You are working in a job position that you had to take because it was the only thing you qualified for and your preferred position either was taken or simply didn’t exist. You’ve been working in this job position now for a few years and you’ve hated it every day on the job. Recnently however, you discovered the wonderful world of working an Internet business out of your home. You are obviously excited and it seems like the utopian thing to do. Are you ready to do this? It is my hopes you don’t rush into this and take the time to prepare for the transition because there are pros and cons in working from home.
Working From Home Does Have It’s Pros & Cons
Working out of your home can be just about anything that provides a service, such as your own lawn care business, a beauty shop, pet care, baby-sitting, and an endless list of many others. This Series focuses in on Internet marketing, which is usually a work-at-home endeavour, but the same pros and cons apply to any business out of the home.
Working from Home Comes with Its Own Set of Problems to Deal with.
There are laws. I start here because this set of details are often overlooked or simply omitted. This is bad news! If you are running any sort of service or creating products to sell to the general public, there are laws that apply to you. You will need to become familiar with these laws and abide by them.
There are 1001 services that require licensing of some sort. Ignoring obtaining proper licensing and permits come with more than a slap on the hand. It is your responsibility to know these things and can come with large fines and even jail time if you fail these prerequisites before starting up.
Some things are perfectly legal to do without any sort of validation, but you also risk a lawsuit should something you are doing goes wrong and the other party decides to bring legal action against you. You can lose everything you own!
However, It Does Have It’s Advantages.
The above isn’t to scare you away from the idea of starting a business from your home, just that these possiblilties do exist, and the fact that there is regulations to pay attention to.
Many of the corporate giants we see around us came from kitchen table operations. They were started because their original owners had an interest, and a genuine passion for doing the work involved. To be doing what you enjoy doing and if you are able to make a business out of it, rather than merely a hobby, something you do when your time is not your employer’s, can is invigorating, challenging but also creates satisfaction.
With a situation like this, you certainly have every good reason to get out of bed, and you do. Gone is the dread of rising from your bed to get ready for a days’s work doing work yo don’t like.
What’s the Difference Between Working in a Factory or Office and in Your Home?
If you enjoy your job position with your employer, consider yourself fortunate. about 70% of all american workers are not engaged with their positions. About 30% of all these workers are actively disengaged with their jobs. This means they hate the company, or the work they are doing, or both. Doing something you enjoy doing and making money at it eliminates this scenario.
Employment generally comes with much of the details done for you. Your pay is figured and the taxes are automatically taken out. You don’t have to figure that stuff out. You also have a clear-cut protocol already worked out for you. All you do is show up and you’re told how, and what you will be doing. In your own business, you must do all of this extra legwork.
Employment generally comes with restrictions. You show up when you are supposed to, go home at the end of your shift, and when you are on company time, you keep personal and company time separated. In your own business, you do what you want though this could cause performance issues.
Here Are the Advantages of Working Out of Your Home
With the legal stuff aside and the basice pros and cons, let’s get into a little more detail. Going forward, I’m going to focus on Internet business…
The Obvious Advantage Is It Eliminates the Hassles That Comes with Employment
Aside from doing something you enjoy and will gladly get out of bed for, this obviously eliminates the headaches of fighting commuter traffic, and saves wear and tear on your vehicle. You start when you would like and are not set to any rigid routines that you have no control over.
Your work doesn’t take near as much out of your free time to be prepared for doing face time in your employer’s workplace. There are no clocks to punch in at, no supervisors telling you what to do and no bosses to terminate you.
You take time out when you want to. If you need a short break, you can take it, get your rest and then continue. In employment, you do that at designated times outside of which would be cause for discipline shouhd you get caught sitting or doing nothing because you need the break.
You Are the One Who Calls the Shots.
You decide, first of all what you want to do. You do not have to pick from available job positions as with employment. In most cases with employment, what’s available is mismatched with your personal interests. In affiliate marketing (an online business model) you choose what to promote. The beauty in this is that you choose what you have passion for and want to work with it,
You set up your business the way you see fit and what works best for you. This includes the times you set asode for it, how the business is run and the methods you use. You don’t have anyone above you telling yo that you will be doing it their way or go find another job!
Your income is also customizable. Employment usually comes with an earnings ceiling which is reached rather quickly. This often results in getting a second job or staying within the means with the one. With a business, how much you make depends on you and how you approach your business.
Now, Here Are the Disadvantages…
Unfortunately, having a home-based business does come with disadvantages. It’s not a bed of roses and first learning about such opportunities. From your vantage point at your place of employment, is the grass really greener on the other side of the fence?
Distraction Tops the List. It’s a Major Problem, but There Are Solutions.
