If you have ever found yourself longing to cut the ties with your 9 to 5 job with the thought in mind that you wanted to start your own home based business, you may need to take a good, hard look at yourself before you take the plunge into being your own boss.While most home based businesses are created out of a desire to be ones own boss, many others are created on a pipe dream of becoming a millionaire nearly overnight while eliminating the requirement of having to report to, and answer to a member of management. Now, before you take the plunge into home business ownership, take a look at the following keys that make a home based business owner successful and determine if you have what it takes to be a successful business owner.First, and most important, do you have the drive needed to get the job done? When it comes to running your own business you have no one to answer to but yourself when it comes to getting the job done. There will be no one standing over your shoulder, or reminding you of projects or tasks that need to be done, or deadlines that need to be met. You are on your own in getting the work done which means you need to make sure you have the drive to do what needs to be done to make your business a success. Copping out and pushing work off to the next day because you “just don’t feel like doing it” will not make your business a success. If you can’t commit to doing what needs to be done for the good of your business, then you may be better cut out for a job where someone tells you what needs to be done as opposed to the other way around.Second, will you be OK with having to handle every task that is involved in running your business? Unlike in the corporate world, home based business owners don’t have the option to pass along any of the tasks and responsibilities that they dislike doing. Depending on your chosen field of expertise, this may require doing the menial paperwork that is required to make sure all your clients pay you on time, or may be something as simple as taking out the trash. Whatever tasks are required in your business, it is your responsibility to get them done. Similar to having the drive to get where you want to go, you need to have the drive to complete any task that is thrown at you. You can’t just push it off to the side in hopes that the magic “work genie” will make it go away. All tasks and responsibilities are on your head to complete. No one will be there to hold your hand and tell you what needs to be done next. You need to be sure you can handle any possible task that is thrown at you because that’s what being a business owner is all about.Lastly, make sure you have the ability to not take yourself too seriously. While running your own home based business offers many benefits, there may be days that the task at hand stresses you out to no end, leaving you seriously reconsidering your new line of work. Whether it is negative feedback from a client, or a task that didn’t go as well as you had hoped, you need to learn from the situation and move on. No one is perfect, and those who don’t take the negatives personally and can learn from them, move on to be successful business owners solely because they know that they cannot please everyone. Just make sure you have the ability to not take yourself too seriously and even the most negative feedback will not have a disastrous affect on your business.Those are the three key features to being a successful home based business owner. If you are not 100% sure that you could succeed with your own home based business because you may be lacking in one of the key areas we discussed, there are other options. You could try starting your own business part time as a true test to yourself to see if you have what it takes to be your own boss. You may just end up surprising yourself by finding traits that you never thought existed, allowing you to enjoy the freedom and success that you had always dreamed that a home based business could provide.