There has never been a better time to earn money by working at home. However, the increased accessibility of home-based businesses does not mean instant success. Individuals who wish to see real results with their home-based business need to be well versed in all aspects of their chosen business. Starting with knowing the product and understanding how to set up a business, entrepreneurs need to go to the next level and realize the value of goal setting.Know Your GoalsThe power of goal setting is tangible in every workplace, from the private sector to the governmental realm. Goals help define purpose and they provide a path to success. For a home-based business, goals should come in many forms, from the number of clients procured in a month to the total amount of money earned. When setting these goals, there are several key factors to remember in order to create goals that engender success.Create Realistic ExpectationsAll businesses should start by being realistic. Home-based business owners should consider the product being offered, the experience needed, and the time being devoted to the business when setting goals. A full-time home-based business should have higher expectations than one only being operated on the side. Individuals need to take into account how much time it will take to get set up and how difficult it will be to build a client base, then scale their expectations appropriately. Some aspiring individuals may set the highest goals possible as a means of incentive. However, unrealistic goals can create a sense of disappointment and futility. If the goals are unreachable, then it is easy to lose motivation to strive for them. Realistic goals can help prevent the feeling of failure that can lead to the demise of even the most innovative home-based businesses.Aim to EmpowerWhile being realistic with goals for a home-based business is important, it is also imperative not to set the goals too low. Goals should be designed for empowerment. This means that the goal must motivate the individual to keep working and pushing to new levels of success. If goals are too easy to reach, it is easy to get lazy and lax in one’s business habits, leading to stagnancy in the business model. It can be difficult to find just the right place to set goals, but it can be helpful to build goals up progressively, with goals that increase somewhat each month. This way, entrepreneurs are continually challenging themselves to reach new heights of success.Build Time for ReflectionOne of the ways to find the right balance with goals is to always allow appropriate time for reflection. Goals should not only be used as a motivation, but also as an indicator of growth and progress. A smart goal will always have a definitive timetable, such as a month or a year. For these goals to be truly worthwhile, individuals must always reflect on the goal at the end of the time period. Things to consider during reflection are whether or not the goal was met, if the goal was too easy or too hard, and what things contributed to or detracted from meeting the goal. By analyzing these factors, it is easy to tailor one’s business model and to make the necessary adjustments to grow in the future.
Top 5 Reasons Why People Fail In Home Based Business
One of the biggest reasons why people start a home based business, is because a successful home based business offers great financial freedom and time freedom, which many people wishes for.However, as high as 95% of people are not achieving the success they want in the home business. After all the research I have done on the failures of people in the industry, i have found out the Top 5 reasons why people fail.1. Choosing The Wrong Partners.First of all, they chose the wrong partners to build their business. They chose a wrong company to partner with, they chose a wrong team to work with, and last of all, they chose the wrong mentors and leaders too.They are not choosing a company that is stable and have a growing track record. Most often, they chose companies which have just started and have a high risk of failure. As statistics have shown, 80% of businesses fail in the first 5 years, and another 80% of business fail in another 5 years. In total, only 4% of businesses survive the 10-year period. Hence, choosing a company of at least 5 years to partner with is important in your home business.They also did not partner with a right team to build their business. A team is crucial for success in home business, because you can get more things done within shorter period of time. If you lack a team, or a team which doesn’t provide support for you, you will be doing business all by yourself, and get burn out easily.Partnering the wrong mentors will bring you down to failure too. You do not want to partner with leaders who are always moving from companies to companies too. You have to partner with mentors who are committed to your success, and not mentors who are using you as their money-making machine.2. False ExpectationsBecause of the huge income potential that the home business industry offers, many people thought that high income can be attained easily. But it’s wrong! They need to work hard to achieve the high financial income they want.When they don’t see money coming in the first few months, they claim that the business is not viable or not working for them, and hence they quit. However, little did they know that they have to put in effort, and the huge income they want to receive will come after at least 3-5 years in business!3. Lack of Marketing TrainingNew home business owners do not know how to market their business the right way. They do not know to promote, without being seen as a spammer or pest by prospects. They do not know how to generate constant amount of leads into their business, as a result, their business cannot grow.What’s important for success in home business, is to know how to market and promote their business effectively and attract quality prospects into the business. All businesses grow because of marketing, and this includes home businesses too.4. Wrong MindsetMany of the home business entrepreneurs build their business part-time, while working in their day job. However, many also bring their ‘employee-mindset’ with them into home business. As stated in reason number two, they have false expectations, and expect huge money to be made in short periods of time.Another wrong mindset they have, is they believe that they can do all things by themselves. They lack a learning attitude, which is to be humble and learn from mentors in their team. Their mentors are willing and committed to teach them, however, many of them always want to do ‘their own way’ and refuse to listen to the action steps laid out by their mentor. As a result, they are not implementing the proven methods to success, and hence, failure is inevitable. And this brings me to the final reason.5. Lack Of A Proven SystemYes. A proven working system is crucial to your home business success. You want to have a system of building your business and helping others build their business too! If you lack a system, you do not have a simple plan of doing things, and your business will be in a mess after a short period of time. You will find yourself working at unproductive things and not producing results.A system that is simple and easy to follow creates the foundation for a successful business. All successful businesses grow and multiplies because of a proven and working system, and there is no exception for a home business not to operate without a system.So there you go, 5 Top reasons why people fail in the home based business industry. Next, apply what you have learned to ensure that you can achieve success too!
Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up
One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.
However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.
Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.
But why?
In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!
So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)
The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.
Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.
Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.
By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.
You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.