I have been, for some time, toying with the idea of forgoing the traditional "get a college degree and then dive into corporate america" path and trying to fire up my own business instead. Possibly a hobby shop.
But there are a flock of attendant risks. I'm... aware of that. And that is why I am, at this point, still planning to continue on to college next year and study electrical engineering. Maybe in a decade or so I will feel comfortable enough to do it for real.
However... I can't quite deny that the idea of diving right in is terribly appealing.

So for the sake of argument, I'm interested in knowing if there are any entrepreneurs here! I would love to hear personal stories... no matter what they entail. Success stories would be great, but even more importantly I'm interested in heading stories of your failures. What mistakes did you make, and more importantly, were you able to recover from that? Did you lose everything, or were you able to make do? How serious were the repercussions of that failure after the fact? Are you still dealing with the debt, and how long will you continue to do so? What about bankruptcy? Have you filed for it and did it help? Were you able to find employment that covered both living expenses and loan payments, and do you think your experience with the business gave you any skills that helped you find said employment?


...Such things as that.