Those distractions if left unchecked can destroy your
business. So, how do you find a balance between home life and
home business life?

In its simplest form, the answer can be boiled down to how you
manage your time.

Realistically, it’s about doing the right things when the right
things need doing.

Read that last sentence over again and really let it sink in.

Do the right things when the right things need doing.

That leads us to the next obvious question. How am I going to
know what the right thing to do is and when to do it?

The key to that answer can be found in the word ACTION.

A-AWARENESS

You have to be consciously aware of what needs to be done. Take
the time to put a plan together for your business. A well
prepared plan gives you the ability to see if you are on track or
not. Not too many people would leave on a cross country road trip
without a map and a destination in mind. Along with that, most
people would have ideas on where they might stop along the way,
and a holiday budget. Why would you run your business with no map,
destination, ideas or a budget? Think about what your business
will need, where you want your business to go, and what you need
to do. Be AWARE of what needs doing.

C-COMMITMENT

Be committed to your business. Once again, the road trip holiday
can provide us with some ideas. If you left on a road trip holiday
with no plan, and weren’t committed to getting to a destination,
would any of your friends be surprised if you didn’t successfully
complete the trip? Of course not. Without a commitment to your
business, you will fail. Make a COMMITMENT and see your plan
through to completion.

T-TENACITY

Have tenacity to persist and see it through. Back to the road trip.
If you get a flat tire, do you give up and go home? Not likely, you
fix it and continue on. Don’t allow little things to stop you from
the big things you have planned for your business. Focus on your
goals and plans and be persistent. Have TENACITY and don’t give up.

I-INGENUITY

Use ingenuity to find the workable way. When an obstacle appears,
pull out your road map (or plan), take a look at it and see if there
are other routes available that will keep you on track to your
destination. Seek advice from the locals (or other people in home
businesses similar to yours). Your ability to use INGENUITY will
directly affect your business’ success.

O-OBJECTIVITY

Use objectivity for an undistorted perspective. Take a break, a
breather, step back, clear your head every now and again to maintain
your objectiveness in making decisions for your business. Take a
moment to survey the lay of the land on your road trip, it will make
travel much easier. OBJECTIVITY gives you the ability to see things
in your business clearly.

N-NAVIGATE

Navigate a manageable pathway. If the vehicle you’re taking on a road
trip has marginal brakes, don’t plan a route that takes you through
the highest mountains!! Know what your limits are and what you can do.
Navigating a manageable pathway to your destination betters your
chances for business success!

There you have the home business keys to taking purposeful ACTION.

I’ll leave you with one final thought…

1. Tell your visitors that you post a new, free offer
every day, week or month in your online community.
The free offers should be attractive to your target
audience.

2. Regularly schedule experts or famous guests to
participate in your online community. You could
design it to be a virtual class or a question/answer
session.

3. Post testimonials on your web site from people
that have participated in your online community.
The testimonials could be about what people have
learned or liked while participating in it.

4. Don’t allow blatant ads in your online communities.
If people decide to visit your online community and
see a ton of ads they most likely won’t be back.

5. Post all the benefits of participating in your online
community on your web site. You could write it like
you’re writing an ad for a product you’re selling.

6. Submit your chat room, e-mail discussion list or
discussion board to online community directories.
You can find them by typing ” the community type”
with the word “directory” in any search engine.

7. Create an e-zine just for people who participate
in your online community. Allow them to subscribe
for free. When they receive each issue, it will remind
them to come back and participate in your community.

8. You (the owner of the online community) should
participate regularly. Post information that will benefit
the other people. This will show them you care about
your online community members.

9. Have plenty of people to monitor your online
community. They could remove postings that turn
away people like profanity, spam and other off-
subject postings.

The strong growth in home based business activity continues and,
according to the Small Business Administration’s Office of
Advocacy, fifty-two percent of ALL small businesses are
home-based.

Some home based business owners have been known to become
“workaholics” because their office is so accessible. Don’t
become a slave to your business…get out of your home office
regularly to renew and revitalize yourself.

Close the door to your office or otherwise remove yourself from
your designated “work area” and go into your “home” area to live
your personal life. If your business involves the use of the
telephone and you find it difficult to ignore a ringing
phone in the office, simply turn the ringer off and turn the
volume on the answering machine way down. If your business is
internet based, just turn off your computer (or at least get away
from the monitor and keyboard).

