So you want to be a pop star.

Are you sure?

No, I mean are you really, really sure?

Are you prepared for the fame, the hard work, the loss of privacy, the detractors, and everything else that comes with the territory when you take the world's stage as a pop star?

"No, I don't think you could possibly prepare yourself for this," says Sahara MacDonald, one of the five members of Canadian vocal act Sugar Jones. "I wish we could have. It would have made it a lot easier."

It' is coming out the other side of the pop music/reality TV experiment Popstars, which filmed the process of creating an all-girl music group from thousands of young hopefuls across Canada.

The five finalists -- MacDonald, Andrea Henry, Maiko Watson, Julie Crochetiere, and Mirella Dell'Aquila -- were then quarantined in a Toronto condo and groomed for their roles in Sugar Jones.

Yesterday, the girls continued their cross-Canada tour to promote their self-titled debut CD with an autograph session and interviews with the press.

It's just another day in the lives of five people who are discovering the realities of getting what you wish for, and, even more importantly, the true nature of the music business.

"It definitely is a business," says MacDonald, who admits that realization required adjustments.

"It was two different things before," Watson agrees. "I went to work and did my 9-5 whatever, and music, that was my passion. That's what I did for fun without any money, and now to do it for money, it's very different than what it was before.

"You don't have that freedom, you can't sing your own songs, you can't do what you want when you want to do it.

"There's a lot of work involved."

Not that they weren't warned.

During the Popstars process, Calgary artist Jann Arden sat them down and gave them some valuable advice on how to make it out alive. "She told us 'Do what you believe in and don't let anyone tell you what to do -- do what you're comfortable doing,' " Watson says.

"She was really inspirational."

It's advice they would readily offer to the next Popstars when the whole thing begins again this fall, this time as a coed vocal group.

And it's advice that they might even be able to improve on, because, as they all admit, unlike Arden, the girls in Sugar Jones saw to it that they weren't going through it alone.

"We have each other to fall back on, which is the good part," says Dell'Aquila.

"We're going through it together."