Starting your own business--step one: mentally this comes before filing the papers and looking for space.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On MANAGEMENT

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE SOMEONE WILL ASK ME how I got started in business.

In the early '80s I would have considered myself a pretty good salesman and a pretty good electronics engineer. I started my own little business because we were in a sort of recession, and I had always thought I would like to be in my own business. Besides, I had been fired from my job with another publishing company.

I jumped in, and in a couple years it began to pay me back.

An interesting thing is that I don't remember However wondering if we would make it, although there were plenty of times we could have failed. I never thought about it; I just kept working.

If you are thinking about going out on your own von have to realize that it is really hard, but it is really worth it when you do. And when you commit to it there are plenty of strengths and abilities that will come to you when you totally commit.

There is a line called the "I'm thinking about going into business/I'm in my own business" line. To have a chance at success you have got to get clearly, totally and irrevocably across this line. It's like being at the door of an airplane with your chute on, ready to jump. Until you are out the door, you are not a jumper.

After you are out the door you can't go back; you are a jumper. It doesn't matter how many times you stick your toe or head out the door and come back, you are not a jumper until you cross totally and don't think about coming back; you only think of how to make the jump successful.

And so it is with going into business. Until you have committed all of your effort, intelligence, ability, perseverance and whatever else you have in your soul you are not in business. Once you have it all on the line and there is no looking back ... you are in business!

It changes most people in a fundamental way. It seems to maximize all their creativity, business sense, willingness to work hard, insight into others and just general enjoyment of life. Those who have clone it will tell you it is one of the most satisfying, liberating, electrifying, empowering things they have ever done. It is as though their being realizes that...