What are you looking for?

It often amazes me how people make decisions when it comes to evaluating a real home based business. After years of coaching and mentoring people I’ve heard it all when it comes to people looking at a business.

It really comes down to the fact that there are two types of people. Those that focus on opportunities and those who only see the obstacles. Successful people focus on the opportunities a home based business can bring, unsuccessful people only see the obstacles.

Let me give you a couple of examples. First, no matter what the home based business is, a person who has an intent to make a profit and works the business to some extent, will benefit from the tax advantages alone that owning a business offers. This is one of the great tax strategies an individual can employ to legally reduce their tax liability. I successful person understands this and keeps more of their hard earned money. An unsuccessful person only focuses on how much it will “cost” to get the business started. Let me ask you a question. If you could put $500 to starting a home based business and save between $3-$5k per year in taxes, would that be a wise move for you? Again, what are you focusing on?

Another obstacle that most unsuccessful people focus on is the initial start-up fee itself. This one really amazes me. First of all, most home based businesses can be started for under $1,000. If you only see the $500 start-up or whatever the start up is and aren’t focused on the money you can earn, that says one of two things. Either you have no confidence in your ability to produce results or you really should be looking for a job, not a business. Here’s the bottom line. Most people spend more money on the TV’s or even their vacuum cleaner than it costs to start a home based business and neither of those earn you money. So what’s the real issue? Is it the money to get started or your fear of failure? Just something to think about.

Here’s what I suggest to those that are looking for a successful home based business. Stop over analyzing everything so much. It’s pretty simple stuff. You have an opportunity to make money and save money on your taxes. If you are willing to put some work into it and you are coachable you will make some money. If you don’t, you won’t. We act like we are purchasing a million dollar home and it’s far less than that. Do your research to make sure the opportunity is real, then get started. Stop with the analysis by paralysis that probably has you in the situation financially that you are in. Find a company and an opportunity that you can believe in and go for it!

Remember, no one has ever won from the sidelines. If you were so great at spotting opportunities, you would have invested in Microsoft, Google, ebay, Dell, shorting the mortgage industry, etc. Find someone who has the results you are looking for and duplicate what they have done. Good luck to you!!

The age of domain is a big factor in search engine rankings. So doing nothing doesn’t hurt a static (it’s aging!) website but it does hurt a blog.

And if your site ranks well, it will slowly gain natural links to it.

So my personal belief is that an online business is far more passive and reliable than a real estate one or anything like that.

It’s a perfect business. We are so lucky to be born in the age of the Internet…

Of course, only if we take advantage of that.

I love this post, Keep up the Great work.

Travis.

How close is your small business to matching your “real job” salary? Do you have savings to live off while bringing it up to that level? I think you are on the right track….outsourcing customer support using websites like guru.com might be another good temporary solution. Keep us updated!
Brian

Dave

I think for most people who start web businesses, there ends up being quite a bit of overhead though. John Reese is a good expert to listen to to learn more about that area.