Business Development Strategies

Posts Tagged ‘home-based business’

You are busy at both work and at home. Some days it may seem impossible to find time for YOU. You may wonder how other busy Mom Entrepreneurs make time for themselves, but you don’t have time to stop and ask. Here are four quick tips:

If it’s too late and you are already stressed…

1. Take a break.
Have you ever been overwhelmed and feel you can’t stop for fear you will fall further behind? When you’re in a high-stress situation, your thinking is often cluttered making you less productive. Michele Dortch, The Integrated Mother, suggests that you take a break when you become stressed. Whether you choose a 15-minute nature walk or a full day doing activities you love, stopping can actually provide amazing clarity and help you complete your tasks on time. This may seem counterproductive, but it really works!

To prevent going on overload, try the following tips on a regular basis…

2. Take time out to socialize each week.
Alice Seba of Mom Masterminds advises taking time out is invaluable to the Mom Entrepreneur. Alice makes a point to have a few opportunities to socialize each week—with girlfriends, her partner, or to just have some time alone. It revives her and makes her more focused when she comes back to being a mom or a businessperson. Alice says, “All work and no play not only makes you a dull mama, but it makes you a stressed out and ineffective one, too!”

3. Take a few “Mommy Minutes” as often as possible.
Ponn Sabra, author of Empowering Women to Power Network, puts herself on “time out” and takes “Mommy Minutes” as often as possible. Ponn sits in a self-made sauna in the bathroom with the hot shower running or enjoys a favorite goodie (she sometimes hides special ice cream sandwiches in back corner of her freezer where no one, even her husband, can find them.)

Ponn also insists that “adults need naps, too!” Whether for ten minutes or forty-five, it is important just to take a nap. The revitalization you receive from a catnap is very powerful. If you are unable to nap in the middle of a chaotic day, it is important to take yourself out of the situation to regain focus. You will have more energy if you meditate and clear your head.

4. Go “off duty” regularly.
In Linda Goodman Pillsbury’s Survival Tips for Working Moms, she recommends choosing a regular time when you are “off duty.” For example, you might say that after 8:30 every night, the kids cannot bother you with “Where are my blue jeans?” “I need cookies for a school party tomorrow,” etc. (Of course, you are there for emergencies.) Children will soon learn to ask for what they need before you go off duty or wait until the morning. This works on very young children up to teenagers–but you should make exceptions for talking to the kids when they come in from a date!

Pick up any “business opportunity” magazine at your local newsstand and you’ll see a glossy attractive publication designed to attract people who are actively seeking ways to earn extra money, buy a franchise, or open a business of their own. After all, it’s the American Dream to own your own business and get rich, right?

You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Most people are too busy earning a living to make any money.” Common sense tells us that we’re not going to get rich working for someone else, with the exception of lucky folks like those who started with Microsoft or Google in their early days and got rich through stock options. The average American employee lives from paycheck to paycheck with barely enough income to cover their living expenses, leaving nothing for investment toward building wealth for a comfortable retirement. Hence the allure of the “Business Opportunity.”

As you flip through one of these “BizOpp” magazines, you’ll see a wide variety of advertisements for different types of businesses, ranging from simple “starter kits” for around $29 all the way to sophisticated franchises costing $100,000 or more. For most people, it’s impossible to raise enough capital to consider opening a true franchise. The franchise fees alone are often prohibitive, running into tens of thousands of dollars even for the lesser known businesses, or several hundred thousand dollars for better known companies. And that’s not even including the outlay required to actually open the doors for business.

At the other end of the scale, most people are aware that the cheap starter kits and “business in a box” packages are basically junk. But that leaves a whole host of medium-priced business startup concepts, ranging in price from around $500 on the low end to $10,000 on the upper end. I refer to these as “pre-packaged business opportunities.”

To explain why pre-packaged businesses are usually a waste of time and money, I’ll use windshield repair as an example. As I write this, I’m looking at an ad for a training program that costs $3,000, including starter materials. In case you don’t know what I’m referring to here, the basic idea is that small chips, cracks, or holes in automobile windshields can be repaired using a special liquid material that seals and repairs defects. This is obviously much cheaper than replacing an entire windshield. Hence the “opportunity” to start a business that helps people save money on their windshield repairs.

Now, in case you’re thinking, “There’s no way I would want to be in that business,” please bear in mind I’m just using this as an example out of hundreds of possible different business concepts advertised in the same fashion. And of course there are many people who would be attracted to such a “business opportunity” — people who really like cars, people who already know quite a bit about auto repair, and so on. Plenty of individuals are attracted to a business idea like this, which is why this particular “opportunity” has been around for decades.

Now, here’s the real question. Can you seriously expect to shell out $3,000 for some starter materials and training in the windshield repair business, then put a sign out, and expect to start earning money right away? Of course not! This is the #1 flaw with pre-packaged business opportunities: you still have to figure out how to market the product or service on your own.

Let’s take a closer look at the windshield repair business. Let’s say your goal is to make $50,000 per year in net income. If we assume that you can charge around $50 per windshield repair, at a material cost of around $10, then you have a gross profit (not counting your labor) of $40 per repair. To make $50,000 net, you’d need to find 1,250 windshields per year that required fixing. That translates to more than 100 repairs per month, and you’d need to keep this up month in and month out to meet your income goal. That works out to 3-5 repairs per day, depending on how many days per month you work.

