Author: james lowe

There are thousands of people all over the world who would love to leave their current job for a home based business. These businesses appeal to people in more ways than one, and can be a great way to break out of the day to day boring work routine.

But the reason that more of these people do not make the leap is simple; they are afraid of losing money, or being scammed. They know that if they leave their current job, and then end up flopping in their home based business that they are going to be in deep trouble. Best idea, do it gradually.

Even though this is true, there are successful work at home business ideas that you can take advantage of. The best thing to do is stop reading about all of the negatives, all of the scams, and start researching home business ideas that will actually be able to help your situation. Make it your business to find a good business and you will do fine.

The majority of people that are successful at running their own home based business are familiar with the industry that they are getting into. For example, if you are a journalist for a newspaper, why not start your own copywriting business? This would be much easier than trying to take on a job as a fashion consultant. By having experience in the field that you are going to be working, you will immediately increase your chance for success.

On the other hand, there is a large group of people that do not like their current job and simply want to start something new. If this sounds like you, there are a few work at home business ideas that are very popular the world over. Once again, make it your business to work at finding them.

The first one is setting up a website and selling products. Even though this may sound like a crowded market, you should be able to find a niche that has yet to be tapped into. But the only way you can do this is by researching what is already available, and then coming up with a way to do things better.

Often times, people will leave out the research phase and end up getting burned in the end. By forgetting to do your research, you may open up an estore that is exactly the same as five other established companies. This will put you behind the eight ball from the beginning, and you will be fighting an up hill battle to be competitive.

Contrary to popular belief, there are successful work at home business ideas that you can take advantage of. Determine what you want to do then complete the appropriate research. You should be able to get started in no time at all. In a matter of months you will be running your own company, and your past job will be out of your mind forever.

Author: Stephen Palmer

As a freelance writer and business consultant, a lot of people come to me with a business idea and want my help to write a formal business plan.

Contrary to what many aspiring entrepreneurs think, writing a business plan isn’t the first or most important step to start a business. For most people-especially those who have not yet started a business-this is actually one of the last things you want to do in the start-up and get-off-the-ground phase.

This article is specifically designed for those brave souls who have never started a business, have a burning desire to do so, but don’t know where to start. Here are 10 practical, learned from the school of hard knocks, that will help you avoid common pitfalls and get started right. (And keep in mind that these are intended for businesses that need little to no start-up capital.)

1. Read

Before you do anything else, read these four books in order: Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki, The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki, Burn Your Business Plan by David Gumpert, and The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.

2. Dream

Take time to create your business “spiritually” before you create it physically. See it in it’s best, most perfect state, as a world-class operation. How does it look, feel, taste, smell, and sound?

Entrepreneurship is one of the hardest things you will ever do, and your business must invigorate and excite you consistently, otherwise you won’t last through the hard times.

Write these dreams down–this is not a business plan, just written dreams, plans, goals, and brainstorms. The formal business plan will come much later.

3. Research

Before you invest a lot of time and money in your dream, do adequate research to find out if your idea is viable and sustainable.

In this step, you basically want to ask and answer a lot of questions, such as these: Will the market support your idea? What evidence do you have to support this? What discontentment exists that your idea solves? Will it unleash an ideavirus? Who else is doing it, and how successful have they been? What will you do differently? Do you have a readily identifiable market? Do market trends support the idea, or will the idea be obsolete in a few years? Do you need funding? If so, how much and by when? What technology can be leveraged in the business? What skills do you lack necessary for the business?

Remember also that hands-on experience can be the most useful form of research–you may want to implement your business on a small scale at this stage to see what the market tells you.

4. Form an Entity & Ensure Legal Compliance

Assuming you’re convinced that your idea will work, now it’s time to make it real and form a business entity. You need an entity for four reasons: to be legal, to maximize tax savings, to decrease liability, and to maintain control.

Your basic business entity options include a sole proprietorship, LLC, S-Corporation, and C-Corporation. Meet with an attorney and a CPA to discuss the differences between them and choose the appropriate entity for your uses. This will cost about $125 if you do all the paper work yourself, or between $200 and $500 if you use a professional or an attorney.

In addition to your entity, you must also ensure that you are legally compliant in all other areas. For example, if you have employees, you probably need Worker’s Compensation Insurance. A good attorney will help you safely navigate all of the legal issues you will face.

5. Generate Revenue

This step is absolutely critical. Too many newbies try to do too much at once, and are so concerned about things like image that they spend tons of money, time, and effort on logo and branding work, marketing brochures, advertising, etc. While all of those have their place, they should be paid for BY the revenues generated by the business.

Now that you’ve had your time to dream, it’s time to be extremely pragmatic about applying them. Do whatever it takes to generate revenues, even if it means door-to-door selling. No dream, however inspiring, will ever be realized unless you can pay for it to materialize.

6. Create Financial Systems

Now that you have cash flow, it’s imperative that you manage it wisely. Account for EVERY income and expenditure, no matter how trivial, and maintain impeccable records. You’ll be glad you did come tax time.

The most common accounting software programs are Quick Books and Quicken. Or, you can use a quality bookkeeping service, which can help you with payroll and quarterly taxes in addition to keeping your records.

7. Begin Writing an Operations Manual

An Operations Manual gives you the ability to leverage your efforts and duplicate yourself by providing simple, step-by-step directions that anyone can follow to perform any task.

