What you need to do and know before your attempt to start a home business. Starting a home business is not for everyone, but the proper preparation before you get started will go along way to improving your chances for business success. read more
Overcoming Obstacles
What you need to do and know before your attempt to start a home business. Starting a home business is not for everyone, but the proper preparation before you get started will go along way to improving your chances for business success. read more
Get Your Home Business
Get Your Home Business Up and Running - Or Not!
By Randy Duermyer, About.com Guide to Home Business
Not everyone is cut out to own and operate a home business. This section will help you decide if you are cut out for the home based business lifestyle. You'll also find a number of home business ideas if you're not sure what kind of business you want to start. Additionally, tips, advice and resources for planning for your startup as well as information on what you need to do to get ready to open your doors for business are provided. The failure rate of new small businesses is high, but being fully prepared for the road ahead will greatly improve your chances for success and help make your dream a reality. read more
A Great Home Office - From Dream to Reality
3 Steps to an Awesome Home Office
By Randy Duermyer, About.com Guide
Once you’ve decided to start a home business, have secured a work from home job, or have decided it’s time to stop working at the kitchen table, you’ll need a place you can use as your home office.
With proper planning and some old-fashioned common sense, you can create a home office work environment where you can thrive while still projecting a professional image for your home business or work from home job.The idea of planning and setting up a home office, or expanding or improving the space you already use as a home office, may seem daunting at first, but if done in an orderly process, happily working at home in a great home office space can be accomplished as easy as 1-2-3.
That brings me to the three basic steps to take your home office from a dream to reality:
- Plan for Your Home Office Needs
- Design Your Home Office Work Space
- Set up Your Home Office and Get to Work
We’ve all heard the expression, “If you fail to plan, you should plan to fail.” That’s very true with many things in life, including setting up a home office.
Whether your home office work area is going to be a room of its own, an area in your basement, attic or garage, or even in a closet, properly planning the space that will act as your home office will save you considerable time, money and aggravation in the end. And, it will result in making your home office space all it can be.
You’ll need to understand both the tasks you’ll need to get your work accomplished as well as the environment in which those tasks can best be performed. Planning will give you a much better picture of how big of a budget you’ll need for your home office and where that budget will best be spent.
10 Steps Before Starting a Small or Home Business
Step 1: Decide What Products or Services Your Small Business will Offer
The first of the steps to starting a small business is to carefully consider these questions:- What do you have to offer?
- What makes you an expert?
- Do you have all of the education and skills you'll need to compete successfully in the marketplace or will you need to do some brushing up or retraining first?
- Does the product or service meet a need?
- Is this a seasonal product or service, or can you market it all year long?
- How sensitive is marketing this product or service to general economic conditions? When the economy is weak, how do you think your business will be affected?
- Will you be energized by going through the steps to starting this particular small business - is it something you'll love to do or sell - or are you just going through the motions of starting a small business to try to make some money?
If you are excited about your business, your customers will notice and it will be easier to get them excited, too. Plus, completing the steps to starting your small business will be fun and much more enjoyable.
Four Steps to Entrepreneurship
Becoming an Entrepreneur: Four Steps to Entrepreneurship
As more and more people start or consider starting their own business, it is important that they understand the core steps that are required to launch successful ventures. These steps include spotting, assessing, selecting and executing upon opportunities.
Spotting Opportunities:
The first step to entrepreneurship is identifying opportunities. The entrepreneur must be able to spot an unmet need. Oftentimes this need is seen through an inefficiency in the market - something that doesn't work quite the way the entrepreneur would like it to. As a result, the entrepreneur figures out a potential solution and the opportunity is born.
Assessing Opportunities:
Many entrepreneurs keep a journal that details the myriad of opportunities they come across each day. While it takes a creative skill set to identify opportunities, it takes an analytical skill set to assess them. Each opportunity should be assessed to, among others, determine its likelihood of success and the financial and human resources required to execute upon it.
As more and more people start or consider starting their own business, it is important that they understand the core steps that are required to launch successful ventures. These steps include spotting, assessing, selecting and executing upon opportunities.
Spotting Opportunities:
The first step to entrepreneurship is identifying opportunities. The entrepreneur must be able to spot an unmet need. Oftentimes this need is seen through an inefficiency in the market - something that doesn't work quite the way the entrepreneur would like it to. As a result, the entrepreneur figures out a potential solution and the opportunity is born.
Assessing Opportunities:
Many entrepreneurs keep a journal that details the myriad of opportunities they come across each day. While it takes a creative skill set to identify opportunities, it takes an analytical skill set to assess them. Each opportunity should be assessed to, among others, determine its likelihood of success and the financial and human resources required to execute upon it.
Why Become an Entrepreneur?
Why Become an Entrepreneur?
What leads a person to strike out on his own and start a business? Perhaps a person has been laid off once or more. Sometimes a person is frustrated with his or her current job and doesn't see any better career prospects on the horizon. Sometimes a person realizes that his or her job is in jeopardy. A firm may be contemplating cutbacks that could end a job or limit career or salary prospects. Perhaps a person already has been passed over for promotion. Perhaps a person sees no opportunities in existing businesses for someone with his or her interests and skills.
