Chapter 4 - Starting your Own Home Based Businesses -

Preparing Yourself Mentally for Starting your own Business

People say that starting your own business is difficult. Guess what? They’re not kidding. Starting a business, in many ways, is a lot like having a child – and would you just have a child without thinking it through first? Before you get started, there are lots of things you need to think about and discuss with anyone you can.

Can You Afford to Fail? You might have heard the old saying ‘only gamble what you can afford to lose’. Well, however you approach it, starting your own business is still gambling. A massive percentage of businesses fail in their first year. If your financial situation is such that you agonise over every small amount you spend, starting a business is probably a bad idea.

Put it this way: do not expect to succeed. Expect that you will fail, and always try your hardest not to. You’ll be pleasantly surprised if things go your way. Note that this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t believe in yourself and your business – simply that you have to realise the kind of odds you’re up against, and stay realistic.

Will You Stick at It? You can’t get halfway through all this and have a sudden change of heart, or feel like you’re doomed to fail. All successful business spend plenty of time doing badly before they start to pick up. You need to prepare yourself for a steady stream of failure being slowly replaced by success. Don’t expect the world all at once.

Could You Take the Stress? Starting a business is one of the most stressful things you can do. It will affect you mentally, physically and emotionally. You need to be strong to deal with this kind of stress, and you need to have someone to turn to for support.

Are You a Survivor? There are some people who always seem to make it in the end, regardless of what life throws at them. You need to be the kind of person whose response to things going wrong is to work harder and get it fixed, not someone who cries and goes into hiding.

Many entrepreneurs say that this, more than anything, is the secret of success. You need to be a ‘never say die’ kind of person. You need to be always ready to try again, no matter what gets thrown at you. Remember that it’s not when things start to go wrong that you fail – you haven’t failed until you’ve given up.

Be Prepared to Work Hard. If you’ve been doing a standard nine-to-five job, you’re probably used to a world where it’s someone else’s responsibility if the work doesn’t get done – you work as fast as you can for the hours you’re told to, and if it’s not done on time then it’s the manager’s fault for not hiring enough people. When you work on your own, though, there’s no-one to blame – the buck stops where it starts, with you.

You Need to Satisfy Every Customer. When you run a home business, you can’t afford to lose any customers. You need to always be nice to them, trying to meet their needs. You have to remember that you’re the most senior person they can talk to in this organisation, and you have to act like it – when there’s no-one other than you to handle complaints, you have to either give in to customers at every opportunity or watch them take their business elsewhere.

Do You Really Love What You Do? If you don’t love what you do, then sooner or later you’re going to want to stop doing it – and when you run a home business, that’s difficult. Besides, you can’t run a home business if you’re always sitting and thinking about how great it’ll be when it’s the weekend. No, the only way to succeed in home business is to be absolutely sure that you really love what you’re doing. If you can think of another job you’d rather have, then you’re in trouble.

Think of it this way: could you run up to someone on the street with a leaflet about your business, and tell them all about it in a way that would really leave an impression? It doesn’t matter whether you actually could or not – if you think everyone will be interested, then, believe me, they will be.

Index for 'Work from Home Businesses' Articles

Thought for the Day

Do you want Success? by Dave Vallieres

There are some things we can control about our future and there are some things we cannot control.

There are a lot of things out of our control: -

• The weather
• Natural disasters
• Terrorist activities ...

are just a few.

But there are a lot of things totally within our control...

• Our attitude
• Our habits
• Our thoughts and motivation

I want you to imagine yourself making more money in 2006 than you have in any other year of your life.

Can you imagine it? If you can imagine it, you can do it.

The only way to succeed is by changing ourselves.

If your habits, the things you do everyday are not getting the things you want out of life, it's time to CHANGE your habits.

Eliminate BAD attitudes, BAD habits, BAD or DISTRACTING desires by KNOWING what they are and HOW TO overcome them.

Let's talk about how your attitude and habits affect your ability to make money. There are certain rules for succeeding financially ... like 'golf' there are 'rules' ... and there are rules to winning the Internet marketing business too.

If you don't even know what the rules are how can you formulate a strategy to win? You can't formulate a strategy because you don't understand what the GAME is all about! And that's why you aren't successful ... yet.

Learn the 'rules' and win by playing the best you can play ... Now is the time to look forward. Look toward changing those habits that have kept you back... what are they?

IDENTIFY them! Name them and write them down! Then you can SEE them for what they are... BARRIERS to YOUR success! Kill them, stomp on them, HATE them!

• Do you tend to procrastinate?
• Do you ease up after succeeding?
• Do you fail to plan ahead?

All of these are BAD habits that must be broken.

How?

By DESIRING it... by WANTING success so bad you can taste it.

Stop settling for LESS, EXPECT more from yourself and 'feel bad' when you don't make money.

Feel terrible when you failed to DO SOMETHING to bring you closer to your goal.

Use your feelings to propel you forward... feel afraid of being POOR ...WANT MORE, WANT BIGGER dreams to come true, for you.

Then and only then will you have the motivation to succeed.

There's only one rule you need to know to succeed: If you want success you have to STOP doing what you have been doing and do something else instead until you reach your goals.

Your habits will FORCE you to succeed. To be more successful change your habits.

Learn MONEY-MAKING Habits.

That's all the news for now,

-Dave Vallieres
(c) 2006 by David Vallieres.
All rights reserved.
David Vallieres is the Editor and Publisher of "Little Known Ways To Make Money Online"
a resource eLetter.

Find out more at http://www.cherrykay.com/DVwebsite.html