Home Business Resource Blog

New home based business entrepreneurs often think that they only need to share their business once before they acquire a new customer. Since the vast majority of people do not make a decision upon first exposure – no matter how compelling the offer is.

So this means it will take multiple exposures because these days it more about being an ‘education process’ than a ’selling process’. All new businesses need to put a primary focus on Marketing - no matter WHAT business they are in.

 Marketing is the process of keeping people interested in what you’re saying long enough to educate them in the benefits, to build trust, and possibly engage the law of reciprocation.

If you succeed in maintaining a person’s interest long enough they will generate the reasons or ’story’ that will compel their purchase.

This current methodology is often called ‘dripping’. Rather than shooting for the ‘grand slam’ (i.e. – the sale’) we focus on a series of communications that offer real value to our prospects.

We also want to make sure our intention of service, and for matching out product and service to people - rather than try and make every single person we meet a client. There is little chance that everyone needs what you’re offering. By trying to appeal to everyone you becoming so ‘vanilla’ you end up appealing to practically no one!

So your action step is to determine how you will now approach prospects in a manner that does not cause them to see you as a salesperson looking to just push a sale. In today’s environment you need to elevate yourself to ‘Trusted Advisor’ position.

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The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.                         -Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Today’s Tip:
Like never before in the history of man, we only have a few seconds to grab a person’s interest.

Rather than using long drawnout explanations about your product or the value it offers, consider using an analogy or metaphor to quickly bridge your communication gap.

Analogies:
The vast majority of human learning happens by comparing something that is known to something that is unknown. 

Example: if I was communicating to someone who had no idea what ‘Residual Income’ was; I might use a an analogy such as; ‘Well you know how a best selling author does the work of writing her book once, and yet they get paid royalties over and over for years?”

This simple analogy acts as an example that the person I am speaking to can relate to and immediately understand.

Not only do analogies help people understand what you are communicating, but it also drastically cuts down on the required time to make them understand.

Metaphors:
Metaphors are often use to embellish a description.

If I wanted to make a dramatic point regarding the current mortgage crisis, using the metaphor of, ‘Mortgage Meltdown’, would immediately be understood by the party I’m speaking to.

Using a metaphor, ‘addicted to oil’, would quickly communicate the direction of the conversation involving our oil crisis.

The creative use of both analogies and metaphors will go a long way in getting and keeping the attention of the person you are communicating with.
Home-based business entrepreneurs have a great advantage because we are not regulated by ‘canned responses’, and can design our own verbiage to use when prospecting and otherwise communicating with clients for maximum effectiveness.

John T. Kelly ~ The Home Business Evangelist
  

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Building habits and behavior patterns that serve you as a person and as a business owner is critical stuff. Habits either act as our willing Servents or as our Masters.

What I mean is this: Whatever habit you’ve picked up, it’s either helping you reach your desired outcome - OR it’s pushing you further away.

Simple Examples:

• If you like the idea of living a long and high quality of life - then a ’smoking habit’ is driving you away from that outcome (and acting as your Master).
• If you’ve developed the habit of contacting 5 new prospects for your home business every day - this habit will serve you well and help generate a thriving business.  

 Habits (good or bad) take some time and attention to develop. Most behavioral scientists estimate it takes between 25-30 days.

During that time you’ll need to remember the new behavior you looking to adopt as well as how to perform that activity.

Once you complete that 25-30 day poeriod you”ll notice the new activity begins to come to you naturally. This is actually an amazing thing because whereas in the beginning stages contacting 5 new prospects a day may be a real struggle; but 25-30 days in the activity becomes far easier and you need for stuggle or willpower diminishes significantly.

I’ve found a very simple visual tool to help people ‘post’ their goals and keep track of their progress. It’s called ‘Joe’s Goals’ and you can find it at joesgoals.com . It’s free…

John T. Kelly ~ The Home Business Evangelist

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Oprah Winfrey’s new web-cast series is based on a Eckhart Tolle’s new book, ’A New Earth’, is providing excellent insights that can be extremely useful to home based business entrepreneur.

