If you are thinking about starting your own business, there is a long list of things you may want to consider; I have started plenty of them in my time and in fact have never had a job in someone else’s business my whole working life, so this is a topic I am very familiar with.

If you haven’t run a business of your own before, I've found that I've been most succesful when doing what I have an interest in and a pssion for. When you know what really interests you, it's worth sense checking that it is something that suits your personality and that you will enjoy and thrive at.

Here are seven questions to ask yourself:

1. Motive

What is your main motive? (clue: It shouldn’t be all about the money) There are plenty of challenges along the way before the money starts flowing in the right direction, and getting through those will require you to have a real passion and drive for the work at hand. If money is the main motive for you, we will find it hard to maintain the level of motivation required to stay the course.

2. Responsibility

Are you someone who identifies things that need to be done in your working environment and readily takes them on board as your own? Or, if things are not done to your satisfaction or standard, do you tend to complain and object rather than propose changes and readily take them upon yourself to fulfill? If you naturally take responsibility for things this is a great trait when starting your own business.

3. Target focused

Starting and running your own business means effectively signing up to a neverending list of tasks, and so you will need to be someone who enjoys identifying targets and thrives on getting things done.

4. People skills

You will need the people skills to build and work with a great team of qualified people around you. Your job is to lead and motivate people, making them want to be involved with you and your business.

5. Determination

Hard work and stamina are needed in great quantities and people who feel competent but bored in their job are more likely to suit entrepreneurship than those who feel underappreciated and overworked in their job.

6. Risk & financial insecurity

Support from friends and family can be very valuable in the early days, and it will be helpful if you are able to live with the relative financial insecurity which accompanies a new business without it causing you great anxiety

7. Reward in the longer term

Running your own business can be liberating and bring many wonderful rewards in terms of personal growth, independence and satisfaction. Those rewards take time to achieve and if you can be driven by them, rather than the short term reward of your immediate income, you will have a source of resilience to help your success.

I hope this is useful to you and that if you are considering a new business venture, whatever you decide, it is the right decision for you.