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Before You Start A Home Based Business, Ask Yourself These Questions

If you are like me, you read as much as you can about the successes and the failures of people who start home based businesses. The successes are usually inspiring and wildly successful. The failures are usually stories about how someone felt ‘scammed’ or duped in a home based business, and how it is all lies. I find it really fascinating that for one person a specific home based business program was their ticket to financial success, while the other person had the exact opposite experience. Here’s what you should be asking yourself if you are thinking about a home based business program:

Are you really committed to take action?

If you are your odds of failing are minimal. If you believe you WILL be success and that you MUST be successful you very likely will be. Change your thinking, and really see if you can mentally commit to it.

If, on the other hand you are going into a home based business with doubts, or thoughts of it not really working but will give it a try, do not start. Like Yoda from the Star Wars movie says, “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’” It takes real commitment to be successful with a home based business. You first must be mentally commit yourself for success.

Will your friends and family offer support, or will they tell you why you can not succeed?

Although we need to be mentally prepared and ready, many around you will tell you that you will not make it with a home based business. They will tell you that you will fail, and some will actually spend time researching reasons and statistics to support their argument and, intentionally or not, try and create doubt in your mind. My advice is to ignore those people. If you can not ignore them, then just change the subject. If they can not support your home based business plan then you will not convince them until you are successfully making money in it. Ignore them and focus on building your success.

Can you sacrifice some of your spare time to build your home based business?

No matter what anyone tells you, there are no automatic money making programs out there. You need to work at your home based business, just like you would work at anything else of value. Schedule time each week to do the necessary work. If you do not schedule time you will get caught up in your daily routine and eventually will start questioning why you started a home based business in the first place. You may start to get the perspective of the person who I described in the first paragraph who eventually feels that they were duped or scammed.

Remember something, no matter what program or investment you make in a home based business, it is YOUR business and it is up to YOU to be successful. There are a number of good programs that support you, give you the steps, point you to the right tools, but if you do not make yourself accountable with your time, you will fail. Choose to be successful by first scheduling and then spending the time.

Will you try new things?

In a number of home based business programs they will outline things that you have never done before, or may feel uncomfortable doing. If any program suggests that you do something you feel is morally or ethically wrong, definitely DO NOT DO IT. However, some of the things a programs will suggest are things that you may never have done before and you may feel uncomfortable doing. You need to get out of your comfort zone and take the advice and do the things that are outlined for your success. Remember, the home based program that you may have purchased is from someone who does want you to be successful. If it is a reputable program, they will want you to be successful because that is the only way for them to keep growing their business. They suggest these techniques for a reason. They work.

Can you invest financially?

You’ll need to create a budget for yourself. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but no matter what home business you follow, you will have to spend some money. Work out what you can spend each month and then stick to the budget. By following the budget you will never feel like things are slipping out of control and since you are planning for success you can plan to succeed. If you have access to a simple spreadsheet like Excel that works. Just keep it updated and treat it seriously. Do not exceed your monthly budget without a real good reason.

Can you find a mentor to help you with questions and give you advice?

There are a lot of people out there ready to help. A mentor does not necessarily need to be someone you physically know. A mentor for a home based business may be a support forum, a chat room group for home based businesses, reading success stories and profiles, and even reading articles. We live in a great time in that we have so much access to information. Do not try and start a home based business yourself. Use the different support systems around you to research ideas and techniques. Over time you will end up being the expert.

There are a lot of places to start when considering a home based business. But before you really start in earnest, take an inventory of the questions I have outlined in this article and see if you really are ready to be successful. Do not allow yourself to go on this great journey unprepared. When I began my journey I was fortunate enough to find a program that I feel offers the right guidance and necessary support in order to be successful.

7 Things Successful Small Business Owners Do

If you’re stuck wondering how to be a successful small business owner, know this: running a small business often simply means making good use of successful small business ideas. Successful small business owners face many ups and downs throughout their work. They know that small business ideas cannot turn out successful unless they use the proper approach and strategies.

If you want to be one of the few successful small business owners, remember that having a good strategy is crucial. Without the right strategy and a proper approach, you are not likely to achieve your goal.

Some small business owners manage to overcome their everyday challenges, while others seem to give up after a while. So, let’s find out what successful small business owners do differently from the unsuccessful ones. Let’s turn their experience into your success through your small business ideas.

1. MAKE ANNUAL REVISIONS OF YOUR BUSINESS PLAN AND BUDGET

Every business goes through changes every now and then, including your small business. For this reason, your business plan and budget should be somewhat flexible to bear such changes along with your business goals. Without revising your business plan and budget, you shouldn’t expect your business to flourish and expand.

The flexibility of your business plan will help you avoid and overcome the eventual unpleasant surprises on the market. Also, such flexibility will give you some time to adjust to certain changes you may experience on your way.

Every business experiences both success and failure points each year. In order to detect and estimate these points, you should revise your budget and business plan every year. While revising, you should check if you are still going in the right direction. If not, you may need to make some changes and adjustments to achieve better results in the upcoming period.

Successful small business owners don’t hesitate to reallocate funds, if that is what it takes to achieve success. In order to increase profits, after they conduct a business revision, smart business owners define and implement the necessary changes immediately.

2. UPDATE YOUR OFFER AND ADD VALUE TO IT

People change, as do their needs and habits. As soon as you notice that you aren’t selling as much as you used to sell before, it is time to make changes. If people aren’t purchasing what you currently have to offer, that’s a clear hint that something needs to be done.

A simple price cut may be the first thing that comes to your mind. As much as lower prices may seem more appealing to your customers, they also point to a devaluation of what you offer. Devaluation of your products or services is never a good thing, so try doing just the opposite – add value to your offers.

The best way to update and add value to your products and services is by developing new offers. If possible, try to offer something completely new to your customers. You could offer product bundles, training programs and workshops, and so on.

3. DARE TO BE DIFFERENT

Most successful small business owners believe in daring to be different. They know their target consumers. Trying to target everyone and anyone as a consumer will get you nowhere fast. Instead of trying to make products for the masses, focus on a clearly targeted community and grow with it. Once you target your consumers, it is easy to understand their needs.

Understanding your consumers is the secret to a successful business. When you know their needs, you can modify your products and services in order to satisfy them. Satisfied consumers will not only become your regulars, but they will also spread the word about what you offer. This may become the best marketing strategy for your business.

Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.

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