THE GREENER GRASS ABOUT WORKING FROM HOME

Before you send anyone money to start a business, read this first. I want to help you forget the hype about working from home. Working from home represents a great idea, yes, but hype, no.

I don't want to start on a negative note here and down play the idea of working from home. In fact, I highly encourage it. However, I highly discourage any myths that exist about working from home.

The truth is this. Anything that looks too good to be true typically is too good to be true, but quite a few articles out there I'm sure stated this, but I want to emphasise it from a different vantage point, from a person who knows what struggling is like and feels like, a person just like you who sits on the opposite side of the website that promises huge profits, the side that faces everyone who sits down at a computer, the screen. This article simply put encourages everyone to first forget the hype, promises and lies that continue to circulate today.

As you can see from the picture, working from home might resemble the greener grass, but it also can represent crab grass. In other words, how one cultivates the idea and plans will determine how the situation unfolds.

Let's say you had a horrible day at work and on the way home you thought, "Man I wish I could work from home." So you hurry home or tell the bus driver or engineer to hurry to the stop or station because you want to work from home and you can't wait. You walk into the house, no dinner for you. Instead, you hop onto the computer, well in front of it, and do a search. Work from home, "BINGO!" The screen fills up with website title after website title stressing how you can become rich rich rich without doing nothing. "Ah nothing, but I do so much already. I like nothing." So you click on the link and find paragraph after paragraph that state's nothing. Then you finally scroll way way down to the bottom and notice the Master Card and Visa logo. "Hmm, I have to pay for this kit?" So it's to the next website and no payment needed. So you give away your e-mail address and then receive an invitation to a site where of course the logo of Master Card and Visa sneak up or way down at the bottom. This doesn't sound like greener grass, and especially for anyone who took the risk more than likely found out the same sad truth. In this situation, working from home resembles crab grass.

Now if you spent many days on your way home from work planning and then eventually meeting with folks from the Small Business Administration, who found your business idea a sensation and you took the risk, only to find out that the business turned into a success, you stepped onto green grass. What am I saying?

Why look in someone else's tree for a business idea? The Internet appears saturated with these business start up kits, books CDs etc. Why not start your own business idea instead? Someone might ask, "Isn't this reinventing the wheel?" reinventing or improving? How many auto makers exist today? Yet each one holds a corner of the market for a specific feature, image, design etc. Working from home holds the same promise if one takes these factors into account.

First, brain storm about the type of business you want to start. What skills do you have? What educational background do you have? What line of work have you done in the past and could do on your own?

Second, talk with others that can help such as the Small Business Administration or something similar if you are outside the U.S. My article about starting a cleaning service, link is to the right, goes into more detail about this.

Offer something that doesn't promise the moon, unless of course you're an astronaut. Well not really. Remember, I'm writing this from the readers point of view. How many promises have you read on-line? I don't need to go into that.

If you'd rather climb another person's tree and want to become a distributor for example with a particular company, check with the Better Business Bureau especially if you decide to work with an established company as a sales rep creating a down line for yourself. Excellent choices do exist out there.

Remember that starting a business from home does require hard work, but with excellent benefits. The one thing I must say that these websites promise does ring true, more time with family. Working from home does provide the possibility depending on the individual running the business, the opportunity to gain additional family time. Discipline serves as the key here. As for some of the other promises, if you want to work in your PJs, that's up to you, but remember although the word home based occurs, the word business also occurs and holds more weight than the two words combined.

With that said, remember to treat the home based business as such, a business. Dress to fit the type of business you have. I know for me, getting up and ready to start work whether I had a client or paper work, always felt like work. I always felt professional.

So before you tell your boss to take a hike, or turn the guest room into an office, count the costs and research research rresearch. Start slow, unless you have a racing business, but start slow. Keep the day job until it becomes time to say good bye. You'll wake up thankful for the green green grass of working from home.