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Guest post by: Candice Clem Become an Author

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Working from home under the auspice of your own home business is a very tempting idea for most of us, and for very good reason: who doesn’t want to avoid traffic, be free of "the man," and work on his own terms? If it’s a fit for you: check out some of the following work at home businesses. You’ll see some great examples of home based businesses as well as some cautionary examples of certain personality types that may not be geared for working at home. If you fall into one of these categories, don’t be discouraged, there are plenty of other types of franchises that will be more suited to your personality and business preference.

Movers and Shakers

Alright, so I don’t even actually know what a mover or a shaker is, but I can tell you they most likely would not thrive in all work at home franchise environments. If you’re a person who needs fresh air and plenty of physical activity, then spending eight hours a day cooped up in your home office is not a very good idea. At least if you work in an office outside the home, there’s the benefit of being outdoors for the commute each way. But at a home based business, there isn’t even that: it’s wake up in your house, eat in your house, work in your house, go to sleep in your house. Maybe you can look out the window once in awhile.

Of course, I make that sound worse than it is for comedy’s sake, and most franchise opportunities do include their fair share of leaving the home-office. Take, for instance, Vehicle Tracking Solutions. Much of the work involves little more than a computer and phone, from which you contact potential clients, current clients, and your distributor to make sales and schedule deliveries of GPS delivery-vehicle-tracking equipment. Still, there is the occasional business meeting with a client to seal the deal with that personal touch, so there is a degree of out-of-the-house time, but by and large, the owner of a work from home franchise is going to have far more hours around the house than hours out to lunch, and even those days outside are not going to be physically rigorous at all. It takes a special breed.

Ground Troops

In America we like to think that everyone is a leader, capable of heading up the charge, rallying the troops, and starting a business, if only they’ll put their minds to it. In reality, that’s just not the case.

Though most of us have never been to war, it provides a brilliant snapshot of this truth. There is one general, and thousands are under his command. Neither party can do much good without the other, making them both very important, but that doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable. A General must be able to act without needing someone to look over his shoulder, while the troops are responsible for obeying commands. Granted, in a franchise environment, the franchisee is maybe more of a Colonel than a General because the franchisor is there to help, guide, and oversee at every step along the way, but the point remains that someone more equipped to execute commands than lead a company, stay on task, and see the big picture may not do very well with a home business franchise.

With a DVDNow or ACFN ATM franchise, for example, the onus is entirely on the franchisee to be actively looking for locations in which to put the DVD vending machines and ATMs (respectively) and keeping track of all the current locations on a regular basis. He must make sure that each machine is working properly, ensure that relationships with the hosting locations remain in good standing, and keep track of all his own finances (personal and business). Home based business owners must be able to issue commands as much as they can follow them.

The Easily Distracted

We’re all now familiar with pop-up ads and banners on the websites that we frequent: those silly, flashing advertisements for a free laptop if we’re willing to fill out a survey. Though we’d like to say that we’ve never been baited by such a foolish ploy, that would be an outright lie; the fact is, we’ve all clicked them. And why? We click the laptop banner because it looks more interesting than whatever ho-hum thing we were doing before it magically appeared to save us from the doldrums. And what was that ho-hum thing we were doing? Probably work.

The fact is we all have gotten distracted by something at some point, our minds taken off task by an ad, or a magazine, or a conversation across the room. Some of us, though, are far more prone to it than others, easily drifting off into what color the walls should be painted when there are Adventures in Advertising clients who need to be called if their business is to be secured. The problem is that the home is where most of us stockpile all our most entertaining possessions, making it all the harder to work and not watch TV, surf the web, play a videogame, or maybe just go water the lawn, for the fifth time today. If you know that the home is not where you find yourself the most clearly focused on what you need to do, even when it’s not what you want to do, think twice about working from home.

Doubting your qualification in any of these areas does not necessarily exclude you from getting into home based business. You can still very much make it in the market, but it will take that much more effort on your part to develop or bypass the skills you do not yet have. Give it deep thought, ask yourself as many questions as possible to determine what you are capable of and what you want, and take the counsel of good friends. There is honor both in working for yourself and in working for someone else, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

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