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Introduction

A lot of people work in environments where they have little job satisfaction or are
just plain unhappy. They may be bored with doing the same job for a long time.
They may have become tired of the eccentricity, and occasional ludicrousness, of
big companies beset with internal politics and meetings, bloody meetings. They
may feel threatened by the sense that their skills are less necessary than they were to
the company and that any time now they may be invited to spend more time with
their families. This negative force sets them thinking about becoming their own
master, telling the boss what they can do with their job and going on their own.

On the positive side, they look with some envy at people who have set up their
own businesses, stopped making someone else rich and started to make money the
best way- using someone else's labour. They mayhave had to work hard to achieve
it and had some scares on the way, but they have made it. They report to no-one,
they work when they want, they make the rules and, who knows, they may even
have an exit strategy by which they sell the business and end with a whole lot more
pension money than two-thirds of final salary.

Employees also look positively at another kind of self-employed person. These
people do not seem as hassled as the first lot. They seem to have settled for a com-
fortable standard of living rather than risking all for luxury but it still looks a better
life style than the rat race in Megacorp Inc. They work on their own, they work
when they like, dress casually, seem to be able to fit in more golf, and use the phrase
'seeing more of one's family' positively rather than as a threat. They too have taken
risks, but their sights are lower in business terms, although possibly not if you mea-
sure happiness in some quality-of-life way.

What exactly is the business of your dreams? Let's say that in the future, either
sooner or later, you want to sell a business to new shareholders as an investment and