5 Key Focus Areas Of A Successful Home Based Business

A maze puzzle is symbolic to taking our businesses on the path to reaching goals. From start (building), there is no direct route (growing) to finish (your goals) but rather twists and turns and some backtracking along the way. Your schedule is like your plan through that maze. When you take the time to contemplate your route and map it out, you get through your ‘maze’ with less backtracking. It’s easier to stay on course and reach your goals with that plan.

To help you apply this approach you must divide up your time into 5 main areas when organizing your schedule. Here is the list and some of the items that fall under each category:

1. Client Work – or the area in which you perform your revenue generating activities. If yours is not a service business, this area may be Product Sales for example.

2. Business Development - time spent working on your website, preparing marketing materials, proposals, making phone calls, correspondence, attending networking events, planning, meetings, reading/audio/video (resources for business/training), writing (articles, submissions, ezine, blog), social media activity, participating in forums.

3. Home Office – tracking business expenses, filing, invoicing, record keeping, managing emails, scheduling.

4. Personal – build this into your day to remind you to break away from work, to eat lunch or go for a walk with friends.

5. Family – spending time with kids, pets and family activities. This usually comes only at the beginning or end of my work day, but I like to have it showing on my schedule.

How you divide up your time will vary from person to person, but it’s important to assign time to each category throughout the week and work with it until you find a good balance. If you neglect one area the others will suffer. Revenue generating activities have to be consistent obviously, as well as Personal and Family time, but don’t neglect Business Development and Home Office time. You have to incorporate these areas into your week in order to effectively grow your business and prosper.

And if you don’t want to make the time because you dislike these tasks and would rather be doing what you’re good at or taking some more personal and family time, then outsource. Most of the tasks that fall under Business Development and Home Office can be managed by a Virtual Assistant (VA). You don’t have to do it all yourself. Like the saying goes, “Do what you do best, then hire out the rest”.

Entrepreneurial Dreams Can Come True

When I get approached by newbie or wannabe VA’s, they want to know how to get started, how I got started and if I need help. I think it’s great that the VA profession is becoming more widely recognized. If you’ve read my bio you have an idea how I got here, but to elaborate on that, here’s my story.

Like the majority of emails I get from those looking to become a VA, I did my research on work from home jobs and found the Virtual Assistant profession to be a perfect match for my many years of corporate experience as an Administrative and Executive Assistant. And like most of those looking to get into this type of work, I also investigated the alternatives to taking the big leap to Entrepreneur.

Telecommuting seemed the perfect fit. Why not? I loved my job and what I did in the office could easily be done from home. The ideal solution to rushing baby out the door to the sitter every morning and I to work and repeating everything in reverse come 5:00 pm. After presenting my superiors with a formal proposal detailing the specifics of how I would work from home, they agreed it was a fantastic idea. They knew my work ethic and trusted me enough to give me the go-ahead.

Little did I know our office manager had other plans. This was new territory for the company and she wasn’t willing to let me go there. The week prior to my telecommuting launch, the office manager vetoed our plans for fear it would cause too much animosity amongst my co-workers. I was crushed!

A few years and another baby later, I knew that launching my VA business was the way to go. Life was busier and I was tired of working on someone else’s schedule. Things weren’t the same at my place of work and I knew in my heart that changes were impending. During this time I started putting the pieces together for my business in whatever free time I had. I enrolled in a web page workshop and learned enough html to build my first website. I created templates for client agreements, gave my company a name and designed a logo. Progress was slow but sure.

The day I was called into the office and laid off due to a company restructuring, was the opportunity I knew I needed to pursue my entrepreneurial dream full time. From there I enrolled in a very supportive small business start-up program which helped me to finish getting everything set up to launch my business 4 months later in July 2006. When one door closed, I opened another and have never looked back.

If you are considering either working with a VA or starting up your own VA business, I highly recommend it. A VA will provide a different level of assistance to that of a traditional in-house employee. As business owners ourselves, VA’s understand the day-to-day challenges and demands of operating a business. VA’s and clients work together because they choose to enter mutually beneficial working relationships that often become long term partnerships. It’s a win-win! I’ll let you in on a little secret, if you do the work, entrepreneurial dreams can and do come true! What’s your dream? Do you have a story to share?