Giving up a corporate position to start a home business is a dream for a lot of people today: You have the ability to get out of rat race and avoid the commute to the office, you can be your own boss, no strict deadlines to work to and no dead boring meetings you need to be present at. Working from home can be a rewarding experience, but it’s easy to forget the basic rules of running a successful business when it’s 10 hours of just you, your computer and the distractions of home.
After a lot of experience in this field I thought I would put together a few points to help you run your home based business smoothly.
” Structure your day. The problem a lot of homebased business owners have is that they no longer have a boss standing over them making sure they get their work done, or a tangible start and end of each workday. There are always other tasks to do at home such as laundry, housecleaning and even things such as heading to the fridge, catching a few minutes of TV etc. Time can easily pass you by.
You need to make sure you have some sort of structure in place that mimicks some sort of a workplace. Structure your day so you have a start and finish time, with certain hours set aside for specific activities.A good option to follow is to allow the first 1-2 hours of your working day to seek and prospect for new leads/customers.Do the important things such as writing your letters, returning or making your phone calls and sending emails so that they don’t get forgotten later.

Use Outlook or some sort of contact management software to serve as a visual reminder of what you need to accomplish that day.Having a to-do-list is a must and you must respect it like gold.Aim to have everthing marked off at the end of your working day.My family have even learnt that if they need or want me to do anything for them during my work hours they need to put it on my list. That way they know it will get done (at least 99% of the time).
” Stay connected. Carry an organizer wherever you go. It is still OK to be using prehistoric items such as a paper diary but it would certainly help you a lot to upgrade to higher technology such as a Blackberry. You don’t need to go crazy and spend a lot of money, but invest wisely in something that will hold everything you need and allow you to instantly access it on the go. Another good idea is to not keep all of your information in one location, such as the hard drive of your home computer. Keep your data hosted on a virtual exchange server so you can access it anywhere that has an Internet connection. Do not make the mistake of thinking that as a home based business owner you are required to be at home 24 hours a day.
” Organize your family time.Ensure you don’t just focus on scheduling your professional like and forget about your family life. Maybe you noticed right away, or maybe it’s just becoming apparent, that you tend to work around the schedule of your family members.This is especially true if you have children. A lot of people, especially young moms, decide that they’re going to quit their jobs in corporate America and work from home in order to care for their children and save on daycare expenses.However, if you are really motivated and serious about succeeding and earning a substantial income from your business then you are going to have to rely on childcare, whether it be in or out of the home, at some stage. If you don’t you simply become too distracted.A good option would be to hire a nanny or babysitter to ensure you get a good solid few hours of quality work done.
” Motivate yourself. Set some short and long term goals. You no longer have quarterly reviews or progress reports, so it’s important to keep track of whether or not you’re making progress in your business.Not only do you have to set daily short term goals (like that to-do-list) but you also have to set bigger long term goals to allow to you succeed in the long run. Hopefully by now you’re making as much, if not more, money at your homebased business than you were at your former job. If you aren’t, begin by setting a goal to bring in the same amount of income you were, and slowly raise the bar to increase your income by a couple of thousand a month. Once you’ve met a goal, make time to reward yourself by doing something fun, which brings us to the next tip.
” Take time out for good behavior. I know a lot of you are probably finding yourselves working 50,60, 70+ hours per week.Hey, just to let you know if you sneak out to meet a friend for lunch or catch a movie. You are, ultimately, your own boss! You have that freedom and flexibility as a home business owner. It can be tempting to work all the time when you start seeing how successful your business has become, but know when to relax. You’ve already established a smooth-running business. Take a break every now and then so you don’t get burned out.
” Learn to multi-task. Being a home based business owner you have various roles to fill: You’re the CEO, president, secretary, office manager and tech support. Learn the basic skills of running an office, including how to troubleshoot some rudimentary technical problems. It is not necessary to be a Rhodes Scholar on all aspects, but it will definitely help to have a basic skillset on things such as bookkeeping. Otherwise it will become too expensive to have to pay someone to do everything for you.
” Network. Either via formal meetings of informal methods, network with other like minded, entrepreneurial businesspeople. This is a good way to find service providers, leads and potential clients.You can gain a lot of support from your peers and gain a lot of referrals to assist with your business growth and success.

I hope that this information is useful to those of you out there that are working hard in their business endeavours and also to those looking at this great lifestyle and career opportunity.

Please visit my website for further information. See the link below
http://www.karlievalentine.com