The first thing you need to do when deciding to work from your home office is to ask yourself key questions. 

1. Am I motivated?  You need to first determine if you are motivated to work from home, to run a business and be motivated about what you are doing. You need to have a certain drive to be able to push a business forward to become success in what you are doing.  If you don't then you should not go into business for yourself, it is not a bad thing some people just cannot work for themselves. 

2. Can I hold myself accountable? You need to determine if you can hold yourself accountable to get what needs to be done, done. 

3. Do I need daily person to person contact? Some people need to have daily person to person contact if this is you and you plan on running a business from home and it does not involve daily person to person contact than maybe you should rethink the type of work from home that you are wanting to do or the type of business you are wanting to start. This will make it very hard for you to work in this atmosphere. When you start to work from home that is the first thing to go. If this is the type of person you are then that is okay but this type of job is probably not for you. One way to fix this would be to join parent groups in your community, get involved with volunteering or at your children's schools. This could help with the person to person contact that is needed. 

4. Do you have the skills? You need to determine if you have the skills to do what you would like to do. If you don't have these skills, get them. It is so important to invest in your own education and people will take note that you have done that and appreciate that. Whatever you want to do, somebody else most likely has already done it and some where there is training to do it.  Do your research and plan accordingly.  Do a little bit of  digging you will be surprised as to how much information you can get for little to no cost if you do a little bit of searching to find it. 

5. Do you have the right tools for the job?  Next you will need to determine if you have the right tools for the job. If you don't do you have the means of getting the tools for your type of business. Do your research to find out what is needed and what can wait or is not needed at start up.

The next thing you should do to get started on your road to working from home is make a list of what skills you currently have. Once you have done this make a list of things you like to do, this can be broken up into two lists one list of things you like to do that you can currently do and the other of things you like to do but don't know how to do and need the training to do so. The last list is a list of things you do not like to do. That way you can easily determine what you should not be doing because if you end up doing the things you don't like you wont be motivated to do them, your business will not move forward and you will fail. 

If the items that you don't like to do have to be done in your business that is fine you just need to find a person or company that does what you don't like to do and outsource it to them. If you don't like to do it I can guarantee that there is someone out there who will.

For example you may have a product that you want to sell online but you love creating websites, taking pictures, writing informative product descriptions, creating the product and you have the skills to do so but you may not like doing the bookkeeping and keeping track of inventory. If you outsource your bookkeeping and inventory tracking you wont be stuck doing the things you dislike which can keep you focused on doing the things that you like to do and more of it. This will keep you being more productive, motivated and help you to love what you do. Because if you don't love it you wont do it!!!

Once you have figured out what type of business it is that you would like to start remember to find out if you need to have any licenses and/or insurance to do so. Many towns will require you to have a business license to operate in that town. They also have specific requirements if you are running a business from home make sure you find out what those requirements are before you open up shop! The next thing would be to get a business name then register it with your state either via a tradename or if it is a corporation to register it with the Corporation Commissions for your state. This all will cost a fee to do so. Also you will need to get your banking in order many people use their personal checking and savings accounts for their business as well but this should be avoided as you will need to have your personal and business expenses kept separate for tax purposes. It is easier to start out the right way instead of having to separate them later. 

Also please remember when you are your own boss you are at many times the boss, the receptionist, the sales coordinator, the data entry clerk and so on. Please remember (especially in the beginning) you will have to wear many hats and be able to be flexible to do so. It is not easy it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get your business off of the ground and moving in a productive and money making manner. I hope this post will help to direct you in getting started or maybe help you to determine what you can do or would like doing.

Skye Hawk 
 
REPA (Certified Real Estate Professional Assistant) 
Phone: 800-403-2430  ext 101
Fax: 866-635-7456
E-mail: Skyeh@atyourservice-va.com
Web: www.atyourservice-va.com
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