On my blog and in ONO, I constantly talk about the benefits and freedoms that entrepreneurism has to offer. A couple weeks ago, I posted an article that had statistics showing the rise in entrepreneurial activity due to the struggling economy. Many people who have never ventured into the entrepreneurial world are taking that step out of necessity. People are doing whatever it takes to get by, and many of them, unexpectedly, are finding new and exciting business opportunities.

Here are some excerpts from another article that I came across on WSJ.com that gives some first hand stories of those who have had the financial rug pulled out from under them, only to find success and opportunity by pursuing their passions. 

Starting Over—as an Entrepreneur

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By KELLY K. SPORS and RAYMUND FLANDEZ

A FORCED BELSSING

Aynsley Deluce didn’t want to leave her job as director of insight and strategy for a Toronto ad agency. But in November, the firm announced restructuring plans—and axed her position.

 A layoff motivated Aynsley Deluce to pursue the parking-spot Web site she’d been kicking around for years.

“In a way, it was a forced blessing,” says the 32-year-old Ms. Deluce. “That’s because they forced me into doing something I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I didn’t have the nerve.”

For about six years, she had been kicking around an idea with her now-husband: a Web site that tracked parking spots for rent in urban areas. They got the idea while chatting about parking gripes over dinner one night with friends, and the next morning went online and secured the domain name, Parkingspots.com.

But then they sat on the idea until last year. Ms. Deluce’s husband, Matthew Ball, plunged into the work full time, but Ms. Deluce procrastinated about making the same commitment; instead she spent evenings and weekends on public-relations and marketing initiatives.

“It’s a scary jump to take the risk to leave a full-time job,” Ms. Deluce says.

Then came the layoff, which forced her to focus on the nascent business. And she found that it had a steep learning curve.

Ms. Deluce and Mr. Ball didn’t have any knowledge about the parking business, so she has joined forums and associations, meeting everyone she can. Financing has also been tough. The couple approached banks and other traditional sources but found few willing to lend—and those that would insisted on tough terms. So, the two have relied on friends and family, as well as government grants.

Another problem was more personal: finding enough self-discipline. “There’s no one telling you what to do anymore,” Ms. Deluce says. “There’s no one telling you to get out of bed at a good hour.…You’ve got to spend your heart and soul into it. You’re now your own boss.”

Revenue from the site hasn’t met Ms. Deluce’s early expectations. But she now thinks that those hopes were unrealistic, and the site has shown strong growth in other ways, expanding its network to 30 cities.

“In retrospect, 13 months in, I’d say that I’m really proud of how far we’ve come and that we are exactly where I’d want to be,” she says.

Ms. Deluce adds that she has no intention of giving up entrepreneurship. “I’m not going back to being a full-time employee,” she says. “I’m working full time now, for me. It may sound selfish, but I’d rather do something for me and build my company than helping someone else build theirs.” 

A HOBBY PAYS OFF

Jessi Walter realized she was good enough at her hobby of working with kids to make it into a business

Jessi Walter was a Wall Street wunderkind. At 21, with a degree in economics from Harvard, she was hired by Bear Stearns Cos., and eventually rose to the position of vice president in credit strategy.

But the J.P. Morgan merger last summer ended her career. “They just didn’t need me,” says Ms. Walter, now 27 years old.

So, she took a couple of months to “make sense of the whole situation,” and realized that she could turn one of her hobbies—cooking with her boyfriend’s nieces, and arranging birthday parties for them—into a business. In September, she used her savings to launch Cupcake Kids LLC, which teaches kids to cook and bake, everything from pizza and lasagna to pastries and cakes.

So far, the business has been busy and profitable; Ms. Walter has even hired a dozen teachers part time to help her. For the most part, she has relied on word of mouth for her marketing. Ms. Walter also got a boost recently when her business was featured in New York magazine’s “Best of New York” list.

Ms. Walter says she wouldn’t have considered going out on her own if it hadn’t been for the layoff. It was “forced decision making,” she says.

And it hasn’t always been the smoothest transition for her to make. “When you work for a big company, you do your job,” Ms. Walter says. “When you’re an entrepreneur, you have to do everything,” from writing the business plan to taking out the trash. “There’s not enough hours of the day” to do the work.

But “I’m 100% enjoying what I’m doing now,” Ms. Walter explains. “I love developing a business, and I’m really passionate and fulfilled by what I’m doing. I’d never like to say never to options in life, but for now, going back to Wall Street is not something that I’m considering.”

OUT OF THE BLUE

Tarah Cranford (top) turned a sideline—photography—into a full-time job when she was laid off.

Tarah Cranford, of San Francisco, knew her ad-agency job wasn’t safe. Clients weren’t renewing their contracts, no new business was coming in, and her workload as a public-relations officer was light. Plus, she was low on the totem pole, since she’d only been there for a year.

When the ax finally fell in mid-December, Ms. Cranford regretted not starting her job search earlier. Days turned into weeks as she tried to get an interview.

And then an unexpected opportunity fell into her lap. She got a bunch of inquiries about a sideline she dabbled in occasionally: photography.

“When I got laid off, I didn’t really expect to start my photography business full time,” says the 28-year-old Ms. Cranford, who studied photography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. But when she got the inquiries, “a light went off when this happened. This was it. This was what I’m going to do. Ever since then, I’ve been working nonstop.”

Her first step was to revamp a Web site she had set up, TarahPhotography.com, to make it more professional. She also had to make some big adjustments to her own style.

For one thing, she learned to stop being passive with clients. At first, when people asked about a job, she would say, “Just let me know when you’d like to do this.” But they often wouldn’t call back. Now she says, “When do you want to do this? How about Sunday?”

Ms. Cranford also had to get used to the lack of structure or accountability that came along with striking out on her own.

“If I want, I can roll out of bed and work in my PJs till noon, but I think it’s important to create a schedule that keeps you on target,” she says. “Otherwise, you’ll waste an entire day running errands, or working in front of your computer till evening with rollers in your hair.”

Then there’s marketing. Ms. Cranford had to build a reputation in an area with tons of photographers. So, she hired a specialist to help her make her Web site more appealing to search engines. She says the move doubled her Web traffic to more than 3,000 unique visitors monthly.

Although Ms. Cranford is turning a tiny profit, she says she’s always worried about the future. “Are the calls going to keep coming in, or is this it?” she asks. “It’s kind of unnerving to not know.”

--Ms. Spors, a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal in Minneapolis, can be reached at kelly.spors@wsj.com. Mr. Flandez, a Journal staff reporter in New York, can be reached at raymund.flandez@wsj.com.