Mistakes to avoid when joining or starting a home business
If you are going to be a part of a home business there are going to be some ups and some downs. Hopefully you will weather the storms and come out ahead both personally and financially. When you do make mistakes, you can learn from them. Even better, you can learn from other people's mistakes and avoid making your own. Here are several common mistakes that you should try to avoid when getting involved in a home business.
Verbal contracts-even if you are working with good friends or family, it is not smart to use verbal contracts for business. The law says that you can hire employees for jobs that last less than a year with no employee contract but why would you want to? It will not take you an hour to write up an employee contract and it can save you immeasurable time and money if you are ever taken to court. You also need to make sure that you have work contracts that are signed by both you and the person you will be working for. If you agree to build a web form for $1000 and every time you show it to your client she asks for another couple of options you could end up building a $2000 web page but only getting paid the grand. Whenever you agree to provide a product or a service get the terms in writing. Failing to do this is a big mistake.
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Non-professionalism-just because you are working from home doesn't excuse you from professionalism. This is especially true if you have employees working for you. If your employees come to work and chat over coffee for the first hour, you are not providing a professional atmosphere. If you have a tutoring service and you are taking personal phone calls or dealing with your children while you are supposed to be tutoring, your clients are not going to feel that great about shelling out $20 or $30 dollars an hour. It is important that you establish an office atmosphere and see that you are not interrupted while work is being done. If you have employees, offer standard breaks, for example, 15 minutes in the morning, 1 hour at lunchtime, and 15 minutes in the afternoon. This will give your employees time to make phone calls, smoke cigarettes, and take care of their other business while you maintain structure and productivity.
Bad advertising decisions-a fact of business is that it takes clients to make money. If you are involved in a home business, do not make the mistake of scrimping on advertising. If you are going to make money you need clients and clients are not just going to find you, you need to actively find them. To find clients, you will need to advertise. Now you probably realize that you need to advertise but you might not have any idea where to begin. The first thing you can do is take good care of the clients that you have. Happy clients will talk to potential clients and word of mouth advertising is about the only free advertising that you will get. The next thing you need to do is determine who your target audience is and how you will get in touch with them. If you are running the tutoring business, you might put fliers up at the local college or post on classified boards where students hang out. If you are guiding fly-fishing trips, put your fliers up at the local fishing shops. Advertising doesn't necessarily have to be expensive but it does have to be smart.
