Go for it. There is a world of opportunity out there. But be sure to Plan For Success, Prepare For Failure.
I did almost exactly what you are thinking (BSME, MSMfg, P.E. 20+ years experience). After I got laid off with nice severance package when my industry collapsed, my wife & I decided "what the heck, every engineer wants to start his own business, why not give it a try? If it doesn't work, then we can just start over."
I incorporated and bootstrapped a one-man show doing mech design & automation engineering and started with ~$20K cash for expenses, plus sufficient savings to live on for a while. Did not get a business loan. My wife was a stay-at-home Mom with our disabled child. I had the business plan, marketing plan, list of contacts, computers, home office, stationary, business cards, brochures, website, phone+fax lines, highspeed internet, etc. A month later while I was licking the envelopes on my initial work-solicitation letters, I was sitting in front of the TV in my underwear watching those airplanes fly in to the World Trade Center. At that moment I told myself, "That's the death of my business." Nine months later, my cash was gone and I had not billed a single hour of time to anybody.
After suffering through that degrading and highly motivating experience called "receiving unemployment" for a few months, I got a referral from my former employer to do some customer support consulting work. After that, I re-named and re-started my business. I spent 80-100 hour weeks beating the bushes, learned to get over my fear of cold-calling and asking for work, re-arranged my consulting offereings and pricing strategies, and started making a living during the worst recession the US has seen in 30 years. It included teaching gigs at the local community college, contract work for low hourly rates, assistance from our church, and doing pretty much anything I needed to do to make a dime. I didn't get rich during this time, but survived and lived pretty well because I cut my expenses to the absolute bone.
The experience and change in attitude about work is wonderful and priceless for developing a customer-focused outlook and entrepeneurial spirit. I'm full-time employed at the moment, consulting on the side, but I no longer have any fear of being unemployed. Nor much patience with Corporate BS and the sniveling backstabbing weasels who live that life.
It can be done, but it takes a combination of savvy, luck, and lots of long hours of achingly hard, sweat-balls-dripping-off-the-end-of-the-nose hard work.
TygerDawg