Systematizing your business is the most important thing you will ever do, and you can never start soon enough. Systems, of course, will be refined over time, but it’s critical that you get them down in writing and keep them updated.

You may also consider using a professional writer to write your Operations Manual.

8. Create Marketing Systems

Many novices want to immediately start spending money on advertising, without knowing the costs and/or benefits. It’s been said that advertising takes a lot of money, while marketing takes a lot of time.

For start-ups, stick with marketing; in most cases, you have time, but you don’t have money, and marketing is generally more effective anyway. Advertising is costly and relatively ineffective. Start-ups should be obsessive about managing finances wisely, and very cautious about spending money.

Advertising would include things such as billboards, radio and TV ads, flyers, yellow page ads, etc. Marketing usually boils down to direct selling of some kind, whether it be telemarketing, door-to-door sales, customer referral programs, etc.

If your idea and delivery systems are good enough, the business should market itself virally anyway. In any case, find something that actually gets results, stick to it, and create and document systems in your Operations Manual.

9. Refine Systems, Replace Yourself, More Refining, & Document Religiously

In the first year or so, you will most likely be performing most, if not all, tasks yourself. This gives you the opportunity to learn and work out necessary details, but it won’t be sustainable when it’s time to grow.

With an Operations Manual in place, you can now begin hiring and training others to replace you. Once they’re replaced, then continue to oversee and refine the systems consistently.

Also, you must be absolutely religious about documenting every aspect of your business. For example, if your business does door-to-door sales, all salesmen should document how many doors they knock, how many people they actually talk to, and how many people bought.

Over time, this data will prove to be invaluable as you seek to refine your systems; without real numbers you have no idea what’s working and what’s not.

10. Write a Business Plan

The final step in the start-up process is the one that most people think they should start with. Here’s why it should come last: if you want it to secure funding, investors will want to see a proven track record before they invest anyway, and if you do it after the first nine steps, you can now do it right, with actual numbers, facts, and statistics rather than unfounded assumptions.

Author: Robert II Smith

Personal behavioural trait of an entrepreneur can be traced to certain socio-economic characteristics, such as:

(1) Family background
(2) Occupational background
(3) Educational background
(4) Work experience
(5) Motives

These characteristics are often associated with entrepreneurship. In Nigeria, some of these characteristics have been investigated.
It is generally agreed that Nigerian entrepreneurs are socially active, alert to profitable opportunities seek material rewards, and that entrepreneurship is socially honoured. Their occupational background varies. They have had considerably working experience in business, government and other professions. Contrary to popular expectations, however, Akeredolu-Ale found that previous business employment has no significant effect on later performance as an entrepreneur.

The educational attainment of Nigerian entrepreneurs is generally above the educational level of the average Nigerian education is significant for several reasons. It is expected that education will provide entrepreneurs the means by which new ideas could be acquired and the skills to manage a sizeable business organization. However, higher formal education has not been formed to be significantly related to successful performance as an entrepreneur. This is probably due to the type of education generally provided in Nigeria secondary schools and universities, which is not vocationally oriented.

In other words, the characteristic of an entrepreneur encompasses various activities which are carried out to ensure the survival and growth of the business. Adequate provisions must be made for decision making and control of the activities of the business.

The entrepreneur may involve such innovation of creating a new product, modification of an existing one in other to serve a need better and adoption of a new technology or production process.
However, the behavioural trait of the entrepreneur has to do with the businessman’s personal attributes, knowledge and experience, to establish and operate a business.
Evidently therefore, entrepreneur entails the acquisition of resources for productive activities, risk bearing, decision making, innovation, provision of capital for continuing the operation of the business establishment.

ACQUISITION OF RESOURCES FOR PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITES: This has to do with the entrepreneur’s private life or concern in a bid to create a good market. However, the acquisition of productive activities is a personal decision that is, taken by the entrepreneur for the purpose of its business to achieve its primary motive.
The productive activities could be referred to as machines bought for the purpose of production of goods/product in order to satisfy the needs of the market.

RISK BEARING: Risk is the uncertainty in business. However, business is full of risk such as employers risk. Risk is the probability that a desire result or event may not occur, when it occurs, the result will be different from the expectation.
The entrepreneur bears all the risk that is involved in the operation at the end result of the business activities.

DECISION MAKING: Entrepreneur is like a manager, in that he decides how the business activities should be carried out which comprises of the strategies to be adopted for the operation of the business. The entrepreneur decision making can either be favourable or unfavourable to the business. The entrepreneur is said to be supreme in decision making in this context because he has the final say on the operation of the business. The entrepreneur must be innovative as to enhance good operation and decision making.

INNOVATION: Innovation can simply be described as creativity or the introduction of new idea and methods etc. the entrepreneur must be innovative in order to know how to modify its product and the creation of a new product into the market to satisfy their needs. Innovation is one of the major qualities of an entrepreneur because it enhances the entrepreneur on how to modify the existing products and the best method or strategy to be used in order to create a good market.

PROVISION OF CAPITAL: Based on accounting field of study, capital could be defined as any money used for establishing or starting up a business. Therefore, we can see that capital is very essential to the entrepreneurs’ personal behavioral trait. This is the entrepreneur’s means of sourcing for funds in order to start up the business and for continuing the operation of the business establishment.