Home Based Business Plan GuideWritten by Charles Fuchs
Every home based business needs a plan to be successful. It isn’t enough to have a great idea for a home based business and just hang out your shingle. Which is a something that many home based business owners learn too late. So even if you aren’t going to be borrowing money for your start up home based business, you still want to take some time to create a thoughtful, realistic business plan.The first step in creating a home based business plan is to clearly define your goals. It isn’t just a matter of saying you want to make a certain amount of money in, say, five years or to leave your competition in dust. These are certainly lofty goals, but they are vague. You want to define what your home based business really is at beginning and where you want it to be. It’s a good to break this into segments. Where do you want your home based business to be in six months? A year? Eighteen months? Two years? A home based business plan that outlines your objectives this way gives you a road map to refer to and will ensure you’re on right track and that you stay there. Second, you have to know market potential for your home based business. After all, there has to be a demand for product and/or service you are offering or you have no business. If your home based business is going to provide business cleaning services, for example, you’ll want to be sure that there are companies and offices in your immediate area that need your service. You will also want to look at surrounding areas for opportunities to grow your home based business in future. The amount and type of competition for your service needs to be taken into consideration too. If your area is already saturated with business cleaning services, you may need to consider a different service altogether. Without some planning and research, however, you won’t know this in advance, and your home based business won’t be as likely to succeed as it could be. Next, you want to consider all costs your home based business will incur. A lot of times when people work at home at their own home business, they fail to consider small expenses. Printer ink, paper, postage, long distance phone calls and cell phone bills are easily missed when considering cost of operating a home based business. And these seemingly small amounts add up in a short amount of time for most business owners. So realistically look at all costs involved with owning and operating your home business. This way you’ll know how much you have to bring in to meet expenses and hopefully, to make a profit.
| | Starting is the hardest partWritten by Marsha Maung
You can’t imagine how many people ask me how I did it. To turn my back onto convention, to turn a deaf ear on people who wants what is best for me, to snub my nose at people who thinks I am making one of biggest mistakes in my life…etc. Hey, this is what I do best, so, I am really good at this. Granted, not everyone is as good at defying convention (and logic) as me, so, I’ll keep that in mind. I can’t explain how it happened and I cannot pin point when it was that I decided to quit my job and work from home, but it happened because I wanted to be with my kids (Then, it was a lone Joshua but resolve to have another child while working from home only went on to cement my decision). I receive at least 10 to 15 emails EVERY SINGLE DAY from people telling me how much they wanted to do what I am doing right now – they ask me how I did it, what was required, how was it in beginning, how to deal with loved ones, how much money they would need to reserve to start their own business, what kind of business they should start and how to spot a scam, etc. And I always answer very definitively, JUST DO IT, ok? Yes, you need to have some kind of a financial reserve in your bank account for stormy days. You’ll need a couple of butcher knives to scare those debt-chasers away when they try to shoulder their way through your door – but other than that, you don’t need to have any more reserve that what you already have right now! Pure gall and gut. (If I were a man, I would use other words, but I am not…so, sue me!) Look, all I can is this: if you think you would rather work at home where you are free to divide your time between your family and you, decide when to work, how you work and what you work on, just do it.
|
