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Opportunity is said to do many things: It follows adversity, it knocks (but seldom twice), it waits to be seized.

For Greg McGivery, it came in the form of a pink slip.

The 26-year-old had often thought about starting his own business. He'd watched friends do so while he worked for a decade in telecommunications.

But then last September, those regular paycheques stopped. The slowdown that had worried the industry for a year finally bit, and he was laid off.

At first he was in denial. He spent weeks on the couch coming to grips with the layoff. But eventually he realized that, for his own sake, he had to get up and do something.

That's when he ditched employment for entrepreneurship.

"I could have been pretty comfortable [in a new job], or at least not in a state of panic, but I'd been thinking about it for some time. Now was the time," Mr. McGivery said.

He tapped into the same cost-cutting aims that had cost him a job. He launched E2E Consulting to help businesses reduce their telecommunications bills. If he can't find them savings, they don't pay him.

With another 40,000 jobs cut across Canada last month, there likely will be plenty of others going solo.

The self-employed already make up 14.7 per cent of the national labour force, and CIBC World Markets predicts it will be the fastest-growing employment sector this year.

Economic downturns can actually provide fertile ground for small businesses, but only if the underlying plan is sound, said Becky Reuber, a strategic management professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

A large percentage of new businesses fail at the best of times. In downturns, she said, it only makes sense that even more would fold.

But a company that can survive now will be particularly strong when the economy picks up, because of the lessons learned early.

"Experienced entrepreneurs say one of the biggest problems can be to have too much money at start-up, because you're not forced to be focused," Prof. Reuber said. "You can be making a lot of mistakes but not realizing it, because you're not running out of money."

The key to success in the bad times, she said, is offering a "need-to-have" instead of a "nice-to-have."

For Mr. McGivery, the first three months were tough. It took time for his business to gain traction, and clients were wary of spending any money at all.

But in January, he said business owners seemed to accept that the slump was here to stay. In a matter of weeks, he lined up months worth of work for GTA businesses from his Newmarket-area home office.

Does he worry about the business's viability? "Not very much. Only every hour or two," he laughs.

Then he adds in a more serious tone: "The pessimist in me says that [failure is] always a possibility, but I don't think so. The company and plan has the ability to push through and be successful."

Despite the risks, Prof. Reuber said, small businesses will be key to dragging the economy back into positive territory.

"They have a focus, can be very responsive to customer needs, and can move quickly," she said. "Let's just hope there's a whole bunch of people out there that can do it well and get the economy back on track."

The Personal Economy is a series that looks at people in the Toronto region are coping with the economic downturn. To share your story, write Tenille Bonoguore at tbonoguore@globeandmail.com