We are not even dealing with kind of punishment you might get at school or a correctional institution. We are talking about toughest kind of discipline: regular, old-fashioned, grit-your-teeth self-discipline. I can hear groans but I don’t know why Discipline has become so unpopular. You should treat it as a good friend, shake hands with Discipline and give him a clap on back — invite him in to look around your home office and get his opinion of your plans.

Discipline will strengthen you and make it easier for you to get organised and stay organised; consider taking him in as a business partner. It is Discipline which will help you to keep going in face of difficulties. It is Discipline which will help you fit in million and one things which will be clamouring for your attention when you first start out as your own boss.

OK, you are boss and you can take a day off when you like without asking permission from anybody else. Great! Fantastic! Wonderful! Yes, it is just as you wanted it to be — but who is going to cover for you during your absence? Who is going to sort out your schedule, arrange for your mail to be acknowledged, make sure your diary is up to date? Aha, now you see it. The answer is “you” because there is nobody else. You, that is, and your good buddy, Discipline, who will steadfastly see you through this potentially difficult situation.

If you have a vacation planned, you will have a date to work to and, even if you are lackadaisical in your running of your business and allow tasks to pile up, you will know how long you have in which to get things sufficiently ship-shape for you to be able to take off without leaving your business in a mess.

What if you decide to take a day off at short notice (like, just when you wake up one morning)? That is one of great things about being boss but wouldn’t it be easier if your work was right up to date, everything neat and organised? Wouldn’t you be more relaxed if machine was running smoothly?

I assume that only in few cases a fellow home business entrepreneur will be able to have an own accountant to calculate Profit/Loss sheet. So you may need to help yourself. Let?s go step by step. Setting an own Budget could help you to know ?when you are in plus?and when opposite is case.

A Budget is nothing else as estimating costs and income. As every ?prediction?, calculation and reality could differ. Thus it is your task to review your budget from time to time and adjust it based on real numbers. The ?real numbers?are ?actuals?you get from your business. The ?budget?is estimation of your costs and income. There are several applications on market to perform mentioned steps. For beginning, you can use a calculation sheet.

1) Choose periodicity of your budget. Usually you may choose weeks or months. This means you need to calculate every cost to a weekly or monthly basis. I.e. if you pay for your autoresponder 120$ a year, monthly costs are 10$ and weekly costs are equal 120$ divided by 52, getting 2,31$ per month

2) Make a complete list of all recurring costs you already know: i.e. Web hosting, Residual Income Fees, your autoresponder, lead subscriptions and so on. Make a complete list with all costs you already know. Consult your credit card statements and search your Paypal account for subscription payments. Transform costs to unity of time you have chosen in step 1 (i.e. monthly or weekly).

3) Now make a list of all ?one time?payments you plan to have this year, and calculate accruals for periodicity you have chosen in Step 1. Example: you plan to buy Internet Marketing Literature for 300$ this year (this is your Budget). You could calculate then a monthly ?costs?of this literature as 25$ a month, or 5.79$ per week. If you have purchased equipment (i.e. Hardware), you need to distribute costs amount life of product. I.e. one PC usually is used for three years. If you pay 1000$ as one time payment, you can distribute costs over three years, giving 333.33$ per year or 27.7$ monthly, or 6.41 $ per week. This is call ?depreciation.?. If you now that after three years you may sell PC for 200$, calculate depreciation accordingly, starting now from 800$ (1000$-200$). As you see, Hardware is not as expensive as you would expect, from financial point of view.

Add costs obtained in step 3) to list you have already prepared in step 2). Now you have complete list of your estimated monthly or weekly costs.

4) Now we come to most interesting section: your Earnings! Obviously you can be in ?plus?, only if your earnings are higher as your costs. This sounds again trivial, but is not easy to achieve.

Most of Internet Marketing Newbie?s would expect to be ?in plus? after a very short period of time. This is unrealistic. As you have seen in first steps of calculation of your budget, you may consider Hardware, Literature, Marketing spending and other costs that in first months do not have corresponding earnings. Thus, it is absolutely normal that you may have a period where you are ?in minus? for a while, till you reach your ?break-even point? (earnings = costs).

But let?s come back to earnings. In Internet Marketing, your earnings are derived from sales. There are either direct sales or indirect sales from your downline, if you are driving an MLM like business.