Highs and lows were something that I began to notice when I first started a home based business. I have many years of top level management experience in “traditional” corporations and have experienced lots of business cycles (corporate “ups and downs”), but natural “ups and downs” that occur in a home business (particularly in early stages) can be emotionally brutal if you don’t prepare yourself in advance for fact that it is a basic law of nature…it will be a rocky road until you have spent enough time and effort to build your business to a level that sort of smoothes out peaks and valleys.

The impact of high and lows you will probably experience in developing your home based business is amplified by fact that you are now in business on your own You are boss and get to make all decisions, but you are also on your own in dealing with frustrations that will occur along way while you are developing your business.

The next problem will be e-mail. I won't go into benefits of automating your business from start right now, but believe me this is only way to go if you don't want to spend all day answering and sending e-mail.

Devote a certain amount of time in your day to deal with e-mail chores.

You should be spending most of your time promoting and advertising your business in early stages and e-mail will intrude on that very quickly. So plan a certain time of each day to deal with e-mail and try to stick to it unless it's urgent.

If you receive your e-mail through an alias at your website and you have option of sending an autoresponse to each e-mail you receive, then I suggest you set one up to say something like:

_____________________________________________________ Thanks for your e-mail. Your request has been received and you will receive a response within 48 hours.

Best wishes,

Your Name or Customer Support ______________________________________________________

Including an autoresponse like one above will buy you some time so that you can deal with your e-mail chores at your pace, without irrate customers and prospects asking why you haven't sent an immediate response.

You would be amazed at number of e-mails I get asking why a customer or prospect hasn't received a response to e-mail they sent two minutes ago.

So automation is vital. I use a combination of autoresponders and a PC based software that I have found to be priceless.

Once you get e-mail and time management under control, you will soon find your business running smoother and you will have more time to relax and enjoy being a successful business owner.