Glamour: Sir Alan Sugar has made business sexy

Want to start your own business but don't know how to go about it? Why not take some tips from the people who've already done it successfully

More and more people are taking the entrepeneurial route and record numbers of students leaving schools and university see it as a possible career path.

One reason is that TV programmes like The Apprentice, Dragon's Den and Risking It All have made running your own business more glamorous. It is even said that entrepreneurs are the new celebrity chefs.

And most of us have had ideas at some point which we thought might make a great business. Yet many of us don't really know what to do next, even if we think our idea is really good.

There is plenty of very specific help about many aspects, but sometimes seeing what other real people did when setting up a business which went on to be successful is the best way to understand what it might be like for you.

So we've spoken to some of the founders of a selction of well-known and successful businesses to find out how they got started.

These are all people who had an idea and turned it into a great business.

Looking at the founders as a group, it is clear that you don't need a very specific background to succeed at your own business. Men and women, young and old, with a variety of racial backgrounds have all thrived. Some left school at sixteen, others had degrees.

What these founders all had, though, was real belief in their idea and total commitment to the it. Sometimes they knew they had to make it work within a set time period, otherwise they would run out of money, but for that time, they gave it their all.

None of the people we spoke to set up their businesses just to make a fortune, even though most have gone on to do so.

Determination: Sir James Dyson came close to ruin before he found success

That is significant - to make your new business work well, you will need to be passionate about the product or service you are offering and if money is your main motivation that will be hard.

When you hit tough challenges, which almost everyone does, without that real passion you will find it hard to get through.

It's interesting how close many of these businesses came to dying out before they became successful. James Dyson's story is one of the most extreme of these examples; he worked hard for years, mainly alone, and surviving on next to no money, because he was convinced he was onto something special.

He was, but it took years to prove that to the world. Even innocent, the smoothie business, came close to going bust in their early days. Success always looks easy from the outside - but it rarely is.

If you're really serious and committed and believe in your idea, then don't let this put you off - just expect to go through some tough times on your route to success.

And keep listening to your customers - being close to what customers really want is something much easier for you to do when starting out than for a larger, established business.

Practical Advice

- Starting up
- Finance and grants
- Employing people
- Exploit your ideas
- International trade
- Buy or sell a business

As companies grow, they have so many issues to consider that it is extremely hard for them to stay as focussed on the customer as they were when they started.

In many ways there has never been a better time so start a business than now - the internet and global change have created lots of opportunities for new types of business, at the same time as reducing the costs of starting up.

Against that, the internet has also made it easy for people to compare prices and quality that you will need to offer something different or better than what's already out there if your new venture is to thrive. Good luck with it!

David Lester is a successful entrepreneur, the founder of the small business website startups.co.uk and the co-Author of How They Started (Crimson Publishing, £12.95)