The million-dollar question that everyone always asks is: "Should I start by building my business alongside my job, or should I quit and go all in?"

The advantage of the side hustle route - what you might call the 'sensible' option - is that you can test and validate your ideas and get a good pipeline of clients before you give up the security of your full-time salary. You may even be lucky to have an understanding employer who allows you to go down to part time to make the transition even smoother.

However, if you're already in a stressful full-time job, then you may not have the time and energy you need to get to that pivotal tipping point with enough clients to have a viable business. Even if you are in a role where you do have capacity to take on more work, you may not be able to start working on your own business, subject to your contract and a possible conflict of interest.

As ever, the best approach probably lies somewhere in between: stay in your job, if you can, while you explore and test and validate - then, when you feel you've progressed as far as you can and you're confident in your strategy, there will come a point where you will have to take that leap of faith. But by that point, it will be more of a calculated risk.

Usually, I'd advise that up to one year is reasonable as a time frame. Any longer and you'll lose focus and risk postponing the move indefinitely, while a faster transition could be possible if you already have some of the foundations in place and you can invest time, energy, and money into speeding things up.