Solutions to the most difficult tasks of a home based entrepreneur

Posted by Shri

March 1, 2008

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multi-tasing

If you are planning to quit your day job and wish to start working from home, then the possibility is that you are dreaming of lower number of less stressed hours a week. The reality is that once you get into online business, 24 hours a day becomes too less to cope with the tasks at hand. Now for the good things of working from home.

A flexible schedule and less stressed work as you are not working under instructions. You work just the way you want and just at the time you feel like. If there are less bills to takcle, then working from home is heaven.

The most difficult tasks of a home based entrepreneur and their solutions:

1) Keep up with day schedule
2) Control the temptation to browse around for hours
3) Instant messegers
4) Stay motivated
5) Remembering all the passwords
6) Quality family time
7) Finding the right topic / right product
8) Multi-tasking like seo, blogging, forums
9) War against bills
10) Sick leave
11) Paper work
12) Learning
13) Networking offline

Now for the solutions:
1) Keep up with the day’s schedule: Write things to do or put up a white board and write your things on it and try to keep up with your schedule. Did you read my post on the top 10 things to include in work at home entrepreneur’s everyday schedule? I use microsoft works calendar which gives me flexibility to toggle / merge between 4 calendars, so i can separate business tasks , client tasks, family tasks etc.

2) Browsing the internet maze: Net browsing is addictive and more often we get lost in the maze and loose track of time we spend surfing. It is important to browse around to blog, to upload, to learn, to market, to network… and lot more. You can tackle this problem by setting aside time for browsing. If you need to research on any topic, control the temptation to do it rightaway, instead write it down on a notepad and work on it when you feel you are less creative or productive. Does this sound ridiculous? Try it for a week and you’ll be surprised at the number of hours you’ll be saving.

3) Keeping away from unnecessary chats: Login to as less messengers as possible and keep your status mode to busy to let others know that you ARE busy. Actually i’m using a live chat program which logs me into 6 different messengers in 1 window (yahoo IM, AOL IM, Google talk, MSN IM, SKype, ICQ). This program not only allows me stay accessible to my customers but also gives me the option to keep number of programs running to just 1. You can get it for free here. If you want to add live chat option for your visitors too, then this’ll prove a great pick.

4) Stay Motivated: Staying motivated to continue in online business career is a task in the intial few months. Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t had many visitors to your website and havne’t made a single dollar. There are hundreds more out there sharing a similar story. Persistance is the key here. Dont have high expectations for atleast few months. Great products + persistance + Great marketing = successful online business. Read my SEO tips here.

5) Remembering passwords: As our work requires, we tend to signup for so many accounts. This gives us the additional task of remembering / storing numerous userids, passwords etc. The temptation to use a single password for all accounts, but we all know how unsafe it is. So, I started using spreadsheet program to store all passwords. It was slightly confusing. Then I found KeePass, an free/open-source password manager which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. For more info, visit http://keepass.info

6) Quality family time: Inspite of having a supportive family, you need to know that you must be with them when they most need you. At the same time, you must be stern to tell them that working from home doesn’t mean you are available through out the day and go out at any time and do anything. It helps to make sure household tasks are shared among the members of the family. .

7) Finding the right product or right topic: Oh yes, this is a our main task. If you run a serious online business, possibility is that your business ideas are a constant whirl in your head. Its kind of psychic feeling that u’ll start to think about topics for blog posts all the time. All you need to do is trap your ideas with on a notepad. Doesn’t matter even if you consider it the most ridiculous idea you ever had. Write down related subheads/ points as quickly as possible and let your mind follow its own path. Don’t let your ideas don’t fade away in your brain. I have a notepad in the car, sticky on the fridge, notepad in my purse. You can read my post about mind mapping for creating info products for more info and 5 ways to find the right products.

8) Multi-tasking: Yes, this is what we all need to master. There is so much of information, so much to learn and still much more to do. It will never end. It’s like a gripping arcade game. You cross one level, go to the next level a little more difficult than the previous one. It’s all about figuring out “how to”. This will be something you need to cope, if you have been a lazy learner.

9) War against bills: For a few initial months, there is bleak possibility that you make enough to pay off your bills. Make sure your bills dont pile up. Either you need a little financial cushion or a part-time job to equate “Income >= bills stream” till you are well established in your online business. Taking a part time job has some more advantages like connecting with people offline, networking, direct marketing to name a few.

10) Sick leave: We all get sick and can do nothing about it. If you have a deadline ahead of you, you can think of talking to them and explaining your situation.

11) Piling (filing) up all those bills & papers is such a torture. You will need to be more organozed in this area to avoid trouble at the time of filing tax returns. Set aside time for this at regular intervals (once a week / month) to punch teh bills of the period into a file which must kept in a handy cabinet. Don’t forget to print the receipts you get through email when you transact online. I’m fortunate in this one. my hubs is a CPA. He takes care of this area of my business.

12) Learning: You got to be a keen learner and sharp at grasping. Sometimes, to get a small thing working might take up a whole day. So many times on forums, I’ve seen people asking questiond like “how to do this? I’ve been trying to figure it out for last 3 days. I’m frustrated, please help.”. I follow this sequence, Search engines, forum posts, outsource (you will find people who have mastered or atleast who’ve figured it out and might be interested to help).

13) Networking Offline: Do we only want to make friends online? Meeting people in person has its own advantages. Joined some interesting & active groups in your neighborhood like a sport’s group, local club, child’s school parent’s association, literary club. You can think of forming a small club on your own. Attend few meetings or gatherings they organize. This helps connecting with people in person, share thoughts about various other aspects of life which will relieve the brain from stress for sometime and leaves you refreshed. This social break will spurge your productivity when you are back at work.