I've been caught in two traps:<p>If you start a business doing something you've done before as staff in a company, you end up doing the same work with more stress and less free time and competing with others who saw the same opportunity to not work for <i>the man</i>.<p>If you come up with a great new idea for a service, then you spend more time selling than doing the actual work. It is harder than it first appears to get people to grok something that is truly new and different.<p>In both cases, chasing payment for services rendered consumes more time and energy than what I had planned for.