Now, if you had 1,250 cars lined up down the road, all ready for the repair work, it would be nice easy money, right? But FINDING those 1,250 cars and then SELLING those 1,250 car owners on your service will be the real problem. In other words, you don’t really have a windshield repair job here. You have a SALES job, pure and simple. Most of your time will be spent finding business. Obviously, finding one car at a time will be totally impractical. Instead, you’ll need fleet accounts with major car dealerships, auto repair shops, car rental agencies, and so on. And you can bet that a number of other people (some of whom bought the same pre-packaged business that you did) have also solicited the same companies for their windshield repair business.

So again, what you really have here is a sales job. If this were a truly profitable business, then the company selling you the “opportunity” would not be making all their money selling pre-packaged businesses to people like yourself. Instead, they would be making their money by rolling out the service across the country and selling windshield repair directly to fleet accounts on a nationwide basis. But they know that there is actually more money to be made in the BizOpp world, preying on people who have the dream of starting their own business.

The message here is that any pre-packaged business opportunity that sells in the $500 to $10,000 range is typically worthless and a complete waste of your time and money. Please bear in mind that these numbers are just a guideline, and you must always exercise good judgment when evaluating any business opportunity. Just because a “hot” pre-packaged opportunity is selling for more than $10,000 does not mean that it is necessarily legitimate. Many rip-offs cost a lot more than that. But generally speaking, the promoters of these schemes realize they are aiming at people who can’t pay a lot of money to get started in business. So the packages are marketed in a way that will maximize the number of people that can afford to buy in.

If you are serious about starting your own business, then a pre-packaged opportunity is not the way to go. It might seem like an easy answer to your problem, but the very fact that it’s being sold as a packaged business probably means that there’s no real money to be made without a long hard sales grind. You’re much better off doing your own research, coming up with your own business ideas, and then testing your ideas with small advertisements to see if your concepts have any real potential. That’s how many businesses get their start. You’ll have a much better chance of making it in the world of business or self-employment if you ignore those BizOpp magazines entirely!

Evaluating the home business opportunity.

If you are serious about making money online, then you cannot ignore the possibilities that are offered by home businesses. These days, however, there are so many opportunities available that sifting the wheat from the chaff can become a real problem. Everyone who wants to earn some serious money must acquire some skill in evaluating home business opportunities.

Perhaps the first thing that you will have to learn will be to gauge yourself. Its cliché, but you really do need to know yourself. Why? Because you will essentially be working with yourself in everything that you do, you must at least be familiar with your particular traits, including your talents, abilities, and inclinations. Unless an opportunity “fits” you, you probably won’t be able to use it well; it may even be completely useless to you.

Consider this situation: you are offered the opportunity to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, one that deals in oil. Your current occupation is that of a kindergarten teacher specializing in art. Chances are, with a combination like this, the CEO position wouldn’t be a good fit for you. It’s an incredible opportunity, to be sure, but it isn’t one that really applies to the person involved. No matter how hard he works, the kindergarten teacher has, at best, a slim chance in making the opportunity work for him.

Conversely, if you are given even just a simple opportunity in an area that you truly love and are talented in, you will most likely succeed. Using our preceding example, let’s imagine that our kindergarten teacher, aside from his teaching duties, is also an amateur painter. He is given the opportunity to display some of his work in a small exhibition, and he works extra hard to improve his craft. In this case, the opportunity presented to him fits his talents and inclinations exactly, and can well be a stepping stone to greater success.

In evaluating home business opportunities, the lesson is this: choose the opportunities that suit you; in areas that you love and have talents in. You will never go wrong by following this path. If you are interested in plants, start a plant nursery. If you are a book lover, consider starting a book club. If you are passionate about beauty products, consider setting up a small shop, maybe even mixing your own concoctions. The possibilities are endless and infinitely varied. Whether you want to sell goods or to provide services, you only have to make sure that you provide a quality product at a reasonable price. As long you as what you have to offer is useful, you should be able to make your own opportunities, not wait for them to come by!

I have been in exactly the same position, for years I have been searching the internet for ways to earn an extra income, not to make me a millionaire over night but just to make enough to help with the bills or to have some extra cash in my pocket for the little luxuries in life.

With so many sites trying to take your money it is not easy to wade through the scam sites and the legitimate opportunities. What as well if you don’t have any idea in what is a good product and will make money and what is a bad product that will just drain your resources? Over the years I have tried so many of the so called opportunities and been burnt financially.

I now believe that I have found the 3 best opportunities available that require a little bit of thinking and time but can give you great rewards once you follow the proven system. Remember you don’t get anything in life for nothing! This is a golden rule to remember, no matter what you do it is important that you need to work at it, how much you work at it can depend on how much you get out of it, not only in a financial sense but also on a personal level.

The best products are ones that can make you an ongoing cash flow, ones that have longevity and have entered a market place where there is a niche. It is no good trying to sell something online where the market is already swamped with goods, this will just lead to your product being another one of hundreds without a customer in sight. This is where the research and the years of hard work have been put in to provide the best products available and you can be a part of this.

The website gives you an overview of the 3 best finds on the internet and gives you the opportunity to make some extra money with a small amount of effort. Remember my golden rule, the more effort you put in the more you will get out. To find out more about these opportunities then go to http://www.toponlinebusinesses.com The website breaks down the best 3 opportunities and gives an overview of what is on offer, take a look today, the sooner you take a look the sooner you can get started and build a brighter future.