To succeed in your business you will need to think and act as an entrepreneaur.

A great thing about running your own business is that it makes you think as an entrepreneaur and because your thinking develops in this way; looking for opportunities and working out how to use them becomes second nature.

As a result you see opportunities you would have previously over looked.

You become single minded, you give your business everything. Because you are going to succeed you dedicate yourself to your business and particularly in the early days you will work prodigiously.

You will succeed and hard as those early days seem you will look back on them with great satisfaction.

You will learn to think creatively, freely and laterally. Things do not always work as planned, your business model may not be working, keep changing it until it does. Be flexible, you will then find away.

Dont be too proud to ask for advice. You will have discussed your new venture with your friends, colleagues and others. There are many people who you can turn to including your local Chamber of Commerce, Local Business network and the bank manager keep him/her on side.

A friend of 30 years standing has started two successful businesses. He's a true entrepreneaur as most peole never start one, let alone two!

The second business was a larger version of the first involving considerable amounts of start up capital.

Over many months in the start up phase we met regularly mostly at his instigation on a Friday night in the pub. I thought he was just being sociable, friendly and trying to relax.

This went on continuously for months and intermittently for years. We always discussed issues relating to the start up business.

Some years later when the business was established and successful I realised from some chance remark he made that I had been giving away free consultancy because my friend had been drawing on our discussions to help him with his problems. Hes still my friend!

This is what friends are for and his business is a now market leader in its sector and I am so pleased that he had the for sight to use my free consultancy.

So, talk to other entrepreneaurs.

As you go on in your business treat every failure as a learning experience. Think carefully about what went wrong, understand it fully and use the information to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Take remedial action and dont take failures personally.

If being a successful entrepreneaur was easy every one would do it. There are no rules, there is no right and wrong way round most issues.

There are just problems with a number of ways of solving them and turning them into opportunities. Be flexible, you will solve them and then you are on to the next stage.

We are living in a great entrepreneaurial age with the development of the internet and world wide web. The business ideas, information and opportunities are enourmous and growing daily.

Never ever be too proud to discuss your problems, and if your are a consultant you probably enthuse about your interests and communicate them freely, beware of giving free consultancy even to friends!