As a work at home business entrepreneur, you certainly aren’t
required to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week just
because your business is located in your home. After all,
your office or workspace is just an area in your home…its not
your home itself!

Working and living under the same roof has a host of advantages,
but it can present some challenges (in addition to the workaholic
syndrome mentioned, above) and stress factors.

Here are four ways to create a less stressful home business
environment:

-Remember why you wanted to become involved with a home-based
business (i.e. more time for family, work schedule flexibility,
etc.)

-Have discussions with your family members and get their input
about the working arrangements and the amount of time they want
with you.

-Use good time management techniques. Keep a list of tasks by
order of importance. There are many low cost and effective “day
planners” or “organizers” readily available today.

-ALWAYS take a little time to “smell the roses”.

While not experiencing the negatives common to a corporate office
working environment, the home-based business owner may
occasionally experience stresses and frustrations that are unique
to working at home.

Networking with other home-based and small business owners
provides an opportunity to connect with others who may be
experiencing the same stresses/frustrations that you are. Sharing
stressful and/or frustrating issues with someone else in the same
situation can relieve your stress and may bring you good advice
from a different point of view.

The strong growth in home based business activity continues and,
according to the Small Business Administration’s Office of
Advocacy, fifty-two percent of ALL small businesses are
home-based.

Some home based business owners have been known to become
“workaholics” because their office is so accessible. Don’t
become a slave to your business…get out of your home office
regularly to renew and revitalize yourself.

Close the door to your office or otherwise remove yourself from
your designated “work area” and go into your “home” area to live
your personal life. If your business involves the use of the
telephone and you find it difficult to ignore a ringing
phone in the office, simply turn the ringer off and turn the
volume on the answering machine way down. If your business is
internet based, just turn off your computer (or at least get away
from the monitor and keyboard).

As a work at home business entrepreneur, you certainly aren’t
required to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week just
because your business is located in your home. After all,
your office or workspace is just an area in your home…its not
your home itself!

Working and living under the same roof has a host of advantages,
but it can present some challenges (in addition to the workaholic
syndrome mentioned, above) and stress factors.

Here are four ways to create a less stressful home business
environment:

-Remember why you wanted to become involved with a home-based
business (i.e. more time for family, work schedule flexibility,
etc.)

-Have discussions with your family members and get their input
about the working arrangements and the amount of time they want
with you.

-Use good time management techniques. Keep a list of tasks by
order of importance. There are many low cost and effective “day
planners” or “organizers” readily available today.

-ALWAYS take a little time to “smell the roses”.

While not experiencing the negatives common to a corporate office
working environment, the home-based business owner may
occasionally experience stresses and frustrations that are unique
to working at home.

Networking with other home-based and small business owners
provides an opportunity to connect with others who may be
experiencing the same stresses/frustrations that you are. Sharing
stressful and/or frustrating issues with someone else in the same
situation can relieve your stress and may bring you good advice
from a different point of view.

Now before you go tell the online world that Mal Keenan is branding Frank Garon’s seminars as predictable, let me explain…..

Noticing the top of each speakers’ list of topics for discussion, each contributor had one thing in common, and that was the word “Mindset” or a similar term relating to the attitude with which you approach your online business.

You see I have always held the view, and it was confirmed at this conference, that you MUST get your head right before you even think about becoming a success at ANYTHING. My home business newsletter( http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/ ) for a long time now has given equal space to the “Mindset for success” aspect of business……I have made a point to feature a success article every week aswel as an Internet Marketing “how to” article. The ATTITUDE is AS Important as the DOING.

Success IS NOT going to come overnight and it is better that you enter into a business venture with this fact in mind. Of all the successful people online, the vast majority have persisted for quite some time and surmounted many obstacles to get to where they are today.

Hard work is also involved….time should be set aside daily to work non-stop on your current project. “Non-stop” meaning avoidance of too much time spent on useless activities like constantly checking your commission statistics or email accounts for new sales. I have been guilty of this time waster in the past and even to this day.

Focus on your business and engage in at least one positive thing daily to add value to your business.

Look at the beliefs that may be holding you back, for instance, do you secretly harbor a belief that too much money will bring more responsibility than you can handle? You need to drop this idea immediately or it will sabotage all your success efforts.

