"There are certain advantages to working for a company," says Lucia Giudice, an independent event and party organizer in Manhattan. "But working on your own outweighs that. I say go do it. You've got nothing to lose. You can always go back to working for somebody else for a living."

Giudice spent her first five years out of college working in a corporate atmosphere, planning events for large businesses like IBM. She collected a lot of experience and contacts, but was dissatisfied with the working environment. She says she stuck with it for as long as she did out of fear. Her business is seasonal, and she didn't know what she'd do during the slow months of January, February, and March.

Would she starve? Would she lose touch with all the people who could give her work once it was wedding season again? At 28 was she too young to make it work?

Then her employer, a restaurant group that planned all its own events, started furiously selling restaurants and adding others. The tumult frustrated her. "I just said, 'I'm going on my own,'" she said. "Now I make my own hours. It's liberating."

These days when Giudice dreams about the future, she imagines where she can take her own business. She wants to move from being a hands-on party planner, guiding brides through their menu planning, into a consulting role for large corporations. She also wants to start an Internet component to her business, facilitating RSVP lines and other party connections.

Got the Right Stuff?

The same concern that has kept Jackie Ohringer and thousands of others locked in their offices -- cash (or, rather, the lack of it) -- has so far kept Jason Spages from going solo. Starting a business requires business sense, energy, connections, and luck, but most of all it requires capital.

"Money. It's the main thing," says Spages, still dreaming of his wine shop.

The amount of money he raises to open his store will determine whether he can open shop this year or next, where he will open the store, as well as the size of the operation. For Ohringer, the amount of capital she can raise will determine how long she has to stay at her current job. If it turns out that she has to raise the cash on her own, she might even stay at Time-Warner until her earliest retirement age, 55 (by which time she'll have put in 30 years). Finding a private investor, however, could get her out earlier. Whatever the source of her capital, the amount will influence the location of the inn, as it will for Spages' business. A lot of capital will mean a location closer to New York, where real estate is more expensive but where they will be close to family. Less money will mean a far away location, maybe in Maine or far upstate New York.

"What I'm trying to figure out," says Ohringer, "is if I work for such a long time at a 9-to-5 job, collecting my paycheck, at what point in my life do I stand up and say 'I'll not do that anymore'? I've been working on doing this for six or seven years."

Someday it'll happen, she says... someday. One thing she's figured out: getting past the daydream stage means focusing not on What if? but on What's my next step?