Frankly, we now wonder why we didn't take the plunge and set up on our own earlier.

In any case, having experienced the fulfilment and sheer fun of running our own company, I doubt that any of the three of us would ever want to go back to being employees again.

Like most start-ups, we were motivated by a combination of carrot and stick. A hefty carrot was the prospect of building a company with our own name on it - something we could be proud of owning.

One of the sticks was the infliction of so-called "management fees" - the time-honoured (and perfectly legal) method by which holding companies milk their subsidiaries. The crunch comes when you realise that no matter how effectively you work, somebody else is going to reap most of the financial benefits. That's tolerable if you can see light at the end of the tunnel.

But if the proprietors of a service business rule out the possibility of selling it to the people who run it, then you either accept that you are a cog in the machine, or you go and build your own machine. We chose the latter option.

It's been great fun. That's not to say that we don't work hard - we certainly do - it's just that there is a world of difference between sweating on your own behalf and the daily drudge involved in fattening somebody else's pension fund.

It's a motivational difference that clients instinctively recognise, and they know it can be used to their own commercial benefit. When they are buying the distilled essence of your own knowledge, experience and personal skills, they want it without the corporate trimmings - the flash cars and fat-cat headquarters staff, for instance.

We needn't have worried about finding clients - they found us. From a standing start, within the first 12 months we have built up a portfolio of more than 20 clients and our annual fee income is running at more than £500,000. We have five executive staff, and will shortly be looking for more. Our business is already financially sound, and we have become an established part of the North-East PR scene. I don't know exactly where we rank in terms of fee income, but it must be in the top three or four.

Surprisingly, we have already been invited to pitch for national business - winning some, such as the Game Conservancy Trust, and losing out on others, such as the Army recruitment account.

But it was exciting to be short-listed for the Army job in the first place - we were up against the likes of Shandwick, the UK's largest PR firm.

Had we been appointed, we would have had to set up a network of offices across the country to service the account!

Recruiting staff could have been very tricky. How many employees are willing to risk joining a start-up? We have been very lucky in this regard. Both our initial hirings already knew us, and had a certain amount of faith in our ability to succeed. For our part, we have been delighted with their progress.

Our arrival on the North-East PR scene was not universally applauded by our rivals, but we consider this to be a back-handed compliment. One pleasing aspect is the way we have been able to build good relations with like-minded firms in related disciplines, such as design, research and advertising.

We don't know what the future holds, but we can look back on 12 months of solid achievement. Whatever happens, we have the satisfaction of knowing that we are taking responsibility for our own destiny.