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Plan for your home based business to be successful, and fully expect your home based business to be successful, but don’t expect it immediately. Depending on what type of business you are starting, success may take months or even a few years. As has been said, "Don’t quit your day job" until you can support yourself reliably with your home business.
To put this another way, assume your new home business will be a successful one, and then make plans to assure that success. As has been said, "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail."
Yikes! Don't let that happen to you!
The United States Small Business Administration has many resources available to you for absolutely free to get your home business off to a good start. In fact there are pages and pages and pages of valuable, essential information to help you formulate your business plans.
One of the greatest advantages of a home based business over a brick and mortar business is the cost of overhead. In a traditional brick and mortar business, you either buy or rent space, and then add utilities, insurance, furniture, inventory, and whatever else. That cost alone has done in more than one small business. When you work out of your home, you have none of those expenses above and beyond what you are paying in your home, anyway. There will be a financial investment that you will have to make, but it pales in comparison to starting a traditional brick and mortar business. Financial success may take months or even years, depending on what type of business you are starting. Being aware of that and planning on it not only will enable you to "ride it out" but will help you avoid discouragement.
In addition to financial planning, you need to plan what you will actually do on a typical day. If you are starting an internet business, will you write? Will you network? Will you research? Will you maintain your website?
If you are starting a home business dealing with either a product or a service, plan how to attract and even more importantly keep customers. Plan your advertising strategy.
Refer often to that SBA website. It will help you get your business off to a great start!
Any business, home based or brick and mortar, is a lot of work. Be prepared, at least at first, to work longer and harder in your home based business than you do in your job. Once your home business is established, you will be able set the hours you choose to work. Often, you can choose the location as well. While the beach on a south sea isle may be a bit far fetched, you are not limited to your office. Take your laptop and go somewhere enjoyable.
However, remember that the only place "success" comes before "work" is in the dictionary. As I wander around the internet reading the testimonies of the very successful, one thing has really stood out. They virtually never work less than a 40 hour week. Often it is more like 50-60 hours per week.
So why is this better than your current 40 hour week at your drudgery job? Because these people are doing what they love to do. They are their own boss. They do things their own way. They are free to go pick up a sick kid from school as necessary. They are free to meet an out-of-town friend or relative for lunch and not have to rush back to work. They can take the afternoon off to smell the roses.
Sometimes of deceptive sales landing pages you read of someone claiming that a typical day for them goes something like, "Ho-hum, wake up when I feel like it, drink a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper and checking how my stocks did, answer a few e-mails, spend a few minutes writing this or that, and I'm done for the day." Don't believe it. Either this person is lying, or isn't as successful as they would like you to think.
No matter what business you have, if your don't invest yourself in it, you won't get anything out if it.