Some people are actually repulsed by the idea of working for someone else. They object to a system where reward is often based on seniority rather than accomplishment, or where they have to conform to a corporate culture.
What leads a person to strike out on his own and start a business? Perhaps a person has been laid off once or more. Sometimes a person is frustrated with his or her current job and doesn't see any better career prospects on the horizon. Sometimes a person realizes that his or her job is in jeopardy. A firm may be contemplating cutbacks that could end a job or limit career or salary prospects. Perhaps a person already has been passed over for promotion. Perhaps a person sees no opportunities in existing businesses for someone with his or her interests and skills.Some people are actually repulsed by the idea of working for someone else. They object to a system where reward is often based on seniority rather than accomplishment, or where they have to conform to a corporate culture.
One Industry Solves its Healthcare Crisis--Will Yours?
By: Carol Tice
With national healthcare reform a done deal, it's interesting to see how some industries are moving to solve the problem now instead of waiting until 2014. Last week, the restaurant industry made its bold move--the National Restaurant Association announced a partnership with United Health Group that will allow independent, small-restaurant owners to offer their workers affordable health insurance.
Obviously, we'll have to wait and see if restaurant owners bite on this offer. But 13 million people in the industry currently have no coverage, and the Restaurant Health Care Alliance, as the initiative has been dubbed, could ensure as many as six million of them, Nation's Restaurant News reports. It could be a game-changer for the whole restaurant industry, vaulting it out of the ranks of industries with the lowest rates of insured workers offering this benefit.
With national healthcare reform a done deal, it's interesting to see how some industries are moving to solve the problem now instead of waiting until 2014. Last week, the restaurant industry made its bold move--the National Restaurant Association announced a partnership with United Health Group that will allow independent, small-restaurant owners to offer their workers affordable health insurance.Obviously, we'll have to wait and see if restaurant owners bite on this offer. But 13 million people in the industry currently have no coverage, and the Restaurant Health Care Alliance, as the initiative has been dubbed, could ensure as many as six million of them, Nation's Restaurant News reports. It could be a game-changer for the whole restaurant industry, vaulting it out of the ranks of industries with the lowest rates of insured workers offering this benefit.
Motivating Gen X, Gen Y Workers
A primer on how to get the most out of younger employees
By David Javitch
Traditional approaches to motivating employees have hit a snag; they don't seem to apply to the contemporary generation of employees, called Generation X and Generation Y (or Millenials).
Who Are the Generation Xers?Most writers agree that these approximately 50 million people were born between the mid 1960s and 1980--the offspring of the famous baby boomers. Many grew up as "latch key" kids, home alone after school while both of their parents worked, and/or they were raised by a single parent.
They saw their parents married to the workplace, often devoting long hours to factories, the office or on the road. Their parents sacrificed time at home with their families. In the economic downturn of the 1980s, many of these hard workers lost their jobs.
The result? The Gen X or Y kids learned to become more pragmatic and were often disillusioned with the lack of work/life balance in their home. In addition, they often looked askance at the lack of loyalty by employers to their employees.
Motivating Gen XersSo how does this information translate into working with and motivating this group of employees? Smart employers will need to recognize those characteristics mentioned above and provide some of the following:
By David Javitch
Traditional approaches to motivating employees have hit a snag; they don't seem to apply to the contemporary generation of employees, called Generation X and Generation Y (or Millenials).
Who Are the Generation Xers?Most writers agree that these approximately 50 million people were born between the mid 1960s and 1980--the offspring of the famous baby boomers. Many grew up as "latch key" kids, home alone after school while both of their parents worked, and/or they were raised by a single parent.
They saw their parents married to the workplace, often devoting long hours to factories, the office or on the road. Their parents sacrificed time at home with their families. In the economic downturn of the 1980s, many of these hard workers lost their jobs.
The result? The Gen X or Y kids learned to become more pragmatic and were often disillusioned with the lack of work/life balance in their home. In addition, they often looked askance at the lack of loyalty by employers to their employees.
Motivating Gen XersSo how does this information translate into working with and motivating this group of employees? Smart employers will need to recognize those characteristics mentioned above and provide some of the following:
- Room to grow. Offer Gen X employees clear statements of goals, but allow them reasonable latitude on how to achieve those goals. Build on their interest in gaining new skills and knowledge by providing opportunities to grow on the job. Gen Xers tend to have a "work hard, play hard" mentality.
- Opportunities to make choices. Since this generation has become accustomed to "fending for themselves," provide options--options for task selection, options for challenges, options to formulate new processes, and options to develop creative yet appropriate conclusions. You also want to allow them the freedom to use their own resourcefulness and creativity to achieve success.
- Mentoring. Strong, relationship-oriented mentorships are a great value for young employees. Be careful not to micro-manage them or suggest rigid guidelines for completing projects. Spend time with them and offer clear and frequent feedback on their progress.
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