If you are thinking of starting a small or home-based business, there are some essentials you’ll need to consider before taking the plunge.

Space—Successful businesses have been started from the trunks of automobiles, kitchen counters, dining room tables, sofas and spare corners. When it comes to “Where will you work?” the answer is just about anywhere. If you are opening a retail or storefront business, your space concerns will be larger. If working from home, a nice office is quite wonderful, but as it has been proven, is not necessary. Different work dictates different space needs. Think about your typical work day, your work style, whether you’ll have clients visiting, storage needs, and what space is available. You at least need some place to store your paperwork and to do your work. After that, it’s all up to you & your budget.

Time—the one commodity nobody has enough of! Well, we all get the same amount and history is full of people who have achieved great things in their spare time—the author who writes a best seller by getting up 2 hours before her kids, for example. Essentially, you will have to give up something – sleep, social life, TV time, whatever you can do without in order to find time to work on your business. It is better to work just a little bit every day—even 30 minutes, every day, is better than never getting started, or always saying you don’t have any time for it.

Money—Many people start their small businesses part-time while working full-time jobs in order to afford their start-up costs. Try to avoid accumulating huge debts. I usually advise starting small and slow for various reasons, one of which is that it is usually takes some time to get a business running and if you proceed slowly, while keeping the cash flowing with a job, you will be better able to leap into success when the time comes. The rule of thumb is to have at least a year’s salary in the bank to cover your bills. In truth, many people don’t have that much in reserve. But, the more of a cushion you have, the more you’ll be able to concentrate on running your business, and the more time you will be able to give your business to succeed. Sadly, many people give up right before their success! Don’t let lack of funds cause you to abandon your dream right before it happens.

A Market—is there a viable market for your goods or services? Do this research before you start. Make sure that your market can afford to pay the prices you’ll need to charge in order to stay in business at a profit.

A Plan—accidental business success probably does happen somewhere, some of the time. But, the smart money is on the business with a plan. Learn about business planning and apply this thought to your business. You will save time by thinking it through before you do it.

Passion—while it is very true that you can succeed in business without being passionate about it, why bother? Passion makes it fun and worthwhile. Find something that you are excited about, something you would do for free and if you can find out how to get paid for it, then you will find a way to figure out all the rest. You should still approach it with diligence and you should still make smart decisions, but without passion, you’ll just be working for a different boss instead of living a dream.