Working
At Home: The First Year Revisited
by: Kirk Bannerman
For
reasons that escape me now, I kept sort of a diary during my first
full year of working at a home based business. It was nothing close
to being a complete daily diary, but was more of a collection of
scribbles about things that I felt were worthy of note at the time.
Since quite a bit of time has passed since then, I decided to revisit
these notes.
In
no particular order, here are some of the things that I had made
note of.
Choosing
the path...in the beginning, my enthusiasm was very high (perhaps
too high?) and I was chasing off on several different home-based
business opportunities at the same time (exhibiting the "dog in
a meat market" syndrome, I suppose) and not focusing my efforts
enough to be successful at any single one of them. I finally reigned
myself in and focused on a single work at home business opportunity.
In
other notes I find reference to emotional and/or psychological issues
that I experienced and are probably typical for most people when
starting a home based business. When working at home a person can,
at times, experience a feeling of isolation which is probably brought
on by the lack of interaction of a work force environment.
There
were also periods of doubt in the early going...did I pick a viable
business opportunity?...am I doing the right things to develop my
business?...when will I start making a profit?, and so on.
Many
of the entries in my so-called diary had to do with the proverbial
"two steps forward and one step backward" thing and the ever-looming
temptation to become discouraged. Although I didn't appreciate it
at the time, it is now obvious that as long as you have more steps
forward than backward you will eventually get ahead! Isn't hindsight
wonderful?
Other
entries reflect the fact that relatively minor events can seem huge
in the early stages of developing a work at home business and can
really contribute to an emotional roller coaster ride. For example,
if you are just starting out and you have two customers/clients
and you lose one...that's a 50% drop! However, if you fast-forward
in time to the point where you have hundreds of customers/clients
and you lose one...that's just a mere fraction of 1%! Same event,
just at a different point in time.
Looking
back on it now, some of the stuff I recorded now seems humorous,
but I'm pretty sure that was not the case at the time I made the
notations.