Home Business

10. Asset: Responsibility

+ The responsibility that will really help you pass this question is the kind that is above and beyond the minimum requirements of daily life. Try to think of responsible roles you willingly took, yet weren’t necessarily expected of you. If you can identify at least one major responsible role that you currently fulfill or have fulfilled in the past, and can easily admit making mistakes in this role, you pass this
question.

√ If you have started a business before, and can honestly state why it failed (or why you closed it), you automatically pass this question with a plus.

– Those with no responsible roles, or those who have responsible roles but have never admitted making a mistake as part of that role, fail the question.

How To Improve:

• If you have trouble admitting your mistakes, practice admitting them. We are all human, and no one is perfect. When you own your business, sooner or later you will have to admit a mistake to a client. If you hide the mistake, the situation will only get worse – and it can harm an otherwise impeccable reputation.

• If you have not had responsible roles, volunteer. Start with a small commitment – say, once a month. Increase that commitment, both in time and responsibility, after 6 to 12 months. When a position on a nonprofit board becomes available, willingly take on the role. (Of course, this should be a nonprofit you are excited about helping.)

• If you can’t find responsible and interesting volunteer roles, ask yourself: “If I could do anything to improve the world, what would I do?” Then see what you might be able to do to make that happen. You might not want to start your own nonprofit organization (after all, you’re going to be busy running a business), but you might be able to make a difference and assume a leadership role in the process.

Evaluating Your Overall Score

This section discusses how you should interpret the number of pluses, minuses, and check marks you scored in the preceding quiz. Note that, because all 10 qualities are important, pluses won’t utomatically “even out” the minuses. It is truly important to be fully prepared in all areas. Here’s how to read your results:

• Minuses: If you have one or two minuses, you have some work to do, but you can probably take care of these issues and continue working toward starting your business. If you have more than two minuses, you might want to delay starting your business until you’ve improved in these areas. All 10 of these qualities are vital to starting your work from home business, and trying to create or greatly enhance 30% of them is going to be too overwhelming while you are also trying to start a business. Take 6 to 12 months, at least, and then retake the test.

• Check Marks: These are the “barely passing,” or C- grades in this quiz. If you have up to four check marks, you have a lot of work to do, but you should still be able to start your business. If you have five or more check marks, put off the start of your business. Address the issues, and retake the
test when you are ready.

• Pluses: If you have all 10 pluses—stop. Are you really being honest with yourself? Please be sure that you really deserve a plus next to all 10 questions. If you have six to nine pluses, good for you! Depending on the answers to your other questions, you probably passed this test. If you have
fewer than six pluses, but have enough check marks to pass, you might still want to delay the start of your business. In this situation, it’s really a judgment call.

Overall, any areas needing improvement should be addressed. The more areas of improvement you have, the riskier it will be for you to start your home business.

8. Asset: Constant Learning

+ If you have learned about three or more subjects on your own, and not at the behest of your employer, you pass this question readily.

√ If you have learned about one or two subjects independently, you pass – but barely.

– If you have never learned about a particular subject on your own, you fail this question.

How To Improve:

• Take a class.
• Learn how to perform some repair job around the home.
• Take up a foreign language.

9. Asset: Creativity Coupled With Perseverance

+ You pass this question easily if you took the train (or at least checked train schedules), rented a car, or borrowed a car. In fact, if you got to the appointment by any practical means (such as getting a spouse, partner, or friend to drive you), you did well.

√ You pass this question (barely) if you called the client and rescheduled the appointment.

– If you couldn’t think of what to do, or gave up, you failed this question.

How To Improve:

• Try to break old patterns and learn to think beyond your typical way of doing things. A coach might be able to help you build your creativity ifyou find this difficult.
• Try to do as many things differently as you can for one entire week. How many different ways can you commute to work? How many meals can you fix that you have never made before? How many routes can you take to and from your home or office? What if you watched something other than your regular television shows – or turned off the television altogether?

6. Asset: Assertiveness

+ If you can provide examples of times when, in the course of business, you stood up for your own needs politely and maintained your relationship with your boss, co-worker, or client, you easily pass this question.

√ If standing up for your own needs usually means alienating others, or you can recall when you lost a client or damaged a working relationship as a result of asserting yourself, you fail this question.

– A no answer also means that you fail this question.

How To Improve:

• Whether you cannot stand up for yourself, or alienate others when you do, some introspection is clearly in order. Psychologists and coaches are professionals who can help uncover why you are so afraid to stand up for yourself – or why you are so threatened when you must do so.

• Remember, too, that the way we do something is sometimes at least as important as what we do. Choose your words carefully when a situation becomes tense. The idea is to de-escalate the situation, and keep things as calm as possible. Don’t use words that would inflame the situation.

