By KC Miller

The long running television quiz show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? offers a prize of $1,000,000 for contestants who correctly answer a series of questions of increasing difficulty. Wouldn’t it be great if, as a want-to-be entrepreneur, you could answer a series of questions to win a million dollar prize?

According to a study completed by Business News Daily, 48 percent of Americans want to become entrepreneurs and own their own businesses, or have the opportunity to make a sustainable living, even if it isn’t a million dollars right away. Over half of those surveyed said they have been thinking about starting a business for more than two years, while 31 percent said they’ve been thinking about it for five or more years. That’s a long time to be questioning something you really want to do!

There are 15 important questions to consider when thinking about becoming self-employed and taking charge of your own destiny:

1. Do you consider yourself a problem solver?
2. Do you have an above average work ethic?
3. Are you a creative thinker, willing to do things differently than they have been done before?
4. Are you able and willing to work on your business evenings and weekends, if needed?
5. Are you willing to give up vacations and other luxury for the next few years to invest in your own business, if need be?
6. Do you have a target market or population of people in mind you want to serve and help?
7. Have you begun to form a mission statement you want to dedicate your life or business to accomplishing?
8. Are you willing to tell people about your business, service or product (once you have a business, service or product in place)?
9. Are you familiar with social media, or willing to learn how to use a variety of social media platforms to market yourself and your business?
10. Do you have a high tolerance for ambiguity, meaning able to live in ‘not-knowing’?
11. Would you be described as optimistic, over realistic?
12. Do you have a desire to make things better and often propose changes to how things are being done?
13. Do you have a core group of people who will support you and your ideas?
14. Do you have faith in yourself and trust your intuition?
15. Are you willing to fail? (And not consider yourself a failure?)

If you answered 12 of the 15 questions with YES, you are a good candidate for starting your own business. If you answered eight or more questions with YES, you have a good understanding of what it take to be successful in business, yet may have a little more work to do before you launch your business. Consider working with a good Life or Business Coach! At the very least, you can commit to taking a class or researching HOW to design a Business Plan, and have a timetable for implementation.

If you answered ‘No’ to ten or more of the questions, search your heart to determine whether NOW is the right time for you to embark upon an entrepreneurial journey. You could benefit from working with a Life Coach to clarify your values, and determine what self-defeating thoughts you may be harboring, sabotaging your dreams.

Despite all the challenges small businesses face, seven out of ten entrepreneurs affirm they would start their businesses all over again. In polling more than 1,700 small business owners to determine the advice they would give want-to-business-owners, 36 percent shared the same message:

To be successful, business owners must have faith in themselves, and never stop asking questions.