Today, Americans of all ages are attracted by the opportunity to be their own boss and reap the financial rewards of a successful business. A recent estimate has shown that in the first 9 months of 2000, an average of 2,600 small business were launched across the United States ,and over 40% of the nation's goods and services are provided by small businesses in our country. In fact, starting a business of your own is not as easy as it sounds. However, to start a small business effectively, the steps of choosing the right business, developing a good business plan and financing a business must be the priorities.

Choosing the right type of business which is suitable with your personal characteristic, technical skills and social demand is the first step you should think of when starting a business. To do this, self-assessment and finding ideas are the best way to help. Self- assessments help you to choose the business that is suitable for your personality and skills. To do this, You should ask yourself if you are creative, self-confident, energetic, passionate and have enough technical skills for what type of businesses. For example, if you have enough patient, communication skills, love taking care of others, and have knowledge in nutrition, you may qualify to run a business such as child-care. If you are accurate, love to work with numbers and have knowledge of accounting, you may be suitable to run a business like tax services. After choosing the business that suitable with your personality, you should consider whether it's suitable with social demand by finding ideas from some resources such as television, newspaper, relatives to choose the best business to run.

After choosing the right type of business, you must develop a plan to create a business. The planning process is one of the most important steps in starting a business and helps minimize the risk involved. Good business plan helps persuade lenders and investors. To have a good business plan, you should analyze all strategies about product, management, finance, market potential, and advertising before writing it. And as Jerry Kleiman, co-founder of Optimal Resolutions, Inc., a New York family business consulting group said: ?A business plan is always a dynamic plan?.

Once the business plan is completed, the last step to start a small business is to get the finance to set up the business. There are many ways that you can use to get the finance such as from the personal saving, from lenders like banks and relatives, from investors. The amount of money depends on the type of business you are choosing and the planned investment. Lots of small business started with $ 20,000 or less such as some fast food, restaurant businesses. And, in these cases they usually used their own personal saving.

In short, starting a business like many others things always goes with some risks because of lacking capital, lacking knowledge on management , lacking experience, inadequate planning and, the economy crisis. However, with a well-prepared plan, the alertness with social trends and a strong will to success, A reward and a bright future are always there and waiting for you.