Karen Steede Terry tells a story I'm sure many of us can relate to:

In 1996, I quit my job, married, and moved from Houston, Texas, to Austin...appropriately named "Silicon Hills"...at first I worked for a small consulting company on a contract basis. After a few months, the company went through a difficult financial period and consequently laid off a good portion of its staff, including all contractors. Not having a full-time job, I decided to eplore what I could do out on my own "for a little while."

Perhaps you've been laid off, and you've emerged from the experience wishing your career didn't progress at the whim of the economy. Or maybe you got married or had kids, and found yourself wishing there were more alternatives.

For Terry, being self-employed for "a little while" became permanent. Now, as a teacher, writer, and tech consultant earning "ample income" and having time to raise her daughter, she's got the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, the ability to truly have it all--what some of even the most successful businesswomen want for themselves but have not been able to achieve. Success without sacrifice.

Terry could rename her book, Full-Time Woman, Part-Time Career to Have a Life AND Make Money, No Seriously. I opened it skeptically, wondering if I would read for the umpteenth time, if I just believed in myself I could have whatever I wanted. Of course, self-esteem is a required prerequisite to running your own business. All of the external barometers of your "worth"--salary, title, and job reviews--are now gone. You need your own North Star telling you, "you're doing great ... you're not going crazy ... you DESERVE to make more than you did at your crappy full-time job."

Financial institutions which once solicited your business now look upon you as a questionable bet: What? Give this woman short-term credit? She doesn't even have a JOB! You need to envision yourself becoming so damned successful that they issue a branded small business credit card for all women entrepreneurs in your name.

While of course we must be mentally prepared to leap into self-employment, we could also use some straight pointers. While much of Terry's book was familiar to me, her practical, straightforward approach wasn't. She commits to numbers and guidelines that you don't normally see in a career how-to. For instance, she offers fee ranges for consulting, writing for trade publications, teaching seminars that are real, not for people who negotiate through agents. She interviews women who are willing to offer normally confidential numbers, not as a means of gloating over their success, but as a means of showing very real, doable outcomes:

Leita Hart, CPA and fellow instructor, talks about setting rates, "Decide what you need to live off of as a bare minimum. My very first contract gave me $20,000 per year, and, using that as a base, I built up my income. My first year I made $30,000, and the most I ever made is $120,000 gross. I don't have one single client that gives me enough money to live on, but I have enough different clients to be able to earn a living. Today I have seven steady clients tho each give me $7,000 annually. After that, the rest is gravy."

I love one of my all-time favorite books on being self-employed, Soloing, by Harriett Rubin

, for the same reason. Along with her Annie Dillardesque exploration into the psychology of changing one's employment status, and thus, one's identity, she breaks out the nitty gritty numbers and shows how to achieve a diversity of clients. But, having been a very senior executive before making her leap, she loses mid-level women who aren't being offered Board positions and negotiating their options packages, or who don't have a $5,000 conference and schmoozing budget, or who would be all-too happy to get what Rubin pulled in her first, experimental year out: well into six figures.

That ain't beginner's luck, nor is it a realistic expectation for 99 percent of the women who make the leap for more practical reasons than their jobs weren't challenging them anymore. Terry's book is for the highly-competent go-getter who's been laid off, or for someone who wants more flexibility in her work day to raise kids/focus on other pursuits while maintaining a paycheck. She doesn't address starting a small business; but rather starting a consultancy--a You, Inc. She also veers into specifics for IT professionals, which, being the quintessential English major, I skipped. Regardless of how you plan to earn your living, this book offers up good tools.

Terry isn't a "career expert", she's simply done what she tells you to do. Her book and 10-year entrepreneurial track record is a testament to her ability to manifest a vision. Who're you going to believe, her, or Ivanka Trump?

Terry's book is about the logistics of leaping, but I would be loathe not to mention a good read that addresses more of the mental requirements. When I first encountered successful entrepreneurs I thought they were a little--you know--wacko. They didn't see the world quite the same way. They didn't get caught up in appearances, or setbacks. They did what they had to, to get the job done.

Now that I am an entrepreneur, I understand; we're in a different reality. We no longer agonize over whether we should increase contributions to our 401(k)s; we wonder whether we should tap into our mortgages or credit cards to pay bills. Our priority becomes less about breathing life into our careers, but rather about supporting this being called The Business.

You have to start speaking to yourself differently, from a place of abundance, in order to survive. The questions must evolve from, "How do I support myself?" to "How do I keep the business healthy?" Just this little ontological switch in focus is required to keep you from looking down and seeing that, yup, there's no net. It's all you making this puppy run. It's a tremendous sense of responsibility that you can convert to exhilaration or to fear.

That's why I really enjoyed Steve Chandler's book about reframing your internal perspective, The Story of You. The book offers ways to empower yourself via simple shifts in how you perceive situations. Very often, your internal story drives whether your business thrives or fails.

A strength of Chandler's book is the wealth of stories he provides--his own, his clients', even stories taken from current events--to show the effectiveness of reframing. One he shares about himself includes trying to build his coaching/speaking practice amidst what was universally perceived as a death-knell period for many consultants--the year following September 11, 2001, when all "discretionary" spending on training and speakers was witheld:

...it was during a time when I simply couldn't afford to have cash flow slow-down, so I used my old, faithful thinking tool: "WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT THIS?" It is really an amazing tool to use, and almost no one I know of thinks to use it...

Soon I started calling all kinds of organizations that had to cancel their big sales meetings, retreats, and conventions. I said, "I know you are unable to have your national sales meeting right now like you wanted to. And I know that, with the impact of 9/11, morale for your people can't be too great. So this is exactly the time when they could use a shot in the arm. I want to be your solution. I want to bring your convention to your door and to your people by creating tailor-made CDs for them to drive around listening to, creating an exciting eMotivator/Coaching program where they'll get coaching and regular messages from me, and also by hooking everyone up to an exciting 50-minute teleconference and sending new books to everyone in your organization every month to get them uplifted and psyched.

It worked--Chandler ended up closing more business than ever before.

This is just one of MANY stories. I enjoyed the varieties of re-framing examples he gives, addressing everything from personal goals to world-scale change.

I know, I know. You know all of this stuff already. Intuitively, don't we all. But then, why don't we do what we love? Consider these books little reminders to get you back on track.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.