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Ensure Your Own Success
Being organised is a major step to success and the most important things to organise are YOURSELF and your PLAN. What do you want to accomplish? Is it a new home or to fund your children's further education, or a million and one other things I am...
Entrepreneurs Ask: As a Novice Entrepreneur, How Do I Feel Less Overwhelmed?
Great question! Overwhelm is very common even among the most veteran entrepreneurs, so take solace in the fact that you are not alone. With the ever-increasing numbers of new entrepreneurial endeavors, and therefore new entrepreneurs, there are many...
How To Use The Past, Future, And Present In Attaining Success
Did you know that your past, present, and future can affect directly or indirectly your outlook in life?
THE PAST
Have you ever done something that is so regrettable you couldn't forgive yourself? Have you ever made a mistake that up to the...
Small Home Business: Ways To Increase Sales Without Money!
Many home business owners lament they don't have enough cash to pay for online advertising to propel their business forward. Before slipping down this foolhardy slope, make sure you are being the best you can be and doing the best with what you...
Ten Commandments of Proper E-mailing
E-mail is without a doubt the best business-building tool to hit the home-based business arena since the fax! Why? Because it is low cost, instantaneous, flexible and absolutely anyone who can type can learn how to use it to their advantage. But...
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How Our Home Based Business Saved Us
If you had asked me two years before my wife and I began our home catering business whether I would consider being my own boss, I would have laughed out loud and scoffed at the idea. The company I worked for seemed to be doing well and I was recognized for the “creative genius” that I was. I was contented as a Web Developer in a multi-national corporation, lost in my own world in cyberspace. The pay was alright and there wasn’t any reason to think of other means of income. Looking back, I realized that I was in a comfort zone and being there shut my eyes to all the opportunities that were knocking at my door. Things were about to change though.
The signs were classic of a company in trouble. Emails instructing us to take cost-reduction seriously, profit sharing withheld, no year-end bonus, a freeze on all pay rises. Then, it was crunch-time. There was talk of “staff re-designation”. One year later, it became a full blown staff elimination exercise. No retrenchment benefits, no nothing.
My wife didn’t really think I was serious about the company being in trouble until I started having the “classic” symptoms of Middle-Aged-Man-With-Job-Threatened-Syndrome. I couldn’t eat or sleep worrying about how we would make ends meet on my wife’s salary as a kindergarten teacher, which wasn’t much. The stress and fear were taking its toll on my health.
It became clear that there was no way the company would keep me for more than a year and with job applicants half my age working for even lesser pay, my wife and I did some serious talking. We came up with a couple of ideas we thought we could do to earn extra cash and prepare us for the tough times ahead. We eventually decided to start our own home catering business, cooking and delivering dinner to people who were either too busy, didn’t have the time or the liking to cook.
Armed only with the confidence that my wife was a great cook, we started. Our first obstacle turned out to be our minds. We were so caught up in our comfort zone for so long that every little decision seemed like a monumental task. At the back of our minds, we
didn’t want to be in the position we were in. We struggled with the fear of change and the unknown, but we carried on, telling ourselves that even if I did get another job, it was only a matter of time before the same cycle would repeat itself. We HAD to take this step and take control of our lives and our earning power.
We made countless mistakes in our first six months, but let me tell you… when we got our first customer, I felt such relief I slept like a baby that night. It was my first night of peaceful sleep in a year. It wasn’t the sixty dollars profit that we made. It was the fact that we had finally started to chart our own destiny, free from the whims and fancies of corporate management.
A year into our business, the inevitable happened. I was approached by my company to discuss “re-designation”. I told them that I knew what they meant and I was prepared to leave. I was the last one in my division to finally say goodbye. Thankfully, my wife and I saw this coming a year ago and readied ourselves for it, so when the time came, we just let go and set our sights on our home catering business.
It’s been almost two years now and we’ve gone through some really trying times learning the ropes of managing a home business. We’ve had to adjust our attitudes and daily lives but we’re doing fine, and our financial situation has gone from hopeless to healthy. What started out as a way to earn extra money has turned out to be our main source of income.
I hope my sharing gives you the encouragement and inspiration to NOT LOSE HOPE. I wouldn’t recommend waiting until you were in trouble before you considered starting your own home business, but maybe like us, it takes a storm to help us break free of our comfort zone.
About the Author
Andrew Shim is the owner and editor of PositiveMoneyIdeas.com a website which offers FREE IDEAS for those interested in starting their own freelance or home based business and PositiveTones.com , a FREE resource website for Positive Living.
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