There are three fundamental and critical components to starting and running a successful business. They are:
	You. Your beliefs, values, and personality.
	A product or service.
	A marketplace with sufficient critical mass to generate a profit.
You. Your beliefs, values, and personality.
	Here's a profile I found in Sally Petersen's book The Real American Dream that I think you'll find useful in determining if you have the beliefs, values and personality to become an entrepreneur.
Business Plan
	A treasure map to success. Do you need one? Here's a guide to writing a business plan.
A product or service.
	The million dollar question: How do you know if you have a good product or service? A more important question might be "Is this the right product or service for me?" The best way I know to determine that is to let the idea gestate for a few months. If your enthusiasm fades after a few months, the ideas probably wasn't right for you. It may be a great idea for someone else, but it's probably not your perfect match. While it is possible to succeed with a product or service that you're not passionate about, wouldn't it be more enjoyable if you were passionate about the product or service. So what is more important than passion? It's you knowledge and understanding about why people buy the product. Specifically, where they typically buy? a physical location like a store? If its a physical location, will they seek out your location? Does the location have to be convenient or on the way? from a catalog? on-line? yard sale? auction? from a drive through?, when do they buy? Is it generally a gift? Is it seasonal? If so what season?, for themselves, Is it a personal purchase? Is it a reward? who makes the decisions about. Do gender critical? Is it a joint decision? The final user? Is it an impulse purchase or one made after some or a lot of research? Is availability of credit nice, critical, essential? Is is a convenience purchase or will they do extensive research before buying? What role does demographics play? Age, Income, sex, race, geography. So how do you obtain the knowledge and understanding about why people buy the product. If you're fortunate, you're already in that marketplace. If not, you'll want to conduct some market research. While you can hire a market research company, most startup entrepreneur's don't have the financial resouces to conduct a formal research study. Remember that even sound market research like that conducted for Ford's Edsel missed its target. On the other hand, where was the market research for the hula hoop or the pet rock. Don't get me wrong, I'm not say that market research is useless and intuition is king. What I am saying is that most shoestring entrepreneur's succeed because they use that grey matter that resides between their ears, consider business is an on-going experiment and learn something from each success and failure. But all is not lost, you can conduct your own information interviews with people who are already doing what your thinking about or something similar. You can also talk to businesses that are complementary, to vendors and suppliers. Why you may also want to talk with the buyers in your targeted market. What a novel idea.
A marketplace with sufficient cirtical mass to generate a profit.

Additional resources on getting started: Please email me any additional material you have on "getting started" at Jerry <[email protected]>

Resources	You're on the Getting Started Page	Protecting Your Assets	Marketing and Sales
Pricing and Proposals	Tax Ideas	Capitalization and Finance	The SBR Homepage

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