Running a Home Based Business Like a Business
Written by: Don Miller
Posted on January 24, 2008
Filed Under Starting your Online Business
There is nothing quite so fulfilling as being your own boss. I became afflicted with the bug at an early age and have never regretted a single moment of providing for my family and myself. Woven within fabric of every entrepreneurs home based business are some challenging issues that will need your directed attention. Some will literally have to force their ways to change. There are no more sick days or scheduled vacations. You own a home based business now and it needs to be run just like any other business. The alarm clock goes off and you have decision to make. You can sleep in until noon, or get up and get to work, usually in a room a few steps away. So tell me what is on your day planner for today?
Schedule Your Day and Yourself
You have done it. You now own a home based business. The boss is gone, and now you get to call all the shots. For many no more boss, means no more accountability. Getting up late, turning on ESPN first thing isn’t going to pay your bills. That might have been a veiled confession. When you start your day depends on when you want to. When you make money is up to you too. Create a schedule that mirrors what you had at your day job. That means get up at the same time; create a routine that starts each day with a plan and with purpose. If you are like me I accomplish so much more with a to-do list. Generally speaking without a to-do I don’t do much. Try to have everything crossed off by the end of the day.
You are now your own time manger. You may want to chart how you spend your time each day. Charting time spent will help you manage it better tomorrow and beyond. Are you an e-mail addict? Be honest. Do you leave your e-mail client open and hear every ping that tells you, another email has arrived. This may be hard for some but, schedule a time to look at e-mail, try twice in the morning, twice in the afternoon. If you don’t know it by now, time spent on your home based business wont be time spent entirely at home. You will need time to allow for that. I found one of the hardest things I ever had to do is not take personal phone calls during the business day. I live in Florida and friends would call often to see if I wanted play hooky and drive to the nearby golf course. The money lost on a non-productive day of golf coupled with a few dollars lost playing golf makes for a bad day all around for your home based business. Discipline is a must.
Setting Goals
Sit down and set some goals for yourself. Mixed within your schedule each day should be goals. Simply starting each day without them will steer your business into mediocrity. Complacency issues could set in so you need to constantly setting a high mark for business. Challenge yourself with something each day that will force you to work outside your comfort zone. If your goal is connecting with 5 prospects on Monday bump it to 7 on Tuesday. You will be surprised how much you can accomplish simply by setting a goal. My own example is today I will contribute content to each of my seven sites. I am planning to write 1000 word articles to each of them. The structure of my day as I outlined has been set to accomplish the task. I will end the day answering e-mails and prospecting for new clients. I will likely be pre-selling today for tomorrow’s sales. If you want to make $500.00 a month with your site , push yourself to setting a goal of $700.00. Hopefully by now you’re making as much, if not more, money at your home based 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. Reaching your goals will allow you to exercise my favorite part of my home based business plan.
Rewarding Yourself
People who own their own home based business more often than not work 60 or 70 hours a week. You and only you can determine what it is that motivates you. You no longer are being assessed with performance reviews and the like. The bonus system you became accustomed to previously is a thing of the past. I personally am motivated by the drive I instinctively have to be a successful entrepreneur. Frankly it is not about making money as much as it is about creating something from nothing. Making Sales Making Money started with an idea contrived in less than 10 minutes. My short term rewards include a nice dinner, and scheduling in a measure of quality time with my loved ones. My long tern rewards are simple doing whatever it is I want to do on a given day. If I want to do nothing one day so be it. Time off and time away from it all is usually how I reward myself. I know from personal experience I can easily burn myself out, so I entitle myself to a tome off award every now and then. You will have to determine your own reward and motivate yourself to work for that reward. We were all raised on a reward system. I remember giving my kids cash rewards for exemplary report cards. Perhaps some of you have done the same thing. As for your home based business, be sure you pencil in a reward for yourself. The boss isn’t there to do anymore, darn that may be a reward in and of itself. Stay the Course.
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Tags:home base business opportunities, home based business, Pre-sell, wahm, work from home
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16 Responses to “Running a Home Based Business Like a Business”
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Good advice! My office environment is very casual and I use a lot of the techniques you mentioned to keep me motivated and working at my regular office job.
A quick question for you: what device/devices/software do you use to keep organized?
Great. It feels good to see that I actually follow all of it.
I’m an engineer by day, blogger by night =),
sometimes it does difficult to arrange and schedule my time between the two, it does challenging sometime to refrain myself from checking my blog stats too often, especially important when I worked in the office.
Don, I just started making and checking to-do list regularly this year, a habit that I’m trying to start this month. I’ve been pretty consistent making it but not necessarily doing it. I really need to learn from you, “try to have everything crossed off by the end of the day.”
That’s especially important.
Thanks for sharing, as what Colby asked, appreciate if you can share about the devices/software you’re using!
Thanks a lot,
Robert
Robert , Colby, I really don’t so anything more than jot down my daily plan on a legal pad, whatever doesn’t get done I move to the top of the next day’s list,technology and myself are mortal enemies so , I generally shy away from Blackberry’s and that sort of thing. I spend time each day thinking about post ideas, type them in on my drafts folder and get back to them as required, sorry to disappoint about the simplicity of my plan, its that simple, just structure my day , everyday, I am performance driven so accomplishing what I set out means deafeat for me if I dont, lol
Then there are some of us who don’t know when to shut down the shop and STOP WORKING! We are really tough taskmasters.
(Like checking your email at 3 AM on the way to the bathroom?)
Someone should write an article on that. Maybe me.
Im laughing out loud Corrine because I did that last night! Guess we could co-write it
[...] Running a Home Based Business Like a Business [...]
nice advice. about ‘Rewarding Your Self’
I think it is better to give ourself reward for each progress
[...] post has been prompted by an article by Don Miller that I read recently. It’s about Running a Home Based Business Like a Business. Don talks the merits of treating a home based business just like any other business and warns us [...]
[...] I posted an article about Running a Home Based Business, Like a Business. I expressed some warnings and advice about maintaining a measure of structure to your day and [...]
Great article Don.
I am a huge advocate of setting goals and keeping on task. It is so easy to get side tracked when you are working from home. These reminders are very helpful.
Heather , don’t be a stranger, thanks for stopping by
[...] Making Money often drops me a note to say hi and that might prompt me to write a commentary about one of his posts. I chat to Yaro Starak now and then about his Blog Mastermind course and the next thing I know, [...]
[...] problem getting this done. I just need to stay focussed and stop wasting time consuming knowledge. This post - from some guy I’ve never heard of inspired me to get off my ass (actually I guess it [...]
Scott, lmao, glad it had an effect, BTW Im Don and good luck to you
Thanks for the advice. I have a home business myself and I find it so hard to work sometimes. I work with my two cousins and sometimes we aren’t motivated enough to work. I think it is because we are really making a low amount and home business takes a while to build up. We are trying to hang in here, but it is pretty difficult. I’m sure every home business had its hard time also. I find that we are taking breaks too often, well this isn’t a great workplace so we even take naps sometimes. Would you recommend renting out a little office space to work at? Oh, we also have a goal for every month and if we achieve it we usually all go out to dinner or sometime fun we can enjoy. The advice I can give to any new home business is to have good time management and try to work hard, your hard work might not show up immediately, but in the future you will see that all you hard work has paid off. Thanks for the post I really enjoyed reading it, I learned quite a lot (now I’m going to make my business partners read it)