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8 Tips to Help you Start a Successful Home-Based Business
Written by: Janis PettitArticle Overview: When starting a home-based business, what you don't know can hurt you. Here are some basic tips that will help you make building a home-based business a reality.
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8 Tips to Help you Start a Successful Home-Based Business
Did you ever see that Toyota commercial where the Dad was giving a first driving lesson to his son? The son is so excited about the Bluetooth technology, the GPS system and the Engine Start button that he keeps telling his dad that driving is going to be “so easy”. He’s convinced he just pushes a button and steers and he’s good to go.
The Dad exclaims in frustration, “It’s not easy! Just get out of the car”.
That sounds similar to the conversation I’ve had dozens, maybe even hundreds of times with smart, skilled people who want to start a business. Just like the young boy, they don’t know what they don’t know. But what you don’t know CAN hurt you.
Here are some basic tips that will help you make building a home-based business a reality:
1. Create a plan, even if it’s just a few pages. It will force you to think through your ideas and decide where you want to be a year or two from now, who you want to work with, what products and services you want to offer, and how you’ll meet your financial goals.
2. Create an ideal client profile and compile a list of possible marketing activities you think would reach this market.
3. Decide on a start up budget and figure out where to get the money. You can bootstrap in the beginning and start with very little, but you will need some money—at least a few thousand dollars.
4. For one week, monitor how you spend your work time to see how productive and efficient you are with your time. How much of your time is spent on business building, potentially profit generating activities? This does not mean checking e-mail, doing administrative tasks or surfing the Internet. How you use your time will absolutely determine how successful you’ll be.
5. Make a list of which life, family or childcare obligations are non-negotiable for you and outsource the rest. For example, maybe you have school age kids and you’re willing to put them in after school homework club, but you absolutely want to spend time with them after dinner. Or, maybe you’re willing to work Saturday morning, but want Saturday afternoon and evening with your family. This will help you determine how your current situation can be changed to accommodate uninterrupted work time. You will have to make some compromises, so be clear which ones you’re willing to make.
6. Prepare an office space that is large enough to accommodate your business needs. If you can find a space where you can close the door to indicate to everyone that you are at work and not to be disturbed, all the better.
7. Don’t answer your personal phone or doorbell when you’re working. That’s what caller ID is for. If it’s an emergency call or someone you really need to speak to, you can answer. If it’s your friend calling to say hi or a neighbor dropping by, you’ll be tempted, but don’t respond.
8. Find a coach or mentor who can guide you through the start up process as quickly and efficiently as possible, who can show you how to avoid unnecessary struggles, stress and wasted time and money. You’ll feel so wonderful when you fastrack to your first $100, then $1,000, the $10,000!
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Article Tags: administrative tasks, bluetooth technology, building a home, business building, childcare, client profile, dad, dozens, e mail, financial goals, frustration, gps system, home based business, school age kids, school homework club, start button, steers, thousand dollars, toyota commercial, work time
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Related Forum Posts
Books for Women Entrepreneurs
- There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here.
It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new.
In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment!
1. The Old Girl's Network
2. Mother's Work
3. The 7 Greatest Truths About Successful Women
4. Pitch Like A Girl
5. Workplace Warrior
6. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the Modern Consumer
7. Contingency Planning & Disaster Recovery
8. She Wins, You Win
9. Napoleon On Project Management
10. Why Good Girls Dont' Get Ahead, But Gutsy Girls Do
11. Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years
12. The One Minute Millionaire
13. Talking From 9 to 5
14. Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambitions
15. 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women: Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started on the Road To Success
16. Work With Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living. Revised and Expanded
17. Fail-Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful
18. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End
19. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide
20. Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen
21. Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start - and Run - Your Own Successful Business
22. Rewired, Rehired or Retired: A Global Guide for the Experienced Worker
23. The Martha Rules: 10 essentials for achieving success as you start, build or manage a business
24. The Essentials of Entrepreneurship: What it takes to create Successful Enterprises
25. Net Ready: Strategies for Success in the E-conomy
26. The Promotable Woman
27. Leave The Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro shows you how to do more in less time and feel great about it
28. The Work At Home Balancing Act: The professional resource guide for managing yourself, your work, and your family at home
29. Secrets of Six-Figure Women
Business Tips
- How about:
Tips for managers to handle employees more effectively?
Tips on how to deal with difficult customers?
Tips on how to deal more effectively with suppliers?
The only three I have in mind right now, but will try to come up with something else.
Chris
Re: How can I promote my site?
- To promote website online you need to hire professional SEO expert because you have to perform the below activities for your website promotion:-
Start On page optimization which includes the following task:-
1. Meta tag optimization
2. Header Tag Optimization
3. Alt tag Optimization
4. Content Optimization
5. Anchor Text Optimization
6. URL Optimization
7. Navigation Optimization
After On page optimization, Start off Page Optimization which includes the following task:-
1. Link building
2. Directory submission
3. Classified Ads submission
4. Article submission
5. Press Release submission
6. Social Bookmarking
7. Business Listing
8. Local Listing
9. Blog Optimization
10. PPT Creation & Optimization
My entry
- 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read
- this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody.
2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto.
3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book
Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: What's 1 word to describe what your business will be in 2012
- Successful.
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