This weekend, over a large I.C. Caramel coffee at Panera, my wife and I spent an hour discussing our future career plans. It was actually extremely fun and exciting, because we were talking about a new idea we had – working together.

I consider my wife an incredibly smart and ambitious woman. She recently applied for a job at a receptionist level and two weeks later was promoted to an operations manager (this has happened at both of the previous jobs she worked for too!). At this new job, she has a chance to really learn the ins and outs of working with clients, and also a fantastic opportunity to network with people. In several years, she will have quiet a skill set when it comes to managerial skills.

I am happy working as a web content manager, and will soon be rolling out a new online presence for the company I work for, including learning all about system administration. I also have a solid decade of experience in this industry, and the education that I (somewhat reluctantly, I should mention!) pursued.

As my wife has always had an interest in consulting, and I an interest in technology, we thought technology consulting would be an excellent business idea to pursue. So we sat and talked about what would be involved in running this type of business (good people skills backed up with solid technical support and reliable, skilled employees), the initial capital needed (not very much at all!), and when we would see ourselves fully committing to this (probably not for ten years).

The funny thing is that I always was fascinated with the idea of starting my own business, but never really considered it a plausible idea until recently. Part of what helped was reading not only about how successful small businesses can be, but how most of the millionaires today got to that point not through inheritance or the lottery, but by innovative ideas that they formed into a business plan.

So I would encourage anyone who has ever had even the slightest inkling to start their own company to sit down and brainstorm about what kind of options there might be out there for them.