Could you launch a startup in 2015?

Each Sunday, the AJC brings you insights from metro Atlanta’s leaders and entrepreneurs. Matt Kempner’s “Secrets of Success” shares the vision and realities of entrepreneurs who started their dreams from scratch. The column alternates with Henry Unger’s “5 Questions for the Boss,” which reveals the lessons learned by CEOs of the area’s major companies and organizations.

Find previous columns from Unger and Kempner on our premium website for subscribers at www.myajc.com/business.

Build your own startup in the coming year? How these Atlanta entrepreneurs did it.

Visit myAJC.com, where each weekday this week you’ll see some of the AJC’s best past Secrets of Success columns. Entrepreneurs share how they built their ventures from scratch. And around New Year’s Eve check out a bonus on AJC.com: 100+ top startup tips from Georgia entrepreneurs.

There’s nothing like having a gun stuck in your face to focus your mind on whether it might be time to make a fresh start.

I’ve never had that particular encouragement. But that’s how Ethan King Allen got his epiphany. He was a young guy who had squandered his artistic talents chasing a few easy bucks in Atlanta’s strip club industry doing graphic artwork (pun intended). Then came the carjacking.

I get to chat with lots of entrepreneurs like Allen — the subject of a column in this space earlier this year — about how they managed to start a business or nonprofit from scratch. They often recall the early years of their endeavors as full of passionate pursuit but also of self-doubt, little pay and brutally long hours.

They sometimes describe finding deep, life-defining satisfaction, first just by starting a venture of their own, then by earning some financial freedom and by helping other people around their business, like customers and employees.

Before all that, though, comes the first hard part: the moment they have to decide whether to make the leap into the unknown.

America might see itself as the land of boot-strapping self starters. But the vast majority of U.S. workers work for others.

Lots of people have ideas for products or services they think would be cool but don’t try to launch them on their own. We worry about whether we’d make enough money. We worry about losing our shirts. We worry that we don’t know enough about what it takes to turn an idea into a successful business.

A new year is knocking, and it’s a natural time to think about fresh career goals. So what does it take for some people to reinvent themselves and dive into entrepreneurship?

Here’s what I’ve heard from entrepreneurs I’ve talked to for the Secrets of Success column that runs every other week in the print AJC and on myAJC.com:

They got an outside push. That's the way it was for Allen. His push was getting carjacked one night. "I felt like it was a sign from God that I wasn't on the right path," he told me later. He ended up getting a respectable job, then started a business. Now he and his wife own a retail shop and an embroidery business, called stuff4GREEKS, that targets frat and sorority members.

You can wait years to try a startup. Some spent a long time trying to line up enough of something (money, knowledge, courage, a network of supporters, a well-timed business idea) to pull it off. Derreck Kayongo was 22 and just starting grad school in the United States when he thought of gathering partially used bar soap from American hotels and having it shipped and cleaned to help the poor in his nature Africa. Sixteen years slipped by without him taking the plunge. By then, Kayongo and his wife had built a comfortable suburban life in Lawrenceville working for big non-profits. Then his father questioned whether the son was leading a life of true impact. Hurt, Kayongo returned to the U.S., recruited supporters and founded a non-profit called the Global Soap Project. It has distributed more than two million bars of soap to needy people in more than 30 countries.

Some decide to leap because they don't like the alternative. Diana Harbour was a recent college graduate with an English lit degree when she got a job sitting in a corporate cubicle writing bland boilerplate to be printed on credit card statements. She had been told that most small businesses fail in the first five years, but she launched her own retail apparel business called The Red Dress Boutique anyway.

“You can have security or freedom,” she told me. “Sometimes you can have both. Sometimes you only get one. I was more terrified of the security in that cubicle and not doing something that I had wrapped my soul around. I choose to do freedom.

The courage to start something doesn't mean they had no fear. Kevin Rathbun spent nearly three decades working as a chef for other restaurant owners before launching his first restaurant, "Rathbun's." He spent lots of time talking to as many people as he could about what might lay ahead. He needed lots of encouragement from them that he could pull it off.

"I was absolutely terrified," he said.

You can always think of good reasons why it's not the perfect time. I've been surprised by how many entrepreneurs had young kids when they launched their businesses. That might seem like poor timing. Tonya Lanthier was a dental hygienist with young twin girls when she started her DentalPost.net job posting site. "I'd come home and the girls would grab onto my legs, and I'm sitting there cooking dinner trying to get everything done. Once they went to bed, that's when I would work (on DentalPost). I would stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning. And then I would get up and go and see patients the next day."

Other entrepreneurs launched their ventures just as the nation’s economy tanked. While the great recession chopped into customer spending, it also led suppliers and contractors to cut costs and weakened rivals, creating room for newcomers.

Some didn't have much of a financial safety net in case their startup failed. A spouse with a steady paying job and good benefits can comfort entrepreneurs. So can cutting back on household spending ahead of time, getting used to living on less and building up savings. But many entrepreneurs don't have enough money set aside to last the years it can take before pulling a healthy salary from their businesses. Even when a new business makes a profit, many entrepreneurs sink the money into growing and strengthening the business, rather than fully paying themselves.

Be prepared to make it your life, at least for the first few years. Zach McLeroy sold his cherished drum set to launch the first Zaxby's restaurant with a childhood buddy, then he worked across the Southeast struggling to open restaurants for the young chain. "I was like a nomad. I would move into a town. I did a lot of the construction work myself. Hired everybody. Bought the equipment. Everything was on my shoulders every single time we opened a store. There was always a bit in the back of my mind saying, "It's not going to work." During those early years I gave up relationships. Because I was always working. I let nothing get in the way."