Home Based Business – Why Bother?

Malcolm Keith at LiveandWorkatHome

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Over the last two years a home based business is being exposed to many who have suffered from job loss or redundancy threat thanks to the economic global downturn.

Those that decide, or have the decision made for them, to move from the safety of an ‘employee-centric’ society to an entrepreneurial one, employee to an entrepreneur, may find the change is an overwhelming one.

That is why I always tell people to set the wheels of a home based business in motion while they still have the so called ‘security’ of another income coming in. It will bridge that gap of years of conditioning to being an employee to that of being self-employed/an entrepreneur/a self-made person.

You will probably be doing this work on your online business in your free time, when the kids are asleep, or dinner is done, and you have a few extra hours. Offline business when the kids are at school, or evenings when your partner is home..

Home Based Business

Many will attempt this and for any one of many excuses – will fail on their first attempt.
Many will be grateful for the extra income coming in each month and the new friends they make.
Many will grasp the opportunity with both hands and explode both in personal growth and business growth and leave their day job far behind whether it was as a bank manager or a litter picker or a stay at home mum.

The internet is full of people who went from something like a pizza delivery person to a millionaire. And no – it didn’t happen overnight – and yes – they worked hard to achieve their success! For instance:

“With $538 in working capital, Bill Hewlett and David Packard started their fledgling company
in Packard’s garage in Palo Alto, California. Today, Hewlett-Packard is a multinational corporation.”

“In 1950, Ewing Marion Kauffman started Marion Laboratories, Inc. (now known as Marion
Roussel Hoechst) in his basement with a total investment of $5,000. When the company
merged with Merrell Dow in 1989, it was doing more than a billion dollars a year in sales.”

“Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, started his business in his rented,
two-bedroom house in Bellevue, Washington. To make room for his new home based
business, Bezos converted his garage into a workspace. And to save money
— of which he had precious little in those early days — he built three desks out of
three wooden doors, some 2×4s, and a handful of metal brackets.
The cost? Sixty dollars per desk. Today, Amazon.com rakes in more than $5 billion a year
— enough to pay for all the desks that Jeff Bezos would ever want to buy.”

Be warned! The internet is also packed full of people still trying and getting nowhere!

What is considered to be a home based business?

I consider a home based business is any business where your main office is located in your own home, whether dealing with with physical or electronic products. For ‘office’ read a study, a spare bedroom or the dining room table!

We all already know some types of self employed home based business owners who work from home. Think of your local personal plumber, interior decorator, window cleaner….others such as trainers and landscape gardeners… these are people who may run a home based business, but will have to leave home and travel to provide their services.

So it is with the part-time start, independent distributorships where you work from home within your own local streets on behalf of Avon, Amway, Kleeneze.. and my favourite, Wikaniko.

Increasingly, many online businesses are ideally suited to the home based business model (as you can see from my blog). Everything can be run of your laptop, and it has opened up a new world of potential income to those who are unable or do not wish to leave the house. As such many women are choosing to learn how to run a home based business.

Good reasons for you to start a home based business

Focusing on your passion
- turn it to profit along with improving your personal skill sets.
For hours put in as a home based business owner
- rewards will be yours — not someone else’s.
Unlimited potential when you own your own business
- push it as far as can or want to.
Be as creative and innovative as you want
- product creation, product marketing strategies and campaigns
Online business
- freedom to work any time from anywhere in the world.
As an entrepreneur — you as a home based business owner
- you set a great role model for your family and friends
for setting and achieving your personal goals.

Downside (think challenges)

You will learn to be all things to all men (and women) and become an amateur accountant, marketer, sales person as you grow your business. Your income will be as good as you perform and probably not much in the early months.
Possibly, depending where you are in the world, your home based business may need declarations to your house insurers, local government (a license), personal liability insurance, formation of a business for tax recovery…

If reading those two puts you off starting a home based businesses – then perhaps you don’t have the ‘hunger’ factor to break out of your existing lifestyle and it wouldn’t work for you. I’m afraid that offline or online – running a home based business is not a ‘get-rich’ quick fix; it will take discipline, ‘stickability’ and passion!

If you are looking ahead in your life and really, really want to make a change and want to to put in the sustained effort to get something different, something better in your life - you will have to do something different!

Start looking at home based business ideas that would suit you! It can and does give people a true way to create financial freedom, and for some more importantly, time freedom.