoff, a restructuring, an industry shift. Suddenly the question changes from “should I start something?” to “what do I do now?” And for some, that’s when the idea of controlling their own revenue stream stops being abstract and starts feeling urgent.
The Motivation That Follows Momentum
One thing Tom has noticed consistently: people don’t always arrive with the motivation fully formed. Sometimes they come in uncertain, unclear on what the right model even looks like for them.
But when they find the right structure — when the business model starts to click and early results begin to show — something shifts. The energy comes. The motivation follows the momentum, not the other way around.
That’s an important reframe for anyone sitting on the fence. You don’t necessarily need to feel completely ready or fully motivated before you start. What you need is enough clarity to take the first steps well.
Starting a Business with the Right Foundation
At Dunn CPA Firm, we work with business owners at every stage, including those who are still figuring out whether and how to make the move from employee to entrepreneur.
Getting the financial and structural foundation right from the beginning makes a significant difference. Business entity selection, tax strategy, compensation structure — these decisions have long-term implications that are much easier to get right at the start than to fix later.
If you’re thinking seriously about starting a business, or if you’ve recently made the move and want to make sure you’re set up correctly, we’re here to help you build it the right way.
A W2 executive out there who’s making good money.
The toughest shift mindset shift for them.
Is they can’t usually get away or walk away from the easy money.
The access to the easy W2 check.
And they don’t even know it’s easy because they’re not small business owners. They don’t realize how much easier that is. You get paid for showing up.
Basically.
And yeah, they work hard and all that. They got to perform, but it’s not like in small business owner world.
Where you get paid only when you perform every single time, you know.
Over a period of years.
So yeah, so it’s that is being able to walk away from the easy money, my experiences, most of them don’t do it, they won’t do it. They wait till they’ve, you know, till that till that ends, till the access to the easy money ends.
And then they start thinking, you know, what can I get easy money again? And if they come to the conclusion that they can’t find it or it’s just going to be too hard to find it, that’s when they start thinking about maybe getting in control of their own revenue stream and get it starting their own business.
So.
I help people in that spot all the time. You know, they come to me and we begin to work together.
And, you know, Sometimes they don’t have the motivation to start their own business. But once they come up with the right business model and they start having success, they get really excited about it and have tons of motivation and energy to do it.
But it does require a lot of effort as a small business owner. It’s not easy. It’s not easy. It’s so much harder than being a w2.
Boy.
