Start & Run a Real Home-Based Business. Dan Furman

      You — owning a home-based business? Sure, why not? In fact, welcome to the club!

      Let me be one of the first to congratulate you. You are probably very excited over this decision, and perhaps even a little bit scared. Don’t worry; being scared is perfectly normal, so let me just reassure you: Yes, you can do this. With some guidance, good advice, and hard work, you will be well on your way to successfully being self-employed in a home-based business.

      And trust me, being self-employed in a real home-based business is the greatest feeling in the world. The benefits include the following:

      • You make the rules (ice cream at noon)!

      • You set your work schedule.

      • You can bring your kids (or your pets) to work.

      • You can spend more time with your family (or not; it’s your choice).

      • You can call your boss an idiot and get away with it.

      • You can earn what you are truly worth, not what someone else thinks you are worth (and they never seem to think you are worth all that much, do they)? If you succeed, you will certainly earn more than you would at a regular job.

      There is nothing like working for yourself. No successful home-based entrepreneur I ever met would want to go back to a regular job. That should tell you something.

      And no matter what type of home-based business you want to start, this book can really help you. It doesn’t matter if you want to work from home using a computer; make a product and sell it; run a business servicing the local area (like a contractor, computer service professional, etc.); or you want to have a business in your home (like a daycare) — I can help you become successfully self-employed.

       Running a successful home-based business is something you CAN do.

      The key is actually doing the right things and knowing which mistakes to avoid. This is where experience comes in. To be blunt, I failed in my first two home-based business attempts. Why did I fail? Because I did things that now seem so stupid that they astonish me. I made mistakes I’d never make now, because I now know better. And here’s the funny thing — I see so many beginning home-based business owners make the exact same mistakes.

      I wish somebody could have sat me down all those years ago and talked to me about the prices I was charging for my product. Or about how my invoicing practices were crippling me. Or how I needed to really focus on my business more and take it seriously. Oh, I thought I was serious, but in hindsight, I was about as serious and focused as four unemployed guys sitting in a garage saying, “Man, we should start a band” after draining the keg.

      But I definitely learned from my mistakes, and today I run a full-time, successful home-based business that I started from scratch. I’ve operated all kinds of businesses: I’ve run a local professional service, I’ve sold a product from my home, and currently I work from home on my computer. I’ve failed, come back, and succeeded. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot of things. In fact, I learned just as much from my failures as I have from my successes.

      And I’ve put everything I’ve learned into this book. Start & Run a Real Home-Based Business will help you by showing you both what to do and what not to do. If you’re serious about owning a real home-based business, then this book is for you.

      Tone and Structure of This Book

      This is a different type of home-based business book than you may be used to. It’s not a “lite” step-by-step guide filled with a lot of useless information. Instead, it’s meant to focus on the things that will really matter to the success of your business.

      To give you an example, I’m not going to spend 39 pages telling you all about office machines (you don’t need a book to go over that, do you?) Instead, I’ll do it in 39 sentences — well, less, actually. I’d much rather spend time talking about your invoicing or your pricing, which are far more important to your business success than which type of fax machine you buy (to be honest, you probably don’t even need a fax machine).

      This book is written in a “no BS” style. I’m going to come right out and say “here’s what you must do,” and I’ll also tell you in no uncertain terms what things to avoid. Nothing is sugarcoated. So let me apologize in advance for what may seem like some stern advice. I’m not going to beat around the bush and give you warm and fuzzy “feel-good” information. I’m going to tell you straight up what has helped businesses succeed, and what has made them fail.

      For example, I’ve read books about home-based businesses that suggest it is okay to make homemade flyers in the beginning and skip advertising because it’s costly. That’s pure BS. For most businesses, it’s not okay to skip advertising, and homemade flyers are pretty close to useless.

      I’ve brought together more than 50 topics that are essential to the success of any home-based business. Some of the topics are fundamental subjects that you’d expect, such as taxes, advertising, and the Internet. Others are things you’ve likely never thought of, such as how to get your spouse/partner on board, finding hidden niche markets, and when to drop trouble customers. Still others are vital to success but are things you usually don’t find out about until after they hurt you — like how having a big customer can actually hurt you, and how to make sure you get paid.

      Start & Run a Real Home-Based Business is more or less written from me to you. It does not assume that you’re a big, rich business-person or a highly paid superexecutive. There are plenty of good business books out there written by successful, millionaire CEOs, but can you really relate to them on the scale of your home-based business? I certainly can’t. Mention the word “capital” once, and you’ve lost me. See, I do not have, nor do I have access to, “capital.”

      A CEO regaling the reader with tales about what he or she did at the latest shareholder meeting to get people to see things his or her way isn’t very helpful to a home-based business owner either. My “shareholders” consist of my wife and my two dogs — and trust me, they don’t always see things my way. I’d include the cat, but she’s fairly well above it all.

      This book talks in plain language to people who want to start small businesses with limited amounts of money. Unlike many other business books, I won’t tell the story about how “Donna from Wisconsin” took a risk, and with $85,000 opened a …

      Listen, if you have $85,000 sitting around to risk, well, let’s just say we’re not playing the same game.

      When I started, I didn’t have $85,000 just lying around (I assume that would be the elusive “capital”). Donna’s story is completely meaningless to me and anyone else who doesn’t have that kind of money to burn. So I don’t mention capital at all in this book.

      The book consists of short, easy-to-read essays on various topics that are vital to a home-based business owner. Some of the topics are two pages long; others might fill five pages. The three major sections are Mind, Body, and Soul.

      • Mind