This is a really special week in my books. Not only is it Home Based Business Week, but it began with Canadian Thanksgiving, which is pretty fitting, since I’m very thankful to be a living the life of a home based business owner. I won’t lie and say it’s stress-free, but I feel that because I have more control over my work setting, my schedule, and my work itself, it’s a very different type of stress than when I was at the mercy of some bureaucrat who didn’t even know I existed.
If you also have a home based business, you know what I’m talking about. If not, you don’t know what you’re missing!
I’m sure that there are many people who are quite content to be employed by someone else, and that’s great. But if you often drag yourself to work, or find yourself counting the number of years left until you retire, you owe it to yourself to consider other options! If you’re not sure what’s involved in starting a home business, or whether self-employment is right for you, the following books will answer many of your questions.
No Limits – How I Escaped the Clutches of Corporate America to Live the Self-Employed Life of My Dreams by Sara Morgan is an excellent starting point. The author successfully left the corporate world to start her own consulting business so she could have time to spend writing non-fiction books and raising her children while still earning an income, and she wrote this book to help others do the same. She clearly outlines the benefits of self-employment and, since a picture is worth a thousand words, she includes photographs of her very inviting working environment. She also describes the type of person you need to be in order to be successful in your own small business. Morgan’s book also includes tips for deciding what type of business you should start and where to go from there, as well as important issues such as accounting, taxes, and insurance. With fewer than 150 pages, it’s an easy read which can help you determine whether you’re well-suited to self-employment and to overcome any apprehension you may have about leaving your day job.
I’ve heard it said that “the proof is in the pudding.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, so I looked it up and learned that the complete quote is actually “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” meaning that results are what counts.
According to Wikipedia, a standard operating procedure is “a set of instructions having the force of a directive, covering those features of operations that lend themselves to a definite or standardized procedure without loss of effectiveness.” Exciting stuff, eh? Maybe not, but it’s something we need to know about.
At one of the first small business networking events I ever attended, the group leader gave an excellent presentation in which she explained that no matter what you’re working on, you don’t have to learn everything the hard way. Whether it’s a marketing technique, an administrative procedure, or something specific to the services you offer, someone else has already done it.
