EVERY entrepreneur will know that the impression of entrepreneurs portrayed by The Apprentice television series, featuring Sir Alan Sugar, is very misleading.

No entrepreneur in all history has started on a £100,000 salary after taking an interview, no matter how humiliating it might be.

Most use the family home as security on a bank loan and live on just enough to keep the wolf from the door and, for many, it's downhill from there.

I am producing a book which will expose and project the actual lifestyle and human interest aspects of being an entrepreneur.

It will be a compilation of stories and anecdotes provided by real entrepreneurs who are just starting out, building their enterprises or have sold up and retired.

The subjects will range across young and old and it doesn't matter which markets they operate in. It's the entrepreneurial culture itself that the book will clarify and expose.

I need to hear from business people in your area, turning over £50,000 to £5 million-plus, who can contribute stories and anecdotes illustrating the impact of the entrepreneurial lifestyle on relationships, finances, health, character and all the other elements that only those who have been there and done it fully appreciate.

Some entrepreneurs make it and some do not, but there is a gene peculiar to every one of them that makes them try and, sometimes, try again and again until they get it right.

That gene is what this book is designed to identify through real life stories.

Could I ask you to ask any of your readers who might wish to contribute their stories to contact me directly, with a 250-word summary, at davidgrose@onetel.net with their full contact details?

All content will be treated sensitively and identities will be protected where requested.

David G Rose, Leominster, Herefordshire.