7. Asset: Organization

+ If you located the information requested in fewer than five minutes, you easily passed this question.

√ If it took you fewer than 20 minutes (but more than five), you pass—but barely.

– If it took you more than 20 minutes to find the information (or if you just gave up), you failed the question.

How To Improve:

• Make the time to organize your paperwork. If you have difficulty doing this, a professional organizer
can help you set up a system that works. When your system is in place, try it for several months before you open your business. You want to be sure that the system works.

4. Asset: Self Discipline

+ If you currently perform your work without supervision, or work on longterm projects at home without supervision, you easily pass this question.

– If you are supervised constantly at work and never accomplish anything on your own at home, you fail this question.

How To Improve:

• Coaches and psychologists might help you uncover why you have a tough time getting moving without a taskmaster.
• Check with your doctor to see if undiagnosed learning disabilities might also be the culprit.
• If you would like to improve your self-discipline, try keeping track of your goals versus what you do on a typical day. What distracts you?

How do you spend your time? Write down what you do, every day, for two weeks. (You can use increments as small as five minutes.) A lot of self-discipline is getting rid of the time-wasting activities (or at least limiting them so that they’re the occasional reward, not the daily habit).

5. Asset: Long-Term Thinking

+ If you have completed a project that took six months or more to finish, and you fully understand how you maintained your motivation during that time, you easily pass this question.

√ If you completed a project of six months or more, but don’t really know or can’t explain what kept you motivated, or if your motivation included nagging from others, you pass this question – but barely.

– A no answer, indicates that you have not finished a long-term project, so you fail this question.

How To Improve:

• Tackle a project requiring multiple steps, but with less riding on it than running your own business.

You might learn woodworking and build your own furniture. Or, you might try to increase your education—taking an evening class or obtaining professional certification will tell you a lot about your ability to sacrifice now for future gain.

Be sure to check back with our home business blog or our work at home page for more information!

3. Asset: Industry Knowledge

+ You easily pass this question if you have at least three to five years’ experience providing the service or product you plan to offer through your business, and you know the industry well. But demote yourself to a check score if all of your experience is with only one employer.
√ If you have less than three years’ experience, but know the industry well, you still pass.
– If you have less than three years’ experience and do not know the industry well, you fail the question.

How To Improve:

• You really need industry knowledge. By that, I mean that you have some understanding of issues such as these, as they affect your business:

Are there slow and busy times within the industry? What professional organizations are important to belong to? How is your profession or industry structured? What divisions exist for entry level, mid-career, and advanced levels?

What happens during the normal course of business? For instance, if your industry is publishing, what happens in order for a book to be published? Can you name all the steps? Which steps would a
customer expect you to perform, and which would be referred elsewhere? What is the jargon used in your industry or profession? What words will you need to know in order to communicate with people while doing your work? How is the industry segmented?

Using publishing as an example again, do you know that the industry is segmented in to small publishers, specialty publishers, large publishers with multiple imprints, and so on? What rules govern your industry or profession? What licensing is required? Which government agencies regulate the industry/profession?

If you don’t have industry knowledge appropriate to the work from home business you’re planning to launch, there are two things you can do:

a) Stay in the work force and gain the knowledge you need, or

b) Choose an industry in which you have more experience and knowledge. This is one positive aspect of regular employment. Employers provide great on-the-job training—the results of which are tough (and expensive) to replicate. It is much more cost-effective to gain experience (and make mistakes) on someone else’s dime.

2. Asset: Marketable Skills

+ Give yourself extra credit for up to five skills.
√ If you have two to four skills, you pass this question nicely.
– If you have fewer than two skills, you fail this question.

If you have more than five skills listed in your description of the services or products you provide in your business, you probably should whittle them down to no more than four skills (or just those skills that can be marketed seamlessly). You’re allowed to go back and rethink the skills you would use in your business. You can undermine your credibility by offering services or products based on too many different types of skills.

So how do you know whether your skills can be “marketed seamlessly”? Let’s say that you want to start a work at home business as a marketing consultant. You have a background in sales that provides credibility to your advice in this area. But you have also been tinkering with computers, and you’d like to offer tech support, too.

Most people won’t go to the same source for assistance with both technical support and marketing expertise. These seem like unrelated skill sets, and potential customers might assume that if you’ve developed worthwhile expertise in one, you probably haven’t had the time and energy to develop
equally professional skills in the other. Marketing this combination would be a challenge, as well. It would be difficult to seamlessly transition from discussing your marketing services to discussing your technical support services.

However, let’s say that you are starting a marketing consulting business, based on the same sales background. You have also had experience with television production and video editing. So, you would also like to offer television production services, and plan to sell these services to many of your clients.

After all, many clients who are revamping their marketing plans (and seeking your advice as a consultant) might also choose to use your company to produce a television advertisement.