“Has This Ever Happened To YOU?”
“STOP…THIEF!”
Let us say that you have been working on your web site on the Internet for awhile and have built up a pretty nice little home business [or two, or more] - on the Information Highway. One day you open up your email…
You See An Angry Email…and not even from “your” customer. This person actually bought YOUR product from someone else not authorized to sell YOUR product!
Here is an email from an ANGRY customer [not yours!]
…demanding that you…
“send my order right now or else!” …and “where is it”….
…and “you scammed me!” and “I will turn you in for fraud.”
Wow! You are so upset! What in heaven’s name are they talking about anyway? You have never heard of them before now. You have worked hard on your online home business customer service. You have always made sure that your customers are happy and completely satisfied.
But just to be sure, you spend a couple of hours searching all of your previous sales records for their name.

That is what happened to us…
Finding no record of the so-called angry “customer” in any of our business sales records or files, we then started emailing back and forth with them trying to find out “the name of the person” that sold them OUR software?

Who the devil has “scammed” them using our good image? Why would they want to ruin our small home business anyway? What kind of people are they?

We finally got a web address from this angry customer. When we got to the thief’s web site…guess what…there was our Software Box eCover that we designed from scratch! No question that it was our unique and copyrighted work!

The thief had colored over our company name and copyright on our eCover. You could even see part of first letter of our name still on our eCover! Not a very thorough thief.

Yikes! Someone was STEALING “our” products right off the Internet!
A thief is stealing our very special products that we spent months and months creating. They have no conscious about ruining our online small home business.

If you have every heard of “Internet Stress” - this is it!

Well, this actually happened to us back in 2002. Luckily we found out about it. We eventually found out how to stop our software from being “pirated.”

What an awakening we had!

Our basic honest and naive minds would never have thought that there were such unscrupulous people out there stealing OUR copyrighted materials!

Couldn’t happen to US! Right?

WRONG!!!

IT DID!

Can You Stop Internet Thieves From Stealing Your Copyrighted Materials?

You absolutely can stop them. Start PROTECTING your small online home business today!

…so how did we stop the thief?

Well, we didn’t want to contact the thief directly and just slap his hand! He would just close that web site down and move on to another one and still “pirate” our software anyway!

We needed time to think about what to do…

We belong to one of those “private web site clubs” that has a “members only forum.” We decided to post our problem on the forum and ask other members for some advise. Maybe they had similar experiences with Internet Copyright thieves! The members all said to “hire a lawyer.”

…hire a lawyer?

We did try to hire an online lawyer and here is what he told us:

Here is what we found out: It costs at least $5,000 just to get a lawyer to represent your “copyright infringement” case in court. Of course it would cost only about $250 for them to send “one” letter to the thief!

Then we remembered that one of the members of our forum mentioned to us that we need to send a “DMCA Notice” to the thief’s web host and that it would knock them off of the net!

What the heck is a DMCA Notice anyway? We went back to the drawing board and did more research…

Here would be another at least $250 for a lawyer to send a DMCA Notice on our behalf.

So, could we send one ourselves?

YES! And we did…and YOU can too.

Legally, the web site host has to honor your DMCA NOTICE.

And they have to honor it within 10 days!

You can view a sample “DMCA Notice” here:
http://www.home-business-reports.com/DMCA_NOTICE.htm

WHY WOULD I WANT TO?
How about those frustrating work days; is it a co-worker that gives you those negative feelings or is it something that the boss says or does?

Do you realize that you can feel great about how you earn your living?

How does it make you feel when I tell you that anyone can be their own boss?

Keep that excited feeling…

- BUT -

Don’t run out and quit your job just yet.

To be straightforward, I’d like to make it clear right now that starting and running your own business from home will require you to invest your time and hard-earned money, but, this pays off. If you work hard, it will pay off BIG.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE?
Are you the kind of person that never finishes what you start, or do you frown upon hard work?

If so, then a home business may not be right for you. To successfully become your own boss, you are going to have to get motivated, set goals and follow through with the goals that you’ve set. Hard work is the key to your success.

When you own a home business, your income will be a direct result of your own hard work. Your success will always reflect your efforts…don’t ever forget this.

WHEN DOES IT PAY OFF?
Every time you make a sale, the immensely exciting feelings you get will pay off more than the money you make from the sale it’s self.

When you can choose your hours, choose your days off, choose your vacation length and choose your salary…this is when your home business has truly paid off.

SOUNDS WORTHWHILE…

- BUT -

Being straightforward again, generally, you will start out making a little bit here and a little bit there. Your first month is one of the hardest. As you keep a positive outlook and continue to work on building your business, you will begin to see more sales and you will most likely begin getting feedback from your subscribers and customers.