That’s because, being a successful entrepreneur calls for honing some particular skill sets.  One such skill is the ability to minimize the behavior which generates ineffective ‘compliants’.

This is important because the vast majority of complaining that people do has nothing to do with positive change but rather has more to do with emotional venting and seeking of agreement from others regarding one’s complaint.

Voicing a complaint such as, “The copy machine has stopped working”,  is a valid complaint.  It essentially brings up the fact that something is wrong and needs to be addressed.  Having said that; it’s easy to turn a valid comment into any ineffective complaint dripping with drama.

 Oprah and Eckhart spent significant time during the third episode of the new earth discussing how a person’s ego is responsible for these drama complaints and the consequences it produces.

An example of an ineffective complaint is a complaining to another person who has no power to do anything about your complaint. Friends, spouses, co-workers & team-mates are often end up being sounding boards for these issues (like it or not).

Another form of ineffective complaints are those that add the unconscious intention of making someone else wrong, or making yourself ‘right’.

The human ego thrives on its absolute need to be right and to defend that position.  Conflicts between people, families, organizations, and even countries typically stem from egos out of control.

As home based business entrepreneurs are primary focus needs to stay on being effective and getting things done that will move our business forward.

Avoiding getting sucked into, or stuck in a quagmire of opinions, prejudices based on the past, past patterns of behavior, etc. Eckhart is teaching us to recognize the devious mind chatter our ego’s produce in order to keep itself in control of our actions.

Stay tuned to further updates on this pivitol subject and watch your home business thrive.

John T. Kelly  ~  ’The Home Business Evangelist’

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Distractions occuring in your home business are not a question of ‘if ‘- they are a question of when, how often, how long, etc., etc.

They come in the form of friends dropping by just because they know you’re home. They come the form of phone calls from friends, telemarketers, peers. They come in the form of those little chores that call out for attention. They come in the form of busy work.

Distrations are a major concern because if you don’t learn to control them - they will control you and your ability to get the important work done. By important work I’m refering to the projects that will move your business forward in a meaningful way.

What is ‘meaningful’?

A meaningful task or project carries the kind of significance that would warrent a call home to your spouse to announce. Examples: “The book has been sent to the editor”, “The software is ready to ship”, “The website finished and is up and running”, etc.

Many of the distractions that happen aren’t planned for, so we typically don’t  handle them well; which simply means we ‘react’ to them rather than ‘respond’. When we react to anything we are ’shooting from the hip’, and we want to approach business as a sharpshooter instead.

We can do that, and end up working smarter than harder (sniper) by actually planning ahead in order to be as prepared as possible for when the distractions occur.

That might include turning your phone off for a specific period every day in order to concentrate on that key project. It might mean leaving your emails unread until the late afternoon. It might require that you close the door to your office during a scheduled period each day. Think this through.

One of the most important business habits you can adopt is the habit of creating a ‘Top Six’ list for each day. These are the tasks that are most meaningful interms of moving your business forward for the long term.

Practice focusing on achieving those six targets before moving on to putting out fires or handling  those distractions. 

Once you have raised your awareness to how often and how serious your ‘distrations problem’ is - you’ll be shocked. Shocked about how little of the truly important stuff gets done.

And once you’ve made the decsion to start working smarter ; the temptations to work on the fires and distrations first will come fast and furious. That’s where you need to stick with it and commit to reversing the tide over the long haul.

Firmly demand that people respect your time. For meetings; ask for and stick to specific agendas and promise to do the same for them. Most people would agree that they are already far too busy so they will likely  appreciate your methodology once they get the hand of it.

Dr. W.Deming stated a long time ago: “The first responsibility of a business - is to stay in business”. By controling distractions and implementing your ‘Top Six’ daily list you will make a Quantum Leap forward to having a successful home based business.