How To Improve:

• If you don’t have at least two marketable skills that are directly applicable to your home business, you need to gain the necessary training or experience to obtain them.
• If you have too many skills, and they don’t mesh nicely, prioritize them.

Which services would you most like to offer in your home business? In the preceding example, the business owner would probably need to choose between marketing and technical support—perhaps growing the business in to a “one stop” service center.

If the decision is tough, work through the business plan and budget for each separate business.

Assessing Your Responses

In this section of the article, you learn what your answers to the preceding questions tell you about your likelihood of success in launching your own home business. For each of the preceding questions, the following assessment indicates the basic skill set the question tests and the criteria for scoring your response. Based on your answers and the evaluation criteria listed in this section of the article, you will award yourself one of three scores for each of the questions you just answered:

A plus + for answers that fully meet or exceed the criteria
A check √ for answers that adequately (though not completely) meet the criteria
A minus – for answers that fail to meet the criteria and indicate that you need improvement.

Any question that receives a minus is likely to indicate issues that will add to your budget in the
. Note the “How To Improve” solution, and plan for meeting these additional costs.

1. Asset: Financial Resources

Scoring:

+ Give yourself extra credit if you have 6 to 12 months’ worth of living expenses in the bank.
√ You pass if you have at least three months’ worth of living expenses in the bank.
– You fail this question if you have less than three months’ worth of living expenses in the bank, or if you cannot tell what you spend over an average month.

You also fail this question if you have more than 12 months’ savings in your account. Why? Because the extra money should be earning a higher yield for you than what you get on your savings account. Plus, having all that money at your disposal increases the chance that you will waste it.

How To Improve:

• If you have less than three months’ worth of living expenses in the bank, you need to work on saving money right now. Although it is risky to start a business with such a small amount in the bank, having an inadequate financial cushion is just as risky when you work for someone else. As you work through this website, you will probably find that you need at least six months’ worth of living
expenses (at a minimum) in order to start your business, and possibly as much as one year’s worth.

• You can either a) accept the higher level of risk, b) cut back on spending and wait to start your business until you save more, or c) start your business on the side while maintaining a regular job.

• If you have more than 12 months’ savings in your account, consider moving the additional money in to your retirement fund or investment accounts.

Stay tuned for more about work from home jobs.

Yesterday we introduced the first 5 questions about work from home business start up. You can find those questions here – Getting Started Home Based Businesses

So lets continue on with our home based business start up questions and finish out the 10 questions today.

6. Can you give an example of a time you said, “No” to someone regarding a business request, while still maintaining a strong business relationship? Are you able to speak up for your own needs and wants—politely (at first, anyway)?

7. Can you locate last year’s utility bills? How much money was in your checking account one year ago today?

8. Why do you learn new things—because you want to, because someone else told you it was a good idea, or a little bit of both? When was the last time you learned a new skill or took a class regarding some aspect of your line of work?

9. You must go to another city, 300 miles away, for a business meeting. All flights are booked. Your car is in the shop for repairs. What do you do?

10. Do you serve on a nonprofit board? Have you ever organized an event for your favorite charity? Do you currently supervise others? Are you responsible for another person’s welfare? How do you handle being in charge? Can you admit your mistakes—even when you are in a leadership position?

Ok, yesterday I started my “Ten Questions to Assess Your Home Based Business Potential“, so lets continue on with that and discuss a few of the work at home questions I think you need to be aware of and be knowledgeable about. First, you will need a list of your business background such as:

• Resume (as complete as possible)
• Financial records, including banking and expense records for the previous year
• Word processing program or paper version of your work at home self-employment planning journal

Be sure not to skip any of these home business questions as everyone of them is important, spend as much time as necessary to get a good understanding of what is going on with your life and how feasible a potential work at home business is for you.

The Questions

1. If you were laid off today, how long could you live on the cash in your checking and savings accounts? (Do not count retirement, stocks, or bonds.)

2. What marketable skills do you have, and how do they apply to the home business you’ve chosen to launch? If you ran in to someone who could refer 100 ideal customers to you right now, how would you describe your business – in 30 seconds or less?

3. How do businesses similar to the one you propose to launch gain customers?

Be specific. How much do you know about the industry or profession you’re entering in to? Recording your answers to this quiz in your business planning journal gives you a valuable record of the ideas, skills, and weaknesses you possessed when you launched your business.You might want to periodically review your answers and retest yourself on the first anniversary of your business opening.

4. What happens on days when you just don’t feel like working, but things have to get done? Do you accomplish the tasks before you, or do you spend your time trying to avoid them?

5. Have you ever worked toward a goal that took six months or more to complete? How did you motivate yourself to sacrifice time, money, and other resources?

Spend time on these work at home job questions, and you will get a better understanding of the direction and timing that is going on with the potential home business opportunity.