Angie Stocklin: Are you ready to start a business? Start here.

The most common question I get from my entrepreneurship students at Purdue is, “Am I ready to start a business?”

As most of you can guess, the answer to that question is personal and different for every person. However, there are a few key questions each potential founder can answer to get more comfortable with the idea of when to launch their first business.

1. Am I solving an urgent problem for a target market that will willingly pay for my solution?

Whew. What a loaded question! Can you successfully build a business that is not built on solving an urgent problem? You can. I did! But the most direct path to revenue is finding an urgent problem and researching this problem so you can identify a specific target market and design a solution this market will willingly pay to use.

The key here is performing primary market research—asking the right questions to the right people—and mixing in secondary research to fully understand your market and competition. Bonus points for a problem that is both urgent AND frequent and has a target market that wants your solution AND can afford it. Properly checking all these boxes does not guarantee success, but it is far easier to start once you understand what you are selling, whom you are selling it to, and why they are buying it.

2. What does my support system look like?

Every entrepreneur benefits from support, but your support system might look and feel different from that of the founder sitting next to you. A strong support system will include both personal and professional support and can include a lot of people, or a few. The goal here is to make sure you are supported emotionally and have the network you need to brainstorm and troubleshoot business concepts.

You also need to consider your financial needs. Will you have a job alongside your startup, live with family or friends, or seek funding from investors or institutions? It is important to be realistic about how long it will take you to be able to support yourself from your new business to ensure you have enough personal runway to get yourself to that point.

3. Am I at a point in my life to make sacrifices?

We can all think of a business owner in our network who is home every night and weekend and spends more time on vacation than working on their business. If you don’t have an exit in mind, this life sounds like the dream!

But early-business owners rarely have this luxury. Starting a business is hard. Really, really hard. Founders often sacrifice time with their friends and family, miss out on new movies and restaurants, and find themselves working day and night.

Is a total immersion healthy? Rarely. But it is important to understand that starting a business is a different level of sacrifice than your typical 9-to-5 job. You often must (at least temporarily) say no to experiences and items that would have once been an easy yes. I fully believe you can have it all; you just might not be able to have it all at the same time.

4. Am I comfortable with the worst-case scenario outcome?

Using the idea of being OK with the worst-case scenario is something that has helped me evaluate and get comfortable with risk over time. The worst thing we can think of is rarely the outcome we experience, but if you can look at the absolute worst possible scenario and be truly comfortable with this outcome, it is easier to take the initial risk.

This is the exact framework that helped my co-founder, Randy, and me ultimately be comfortable quitting our jobs and becoming serious about building One Click back in 2007. I won’t go into the full details, but we ultimately decided it was unlikely we would lose our house, and we could both go back to working in our previous fields if we couldn’t find success. Our pride would definitely take a hit, but we thought that was well worth the risk.

There is no crystal ball that can give you the answer to whether you are ready to start a business, but starting with these questions will help you assess some key areas and prepare yourself and your life for business ownership.•

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Stocklin is an angel investor and exited founder who currently teaches entrepreneurship at Purdue University.