Habits for a Successful Home Based Business

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

Habits are what make us who we are. If we want to change who we are, we change some of our habits. I was taught one time that if I wanted to change a habit, I wore a rubber band around my wrist, and every time I performed the habit that I wished to stop, I snapped my wrist with the rubber band. That habit didn't last too long with me, I got irritated with snapping my wrist with the rubber band. Once you start a home based business, there are habits you want and habits you don't want. The key is to not fall into the bad habits, or even to learn bad habits from others. There are times, especially when starting your own home based business that you have a sponsor that makes the growth look easy. Be careful to follow their good habits and not to pick up any of their bad habits. Some people appear to have a natural talent to create and grow a home based business, but you are most likely not seeing all the hard work and time that they put into the business before you looked into it.

If you work full time and want to start your own home based business, you need to find some time in your busy evening to start the business and try to grow the business. Carving out time from what is left of your day can be extremely difficult to do. (Finding the time to start a new business is something we chatted about last month.) As mentioned in the earlier blog, you will most likely have to stop doing something in order to dedicate some time to your fledgling business.

Another habit you should refine is the persistence to build your home based business. (We talked about Persistence this last Tuesday) Especially if you are currently working full time, you need to be persistent in your desire to build and grow your home based business. If you don't have the desire to stick with the business, you will find no growth in your business.

Most importantly, if you know what you want out of your business, write it down. That is your goal, you really won't be able to drive your business forward if you do not have a specific goal or plan in mind. As Stephen R. Covey puts it, you need to "begin with the end". If you know what the end result is, (i.e. why are you starting a business in the first place?) then you will find a way to get from your current situation to the desired end result. This is where persistence comes in. If you persisted in going after the end result, you will find your business grows into what you want it to be.

Tomorrow we will continue with some other habits for creating a successful home based business.

Until tomorrow...