John T. Kelly ~ ‘The Home Business Evangelist’ 

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Most people who start a work from home business opportunity do so because we feel it will fulfill a need they have.  This need may be for additional income, more time with our families, the desire to be our own boss, etc.

These are all valid reasons and provide a fair amount of motivation to succeed.

For those of us who have set our goals higher we will need a more profound source of inspiration.  That inspiration can be found in discovering a bigger reason or meaning.

The bigger the reason, the more this mission helps other people or the planet; the greater the power our inspiration will be.

My point here is that although you may have initially started our businesses for our own selfish (not a bad word) reasons; it is only when we begin to devote ourselves to a higher calling than we are able to achieve truly significant success.

That’s right; the more we help other people get what they want, the sooner we will get what we want.  We must remember that our mindset needs to be focused outside of ourselves rather than reducing this to a mere formula. 

If our intentions are not genuine, our results will likely suck. People are great B.S. detectors - it comes from experience…

Taken a step further; our commitment to this mission cannot be a short term matter.  This is why it is critically important that we invest the time and a lot upfront to uncover our core values and motivations.

Dedicating ourselves to the needs of other people automatically generates high standards and integrity which also serve our business success in the long term model. 

Included in this is seeing to it that your customers and clients purchased only what they need; no more, and certainly no less.

The purchase of your service or product should come only after you have provided value up front; to the point where your customer decide for themselves that the time is right to make this purchase. 

Customers who are convinced to make a purchase by someone other than themselves  always end up feeling negative about the transaction.  Needless to say,  this does not provoke trust or the desire to do business again in the future.

We have previously discussed the multiple benefits associated with building trust with your customers.  Finding new customers is neither cheap nor fun whereas working with existing clients is extremely cost-effective and can lead to multiple referrals. 

As always, it’s about working smarter rather than harder.

John T. Kelly

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In our forthcoming work from home business e-book we speak of the critical skill of connecting with people.  It is such an obvious element to business success that people actually overlook it thinking they already have the ability.

Well, we all do - but to what extent?

But my favorite principals is Leverage.  Leverage is essentially working smarter rather than harder - multiplying the power of our resources (time, money, effort, etc.). It’s also available in most everything we do.  Our challenge is that it is not apparent to us - so it is often overlooked.

So the question is: How can we leverage ourselves in this critical area of connecting to others?

First off; become more.  Rather than coming across as just another person who wants their money - position yourself as the one person who will help them in an ongoing manner from this point forward.  Become their Trusted Advisor. Assume this position before you ask for their money.

This is accomplished by being of service and adding value upfront.  Yes; it makes perfect sense to determine if they actually need and want what you provide, that they can afford it, and also have the authority to make the purchase decision.

The point is this: If you are simply the marketer or salesperson - then the next salesperson offers a similar product at a cheaper price will replace you in a flash.  At that point you are just a commodity competing on price and that’s a losing proposition any way you look at.

Second. I don’t care how old you are, what you look like, your education level, the color of your skin, etc. - people want to interact with people who are self expressed and feel genuinely comfortable in their own skin.

Being the quiet, mild mannered, reserved person we were trained to be thanks to the school system will not serve you as an entrepreneur.  For you and your product to be known - YOU are the message.

In fact, you only have a few seconds to make yourself significant enough to another person that they will invest any quality attention on what you have to share.  Be bold in your communication and do it with a quiet passion - coming from a person who is comfortable in their own skin and who has strong self-esteem. 

Third: Fall in love with your prospects and clients. They will sense your genuine caring and it will be something they rarely encounter.  See everything from their point of view and communicate that understanding to them.

Forth: Never stop educating your prospects and clients.  Marketing’s main goal is to communicate messages that provide value to a client that they continue to pay attention. If they pay attention long enough they will purchase.

