Home Business Resources Part 1

Once you have decided to start a home business, the next step is to get everything you will need in place to launch your business.  In many cases, what you will need varies upon the type of business that you decide to start.  However, there are certain basics that everyone who owns any type of business will need, regardless of whether it is a home business or a traditional business.

Hopefully you have taken time to reflect on becoming a business owner.  Not everyone is cut out to run a business and if you aren’t that’s perfectly ok.  It is better that you discover this now then for you to invest the time, energy and money necessary to build a business only to discover later on that this is now what you want to be doing.

Once you have made the decision that you absolutely want to be the owner of your own home business, the next step is to analyze your personal resources and identify where there are any gaps.

There are three resources that every business owner needs in order to successful start, launch, grow and maintain a successful business.  Those resources are as the following:

1. Time
2. Money
3. Skills

Let’s examine the resources that you currently have at your disposal.

Time Management

The first resource that is essential to starting a business is time.  It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, it will require your time.  Even if you have billions of dollars at your disposal and you are working a completely leveraged business model there is still going to be some time required from you.  It may not necessarily be 40 hours a week like a job, but there will be time required.

Since you know that the business is going to require some time, the first step is to take inventory of your time.  You need to know how much time you have available to dedicate to a business.  This is important because this is going to have an impact on what type of business you can start.

For instance, if you work a full time job and you only have 10 hours a week to dedicate to a business, you are obviously not going to select a business that is going to require 40 hours a week to get it running successfully.  You simply lack the amount of time that is required as a resource to get such a business started successfully.

How do you determine how much time you have?  By taking inventory of your schedule!  This is when you track how you spend your time and what free time you have available to dedicate to building a business.

To track your time you simply want to take inventory of how your time is currently being used right now.  For your convenience we have included a sample blank schedule to assist you in doing this.

TIME	MON	TUE	WED	THR	FRI	SAT	SUN
Midnight
1am
2am
3am
4am
5am
6am
7am
8am
9am
10am
11am
Noon
1pm
2pm
3pm
4pm
5pm
6pm
7pm
8pm
9pm
10pm
11pm

What you want to do is go through this chart and fill out how your time is currently being occupied right now.  This will give you an idea of how much time you have to work with.  For instance, if you know that from 10pm to 6am every night you are sleeping, just write in “SLEEP” in the boxes associated with those times.

If you have a full time job and you work between the hours of 9am to 5pm on Monday through Friday, write in “WORK” in the boxes associated with those times.

Go through your schedule and write down how you are currently using your time.  You can even track yourself for 7 days if you want to get a more accurate picture.

After completing this exercise you should have an idea how your time is currently being utilized.  The next step is to see where you can find time to build a home business.

If you have a lot of blank spaces it means that you have a lot of spare time.  Count the number of blank spaces that you have and you will be able to calculate how many additional hours that you have to dedicate to building a business.

For instance, if you have 10 blank boxes, that means you have 10 hours that you can dedicate to building a business right now and it will not interfere with anything else that you have going on.

What if you only have a few blank boxes or no boxes at all?  This means that you have little or no spare time to build a business.  You will need to either find a business that can be done in the amount of time that you do have or you will need to look at your schedule and see what you can eliminate from your schedule in order to build a business.

The good news is you don’t necessarily need a whole lot of time to build a business.  There are many home businesses that you can get started with as little as 5 hours a week.

If you do need to free up time, look at what you are currently doing in your schedule that isn’t an absolute priority.  Some of these decisions may be easy for you.  Others may be difficult for you.

For example, you might be part of a bowling league or a softball league.  If you have no time available on your schedule, you are going to have to make a decision.  Which one is more important to you?  Is bowling more important?  Or is building a home business and experiencing the benefits of it more important?

Keep in mind that there may be certain elements of your schedule that you may have to eliminate temporary until you get the business up and running successfully.  Then you will have other resources at your disposal that will allow you to rely less on your personal time so that you can add these elements back to your schedule.

We spent a lot of time on time (no pun intended) because it is your most important and most valuable resource.  The other resources on the list, you can get more of.  However, we all have only 160 hours in a week and once we use those hours, we cannot get them back.

Financial Management

The next step is to look at how much money you have available to building a business.  You want to take a look at the money that you have right now at your disposal that can be invested into a home business.  You also want to look at future income that you have that can be re-invested into a home business.

Take a look at any extra money that you have available in your bank accounts and perhaps physically on your person.

In some cases, while you might not have a lot or even any money at all, you can make up the difference in the form of credit.  You may have friends, family, colleagues and/or associates who would be willing to lend you money as long as you pay it back.  Some may even be willing to lend you the money interest free whenever you are able to pay it back.

Others may want to put you on a monthly schedule or even charge interest.  See which option is best for you and your personal circumstances.

Some may be willing to lend you money in return for a percentage of the business.  They may even decide that they want to run the business with you.  Consider that scenario as well and see if you believe it would be a good fit for you.

If your credit is up to a certain standard, there are even institutions that you can go to where you can borrow the money that you may need.  Banks and other lending institutions are in the business of loaning money to get it back at a return.

There is even a new market known as peer to peer lending where individuals are willing to loan money to other individuals.  A perfect example of this is a company known as Prosper.  You can visit them by going to www.prosper.com to learn more about the service they offer.

While there are some businesses that you can get started with literally no money at all, it’s always best that you have at least some money available.  With no money available as a resource that will limit the options that you have available to grow your business successfully.

How much money will you need to get your business started?  It all depends on what type of business you choose to start.  Some businesses you can get started completely for free.  Some will require an investment of hundreds of dollars.  Others may even require an investment of thousands of dollars.

Also, the amount of money that you will need also depends on how much of the other resources you have at your disposal.  As a general rule, if you have more time available to you and a higher amount of skills at your disposal, you will need less money than someone starting a similar business with less time and lower skills.

In part 2 of home business resources we will look at how to analyze the skills that are going to be necessary in order to get your business up and running.  We will also take a look at some professional resource options that you can consider in helping you to get your business started successfully.

This Lesson’s Action Steps

1. Complete the time inventory chart and identify how many hours you have available to build your home business.
2. If you don’t have enough time, look for areas in your schedule that you can potentially cut out temporarily until you get the business up and running.  Decide what those areas are and whether it is worth sacrificing them for your business.
3. Review all of your finances and figure out how much money you have available to invest in a home business.

Resources

Notes, To-Do Lists and Time Management Tools

Evernote – Manage notes and To-Do lists.
Remember The Milk – Manage notes and To-Do lists.

ToodleDo – Task Management

14Dayz – Time Tracking tool

Timeleft – A time management application from TimeLeft – Countdown, reminder, clock, alarm clock, tray clock, stopwatch, timer, sticker, auction watch and time synchronization utility.