Step 1: Make a Definition of Your Ideal Life
Create a very short description of your vision of a perfect life.
Remember, this is a snapshot of your “ideal” life. Factor in things like family time, hobbies, charity work, early retirement – anything that gets you really excited.

Your skills (what you do well)
List the abilities, experience and strengths you can build on to attain that ideal life.

Your ideal work style
Whether full-time or part-time, at-home or on the road, working behind the scenes or interacting with lots of people — understand what your work style priorities are so you can define the best kind of work for you.

Your personal manifesto
This is your personal mission, your values, what drives you forward, all wrapped up into a one-page (maximum) statement. To write this, you should draw on everything you’ve already discovered about yourself, and bring it all together into a clear statement of your principles and priorities.

Step 2: Choose a Business Model
Business models could be for example: Home-based businesses, e-Commerce, Franchising, Multi level marketing

Step 3: Create a Business Plan
To write a good plan, you have to know the answers to the questions, What’s your idea? How does your idea address a need? What business model suits you best? What’s unique about what you plan to offer? What is the market opportunity? What’s your personal role going to be? Who are the key employees? What will customers pay and where/how will they buy? How much money do you need to start and run the business? What’s the source of your start up capital? How will you measure your success? What are your key milestones? (business plan samples you can find here: http://www.businessplans.org, http://www.score.org/template_gallery.html,
http://www.sceb.ie/resources.htm)

Step 4: Select a Structure of your business, for example:
Sole trader are a popular choice for many new business owners because so little is needed to set them up, there are minimal government fees and paperwork.
Partnerships are similar to sole trader, partnerships are extremely easy to set up and maintain, but on the downside, you and your partners are each held fully responsible for all of your company’s debts. This means if you or one of your partners defaults on a company loan, creditors can go after your personal bank accounts, property holdings and other assets to satisfy the entire loan.
Corporations are the standard for many businesses in today’s market. The primary reason is that incorporating shields you and the members of your company from personal liability. In other words, if your business hits hard times, creditors cannot go after your personal assets to make up for any company shortfalls.
Company Limited by guarantee. For many new entrepreneurs, choosing a business structure comes down to liability protection, tax savings and convenience. This type of company require fewer formalities and less on-going paperwork than corporations while offering the same personal liability protection and tax flexibility. For more information and to register your company go to www.cro.ie

Step 5: Create Key Assets
It’s a well-known fact in the business world: Your company assets are only as good as your ability to protect them. This is especially true where intellectual property is concerned. We will explore few types of key assets here
-Website Address (domain name) More than ever, businesses are turning to the web for both retail opportunities and marketing. Key to establishing a website presence is securing a website domain name for your business. Cheapest service provider we found for you is here www.mt57.com
-Trademarks is one of the most important business assets you’ll ever own. It’s your brand name, your logo, or any other symbol that distinguishes your company or your company’s goods from those of another manufacturer. To register trade mark will cost you in total about 250 euro in Ireland.
-Copyrights are used to protect intellectual property such as company names, brands, logos and symbols, a copyright grants you exclusive legal rights to your creative work, which can include anything from literary or website content to musical or artistic compositions. See www.patentsoffice.ie copyright section.
-Patents. You should protect your invention (assuming it is novel) so you can cash in first. The best way to protect your idea is to get a patent on it.
Provisional Applications for Patents (www.patentsoffice.ie) is a fast and easy way to temporarily protect your invention until you’re ready to commit the time and money required to submit a full patent application (cost 60 euro per 10 years).
-Confidentiality Agreements Anytime you are considering exposing some of your company’s secrets, whether it is a customer list, business process or financial data that you want to keep out of the hands of the competition, it is critical that you safeguard this information. With a Confidentiality Agreement, you can do just that.

Step 6: Find the Funding
Bootstrapping Look no further than yourself to find the funding you need—perhaps using your savings, your initial revenues, credit cards, equity pulled from your home, etc. Debt Financing requires that you qualify for a traditional bank loan (not common for startups).
Grants are special programs designed to fuel the innovative fires of small businesses, and typically target specific groups or types of businesses, such as technology businesses, veteran-owned businesses, women-owned businesses and minority-owned businesses. www.corkceb.ie, www.sceb.ie
Friends and Family Just like it sounds, raise money from people you know well, either in exchange for equity or as a loan to be repaid.
Angel Investors are individuals who invest in companies at an early state in exchange for equity and the chance to help guide the company. In contrast, venture capitalists invest as a profession and generally on behalf of other investors.
Venture Capitalists are individuals or companies with large amounts of capital to invest and expect higher returns.

Step 7: Organize Logistics
Having your books in order, your contracts buttoned up, your money safely managed and your downside covered are each critical to your personal and business future. Accountants, lawyers, bankers, insurance agents—the big four—are the people that can help you get these logistics organized and put you on a path to starting up smart. These service providers will be instrumental as you grow, too.
Before you start your search for these service providers, it’s important to know what you want to accomplish with each of them, and to set a well-defined budget to meet your goals. Once you’ve hired these professionals, you should work with them to establish clear milestones to reach, a strict timeline for reaching them and a plan for communicating with each other along the way.

Step 8: Find Great People
The single most important factor in the success of a company is its people. It all starts with you as the entrepreneur and flows from there to everyone on your team. Great people can take a mediocre idea and turn it into success. But no matter how great the idea is, if you have no great people on the team it will not succeed.

Step 9: Establish a Brand
One of the most important assets you can develop for your business is a powerful brand. Brands are not just logos or tag lines. Brands are the culmination of who you are, how you’re different from your competition, and why a buyer should do business with you. See www.helios.ie
While your name is certainly not everything, it is an important piece to building a lasting brand. Be original, avoid names that are hard to spell or pronounce. A logo is the visual image of your company that will be used under a variety of applications. When you are considering a design, think simple. Some of the best logos are one color and for a start-up, this can save you printing expenses. Today all customers in all categories count on the Web for information. In some cases, sites have replaced many printed items completely. Make your brand breath, this can include your environment, other promotional activities, and even how your phone is answered.
Create a demand for your brand, your product’s performance, your customer service, follow-through, and your communication add up to a brand experience.

Step 10: Market and Sell
You’ve got to get the word out about your business so customers come through your door. First and foremost, however, you need to identify and study up on your target audience (who you are sell to) and develop a marketing message (promotional sentence) that will resonate with them.