(FORTUNE Magazine) – If the headline above grabbed your attention, you're probably one of the untold legions of good corporate citizens with a recurring daydream wherein you take hold of your own destiny and run your own show--and maybe, before too long, get very rich doing it. The current tight labor market means, according to research by headhunters Lee Hecht Harrison, that more of the newly self-employed are out there--not because they've been pushed into entrepreneurship by a layoff, but because they really want to be their own bosses. As the number of startups steadily climbs, the pile of money venture capitalists are prepared to throw at them is mounting too. In the second quarter, according to Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, U.S. venture capital investments hit a new high of $3.7 billion, up 26% from the same quarter of 1997. Even the stock market's recent backflips are unlikely to derail that trend. Because venture capitalists have nightmares about missing out on, say, the next Intel, great business ideas will always find backers.

But here's another thing that hasn't changed: Startups are risky. Dun & Bradstreet's newly released annual survey of small business says in 1997 failures rose 16%, and financial liabilities 27%, over the year before. Even if you have the best product or service and the most brilliant business plan the world has yet seen--and you do, don't you?--entrepreneurs and the experts who advise them say you can be tripped up by failing to do some serious reflecting of a more subjective kind. Before you hand in your notice and clean out your desk, ponder the following questions. They could keep you from making a wrenching and expensive mistake.

1. Do you have the right personality for running your own business? In her new book, Working Solo (Wiley, $14.95), longtime entrepreneur and counselor to the self-employed Terri Lonier offers a wealth of hardheaded practical wisdom--beginning with a 25-question quiz designed to make you take a good look at yourself. Some key points: How prepared are you to lower your standard of living for a while, if need be? Are you good at making quick decisions, or do you need lots of time to mull things over? Are you resilient when things go wrong? Can you admit to yourself that you don't know something you need to know, and are you able to ask for help?

"Not everyone is cut out to be self-employed," says Lonier, whose Website, www.workingsolo.com, offers a free monthly E-mail newsletter of tips for entrepreneurs. "You really have to be ruthless in assessing your strengths and weaknesses, and in thinking about why you want to do this in the first place. If you yearn to be on your own mostly because you're unhappy in your current position, you might be far better off looking for another job instead."

2. Are you willing to do a lot of everything? "In a big company you may be an expert in your field--say, marketing or manufacturing--and take for granted how much you have relied on other people's skills in other areas. But in a small business, especially in the critical early stages, you have to understand it all yourself," says Fred Thomas, president of the U.S. Small Business Administration's SCORE program. (SCORE connects fledgling entrepreneurs with seasoned veterans who give free business advice. For a SCORE chapter near you, call 800-634-0245.) Thomas notes that the staggering time commitment involved in running a new company is often enough to drive former senior managers, accustomed to spending weekends playing golf, running back to the corporate fold.

3. Do you think of "sell" as a four-letter word? David Birch, founder and head of Cambridge, Mass., economic research firm Cognetics, has been studying and advising small businesses for many years. He says the most often overlooked cause of small-business failure is many entrepreneurs' lack of experience in sales, or any taste for it. "Especially in the critical first year or two, you're so enthused that you tend to assume people will want what you've got," says Birch. "But the idea that you have to sell to get revenue is alien to many people"--especially if they come from a highly structured corporate environment.

In the current labor market, good sales help can be harrowingly hard to find. Ken Schultz left a senior management job with Tie Communications in Moline, Ill., two years ago to start (with three partners) Commspec, a telephone cabling and installation company based in Davenport, Iowa. Having done the kind of self-assessment alluded to in questions one and two above, Schultz realized he was "a lousy salesman. And finding and keeping salespeople with the kind of technical knowledge we need has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be." Unusually, Commspec turned profitable in its first full year of operation. Still, and sensibly, Schultz sees a need to sell harder: "Right now, we're looking for a good sales manager."

4. Can you stomach nonstop networking after the workday is done? Or, to put it another way, are you adept at selling not just your product or service but yourself? Skill at schmoozing is, of course, valuable in any job, but for small-business owners it can mean the difference between thriving and starving. In most corporations a wealth of connections--with customers, actual or potential employees and colleagues, vendors, suppliers, and financial backers--is already in place when you walk in the door. To run your own business effectively, though, you have to spin that complex web of relationships yourself.

Many people find that they loathe doing this because it tends to involve long evenings of listening to speeches at rubber-chicken dinners, serving on trade association committees, and in general giving up precious free time to charm a lot of people you may not even like. Still, there can be a bright side: Particularly for one-person businesses, networking can be a sanity saver. Notes Tara Levine, a consultant to entrepreneurs at New York-based research organization Catalyst: "No one should sit in his office by himself for eight hours a day."

5. Is your family 100% behind you? When he and his partners were first considering leaving corporate life to start Commspec, recalls Schultz, "I asked them, 'What do your wives think about this?' And they each said, 'Gee, I don't know.' And I said, 'Well, you had better go and find out.' " Smart. Over and over again, successful small-business people and the folks who advise them say that opposition from a spouse, or resentment from kids who wonder why you're never home anymore, can burden a new business to the breaking point.

Schultz and his wife, Stephanie, a nurse, took several months to talk over the idea of sinking their savings into Commspec--a particularly risky move since they had one child already in college and another soon headed there. But once they agreed to go for it, the whole family bought into the idea. And former Bankers Trust loan officer Linda McCormack, when she started Pixellence, a Web-page design firm in Glen Head, N.Y., likewise had her husband's full support. "Not that there haven't been days when we both wondered if I did the right thing," she says. "But if you had to come home every day to somebody who said, 'Why are you doing this?' it would be just impossible."

6. Are you prepared to wait for success? Tom Culley, a former McKinsey consultant who has been involved in dozens of startups in Brazil and the U.S., has written a wonderfully clear-eyed book called Beating the Odds in Small Business (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, $20). Culley has seen countless small-business owners give up in frustration when they don't achieve instant wealth. "Fast growth and quick riches seem to be all you read about," says Culley, "but the reality is that the entrepreneurs in those stories are like lottery winners. Sure, this could happen to you. But only a fool would count on it." He adds, "It takes years of grueling, gritty, sweaty work to build a profitable company. My rule is: Survival first, then success--however long it takes you."

McCormack agrees. "If I were to give just one piece of advice to somebody starting a company, it would be, 'Don't give up.' " she says. "It's always the really discouraging day when you feel you should pack it in that the phone rings, and it's somebody you gave your business card to six months ago and forgot about, and everything turns around. You've got to be willing to hang in there." Or as Culley puts it, "Slow ain't sexy, but it sure beats falling on your face."