Working from home poses its own special problems. Employment is a time-tested entity that comes with great wisdom. One of these is keeping business and pleasure separated. This doesn’t mean you are not supposed to have fun doing the work. It does mean you need to cut off anything that would distract you from your work. If you wirk better without music, turn it off.
Home and business doesn’t always mix very well. Others living in the home must respect that you have set times to work the business and that you must set those times. Again, there’s wisdom in some routine here. However, instead of your employer doing the scheduling for you, you do that yourself and it is customizable.
You might find you can’t work out of your home due to distractions you simply have no control over. I tried to work my business when with a friend in his home but he had neighbours that insisted on blaring rap music from a $10,000, producing sound worse than an earthquake! They also ran their sports vehicles (quads) back and forth, throwing up dust and creating more distraction. With no compromising from their end, I had to trek to the public library every day.
Are You Cut Out for a Work-at-Home Business? It Requires Discipline and Compartmentalization
There’s very good reason why companies you work for have regular work schedules for their employees. It gets the work done. Being stripped of having personal things mixed with your job also boosts productivity for the company. Like it or not, you must discipline yourself to schedule out your work, when you do it and stick to regular routines.
If you can’t do this, you don’t stand a very good chance of succeeding with your business. You do not have anybody over you to make sure you put in the required work to be productive (and not just busiy either!)
Making yourself accountable to get rid of the distractions, creating the right environment that would promote production and then doing the work, that is, putting in the required amount of time each day, is imperative. If you have bad habits of not focusing in on what you should be doing in your business, you need to work on this and get it down.
You Do Not Have the Guidence and Set Protocol You Had at Your Day Job. Can You Do This?
It’s very important to realize that the supervision you had when you were working in your day job will not be there. Running a business, or trying to without realizing this will result in failure if you don’t have the kind of discipline you need that is required of you in employment.
You also had a lot of stuff done for you by your employer, some of which has already been mentioned above. In your place of employment, you were provided the equipment you needed to do the job. You will need to provide everything you need for your business. Until you can procure these things, you may have to wait.
I cannlt emphasize strong enough, the importance of discipline though. Getting the equipment is one thing. Being able to manage yourself and effectively be your own boss is a completely different ball of wax. You either can, or you can’t do this, but it is learnt behaviour and takes changing some basic habits…
Working from Home Requires a Whole New Mentality
Being an employee and being a business owner (an entrepreneur) are two completely different mentalities. You necessarily must traverse from one to the other. Here’s what’s involved…
You Are No Longer an Employee
Employee mentality comes with expecting supervision, being instructed on what to do on a daily basis and having everything provided for you to do your job. You will need to reverse direction and figure things out on your own, or get the training for it from specialized learning facilities. As already mentioned, you need to determine what is to be done and then put that into action.
It is advisable you choose a business you enjoy doing. Going into this for the money is an employee mentality. That is secondary though it is an objective. You won’t last very long doing a day job you’ve created for yourself if you went into something because the money is good. If you come to hate it, you simply won’t do it, or won’t do it good enough to succeed with it.
You Will Need to Think Outside the Box (Not as a Consumer)
Consumers spend their time watching movies and television, play video games, attend sporting events, read books (leisure,) forbid talk about money and business, in fact, is usually financial illiterate, purchase all kinds of doo-dads, which are user end products, talk about such things as their favourite sports teams, celebrities and even become identified with their favourite products, such as shoes, clothing, or products based on their favourite sports players, teams or celebrities.
Entrepreneurs spend their time making movies, televisions and their programs, produce video games, movie media and the equipment to play them on, own the sports teams and put on the sporting events. They write the non-educational books the consumer reads for entertainment and create all of the products the consumer uses for entertainment.
The entrepreneur focuses on creating, improving and innovating whilst the consumer focuses in on the entertainment and the getting of the consumer-based products.
There Is No Room for those Scarcity, Poverty and Victim Mentalities. These Need to Go.
Employee mentality does not work very well with business though many of the concepts used in employment you would have to adapt into your business. You are free to customize these as you see fit.
Scarcity, poverty and victim mentalites are all similar in many ways. Victim mentality is by far, the worst of these because it relies heavily upon self-centeredness. All three of these hinge upon seeing life as lack of abundance, opportunities and enlightenment. These mentalites make life dull, and simply miserable. They produce negative outlooks on life and if you have a problem with any of these mindsets in your life, you probably won’t do very well in business.
Here again – with the right training, these issues can be resolved if you can learn to believe in yourself and your abilities and lose the ideas that opportunities are far and wide in between. The right outlook within yourself will not only open up a world of opportunities for you, but you will also be able to create your own opportinities!
Conclusion
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