At six months, if you have been working hard, you will be surprised with how well you are doing and solid ideas will be forming.

After a year of working from home, you will be impressed. Now, this is the time that you are realizing, all of the effort, time and capital that you are putting in is completely worth it.

You may think that you are fully occupied with your home management and left with no free time at your disposal, even though you wished it so. If you really want to make some extra bucks from home along with managing your home and kids, lack of time cannot be considered as an excuse. If that strong will is there, all that you have to do is make adjustments with your routine work at home and proper time management. It can be easily achieved by little bit of planning and organising your routine work.

1. It is worth remembering the old saying, “If there is a will there is a way”. If you organize your work in a better way you will be surprised to find that extra time that you very badly needed to devote towards your home based business.

2. Spend some time thinking to find out where your time is spent more than it is absolutely needed. Ask yourself “Can I manage this work by reducing 15 minutes of my time spent for this”? If more of your time is spent in cooking you have to sit and think how you can finish your cooking faster and get some time from that task. The easier thing will be if you plan what you are going to do in advance instead of rushing each time. A planned work can be finished faster than the one done without any planning.

3. Teaching the kids to be self- disciplined and self-reliant is another method to find time. If they can do some of their work without your help you will get some free time. The older child can be given the responsibility of taking care of the younger ones when you are busy with your home business or other work, for which don’t forget to reward them for their understanding. Also engage them with something they enjoy doing when you are busy with your work.

4. Are you spending more time watching television? Do you think it is absolutely essential to spend that much time? By giving up some of your regular serials and soaps you will find some extra time at your disposal.

Not only the ones mentioned above, anything which takes your time such as gardening, shopping, paying bills, running errands, visiting friends and relatives, afternoon naps, chatting and gossiping with friends etc can be reevaluated and you will be able to squeeze some time there.

When trying to make a decision about starting your own business, you will find yourself asking one of these questions:

* “How much experience do I need to start a home business?”
* “Do I have enough experience to start a home business?”

Textbook don’t answer these questions. You can either go ahead hoping for the best, or you can go slowly analyzing every little step.

It is possible to go from being a bricklayer to a successful Internet Guru. There are true stories of partially educated teenagers who stumble on to a bright idea and become wildly successful.

A growing number of stay-at-home moms travel way out of their comfort zones into the untried world of business. Yet without prior preparation or knowledge of the world they were entering, met with stunning success. It is just a matter of how willing you are to take risks and educate yourself.

Stone Evans had no knowledge of the Home Business Industry when he started working as an affiliate, yet he persevered. Now his PlugInProfit Sites are famous and I’m sure he is enjoying his well-earned success.

One of the important personal traits of an entrepreneur is the willingness to explore new horizons, take risks and accept responsibility for the risks taken. An entrepreneur needs to be good at self-motivation, or have the characteristic that gets and keeps a person moving even when things seem dismal. It is this trait that will enable you to continue despite drawbacks, like very little capital, lack of education or limited experience.

Don’t get me wrong; knowledge and expertise are important. Studies have shown that lack of business experience is one of the major reasons for the failure of any business. So, if you are the kind of person who likes to analyze your options then take time to evaluate all the factors, then stick with your preferences.

If you think that you need more business experience, there are a number ways to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for your venture. You can scour the Internet for education packages, or you could choose to get on-the-job training to give you some hands-on experience in your field of interest by teaming up with someone who already has an online business. There are definite advantages to working with someone else in your industry of choice. You “earn as you learn,” while you increase your chances of becoming known online, which makes it much easier when you decide to go it alone.

Approach obstacles like learning how to run a home business or a new aspect of home business management, as an exciting challenge and meet the challenge head-on. Many of the successful entrepreneurs who started their ventures, did so without fully understanding the mechanics involved, like them you must motivate yourself to learn whatever is necessary to accomplish your goals.

Take the initiative! Learn everything you can about your prospective business - the product or service that you plan to sell, the niche you are thinking of entering, your competition and your prospective market. Be sure to do your homework.

If you possess common sense, the ability to learn new skills, are enthusiastic about taking risks, or have the courage to venture into the unknown, and the persistence to continue - you should be able to overcome the initial lack of expertise and be wildly successful. Have faith in yourself and determine come what may, you will have your own home business.