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

You become single minded, you give your business everything. Because you are going to succeed you dedicate yourself to your business and particularly in early days you will work prodigiously. You will succeed and hard as those early days seem you will look back on them with some satisfaction.

You will learn to ‘think 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.

Don't 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 bank manager - keep him/her on side.

I almost fell out of my chair. I wasn’t sure if it was from fact that I was now in my tenth hour of working that day and I was tired or being taken off balance by my surprise at this person’s belief that you don’t have to work at something to be successful. I don’t know why this would really surprise me as I have been hearing people say this type of thing for years.

The fact is my business did extremely well in 2004 and much of that has to do with my knowledge and use of Internet in my overall marketing. It also had to do with fact I am very systematic in my approach to building my business.