Ongoing communication regarding your product’s value, your value, the value of your relationship, trends coming down the pike, important information that will allow your client to prosper, etc. we’ll help cement your status as their Trusted Advisor.

These principals actually apply in any business but a home based business entrepreneur especially needs to adopt the mindsets and strategies that provide the leverage to not only succeed - but thrive.

John T. Kelly

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In a work from home business, leverage (in the terms that I use it for) is all about getting far more return out of my invested resources such as my time, effort, and money.

It is all about working smarter - rather than harder.  Leverage is available in a number of different forms in business.  Financial leverage, time leverage, people leverage, and systems or tools leverage are my favorite categories.

There are several elements of leverage available to the home based business entrepreneur that make owning a part-time home busines a no-brainer.  For example; there are amazing tax advantages available to people with a work from home business.

Not only are you able to see significant money on your taxes; but you can also use your business to purchase things like computers, video cameras, Internet access, etc.

Another form of leverage available to home based business entrepreneurs is the opportunity to tap into the leverage which exists by operating a network marketing business.  The network marketing business model allows an individual to make the most of their time, efforts, and investment capital without becoming a slave to their business.

Did you know that close to 90% of all people earning over $100,000 per year are running their own business, and that a home based business market is growing at about 12% per year?

The point is, we all have a limited amount of time and resources.  To me, this means making the best use of these resources is critical for individuals to master for a high quality of life. If that is a goal that you aspire to you may want to  seriously consider how to implement leverage in as many categories of your life as possible.

There is no doubt that the leverage offered in many work from home businesses and provide the quality of life we always dreamed about.

Debbie Amon

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Almost all work from home business enthusiasts know about the amazing the tax advantages available to them. They love the fact that being a home business owner they can save a huge amount of money on their taxes each and every year.

Another huge benefit is that they can also use the business to pay for many items such as computers, Internet access, and also deduct a portion of their homes from their taxes. You can also hire your own children and save even more money.

The fact is there are literally hundreds of perfectly legal deductions available to the home based business entrepreneur - even if it is only a part-time business.  These tax deductions can easily add thousands of dollars to your income from this time forward!

The two essential things to do to get started are these:

• Educate yourself on the amazing tax benefits that are available to work from home business entrepreneurs.  Amazon has a bunch of good books to choose from.

• Get in the habit of investing that two-minute it takes each day to record and organize your receipts record, and a very basic log of your work activity.

For additional information or to read the entire article I wrote on this subject, do a Google search for; Debbie Amon - How a work from home business and slash your taxes.

t may take a little getting used to but when you figure out all the money you’ll be saving from this point forward with your work from home business you’ll be happy to do it - trust me.

Debbie Amon

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Here’s a secret known by many that can add immeasurably to your own wealth. It is the amazing differences between linear and residual income.

The difference between these two types of incomes is so important because I don’t know a single person on earth who wouldn’t prefer to work smarter than harder.

People who earn linear incomes are people who trade for money. This includes everyone from the traditional employee to some small business owners like dentists, doctors, contractors, etc..

No matter how much money this person may be earning they are still trading time for money. Even the highest paid surgeon must report for work come Monday morning 9 a.m. To me, and many other home based business entrepreneurs; this rigid schedule can hardly be called freedom.

All of us are familiar with some professions that offer a residual income. People such as authors, songwriters, inventors, and some marketers. These are people who essentially do a project one time and continue to earn money from that project long into the future.

This bears repeating. Do the work one time and he paid for that work over and over again. Now that is working smarter than harder, and can have an amazing impact on the quality of a person’s life.

My suggestion for everyone is that they consider starting a work from home business that offers the opportunity to earn a residual income. Even if this business is started on a part-time basis over time it can build up and easily exceed your current income.

Needless to say this would provide tremendous security and a great sense of confidence to a person’s life.

For a person looking to start this type of business inexpensively and on a part-time basis, I recommend that they seriously consider using the network marketing business model in order to become a home based business entrepreneur.

John T. Kelly

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