Starting Your Own Business

I have been receiving tons of responses about how to start a home based business. Here's a little story about how I created my company which is operated out of my home. Never ever believe in these sites such as http://money.vkx.biz. Many of these sites are scams. What you can do is create any regular company and operate it from home. To get started, ask yourself these questions: what are you interested? Are you passionate about that interest? What are your core competencies? In other words, what do you do well that you could share and profit from?

I've been in business for myself since 1999 owning my own web design firm in Hawaii. Is was originally suppose to be a hobby while I recover from knee surgery. However, I realized that in this extremely competitive job market to pursue my passion, which is human resources, was to run my own business, thus creating my own career. So shut down 808image in Hawaii, and moved back to Florida. Now re-established it under my own name, and operate it out of my home. However, I do not classify it as "home-business." For example, when advertise my job openings, I place those openings under the categories "professional" or "sales and marketing," not "work from home."

I have three bedroom house with a den. I took the spare room and the den an converted it to office space for myself as well as some of my staff. My sales and marketing team all work from their homes or wherever they are most productive, which can be at Kinko's or Starbucks, as long as they have access to a computer an the Internet. I am building this business on as little capital as you can imagine. I have a laptop and two desktops already in my household, and use those three computers in office space so I don't have to buy any additional equipment.

When it comes to marketing my business, I don't advertise at all. I use sales and networking. My sales and marketing "team" is made up of account executives on a commission only, 1099 bases. I don't have to budget for that labor costs nor pay the payroll taxes. They are on the phones calling on small businesses discussing the how to solve business problems with a web site solution. I call this operating in stealth mode. A stealth fighter approaches really quiet, then makes it noise as it goes by you. The concept here is that I am keeping my business quiet so as to not alert to many of my competitors. As I build a client base and a reputation, then I begin to make some noise.

Much of those home based businesses you see advertised are scams. There are ads out there for being envelope stuffers. You call for more information, and come to find out they want you to send in a "one-time processing fee." I don't believe in that, much like I don't believe in renting additional office space, buying additional office furniture, and paying additional utilities for my business. I just use my home. The fact of the matter is that you can start any business you want with virtually no capital. It just takes asking yourself what am I really good at doing and what am I interested in doing. Take that and use your imagination. Ways of growing business are all around you; you just have to want to see it.