So you have entrepreneurial aspirations, but you're stuck in a job working for someone else. You wake up, commute to work, work hard, pay your bills and then come home exhausted. You repeat the pattern for another four days, becoming increasingly tired as the week progresses. By the time Friday night comes around you are absolutely shattered requiring every second of your weekend just to recover! And just as you start to feel as if you have your life back, your alarm clock goes off on Monday morning, you drag your feet out of bed and you repeat the cycle. Does this scenario sound all too familiar? Is this the way you want to spend the rest of your working life?

Controlling your thoughts.

So how do you start to break this monotonous existence? You do so with a single thought. It is said that each one of us has 60,000 thoughts a day, 55,000 of which were exactly the same thoughts as we had yesterday. So I am going to place a simple thought in your mind right now;

" You have the potential to create a profitable business that you are truly passionate about, that fulfils you creatively and that delivers a lot of good in the world. "

If that message resonates with you, you may like to re-read it and hold the thought in your mind for a second time. Really try and experience the meaning in this message. Not just intellectually but emotionally as well. You may also like re-think this thought again tomorrow. And if it feels good tomorrow, you may like to add it to your habitual thoughts.

Give your new thought some support.

Once you have held the thought of running your own business in your own mind and you are comfortable with it, you need to start expanding the dynamics of the thought. Ask yourself the following questions

What sort of business would you like to run?

Would it be a full time business or just a part time one?

What would you call it?

How much time would you like to devote to it?

Who would be your target market?

Who can you get involved to help you get it started?

Take some action.

Once you have a few answers for the questions above, you've got to take some action straight away! Start off small. Get some business cards printed up (vistaprint.co.uk will give you 250 colour business cards for free!) and you may also like to register a web site domain name (you can register web names from as little as 2.59 per year through 123-reg.com). Once you've got the ball rolling you can start thinking about the bigger action steps that you will need to take.

Seek out other business people.

Take a look at your social network. If all your friends and family are employees, chance are any conversations about work will be about the 9-5 grind. If this is the case, start adding a few small business people to your social network. Buy them lunch, ask them questions about how they started out in business. I am sure that you will find plenty of inspiration as well as some words of advice about how to run a business. You may also like to consider joining up with groups so you can network with like minded individuals (Toastmasters is excellent start and for online Networking check out ecademy.com)

The most important consideration.

One of the most important things to consider when setting up a business is to choose a business that you are passionate about. There are so many different ways you can make money so you might as well do something that excites you.

Copyright Damien Senn 2005. All rights reserved.