How seriously should you take your home based business?

Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 11:04 am  
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Alright, I admit that this might seem like a particularly stupid question. But you would be surprised at how casual too many people are when it comes to setting up their home based business. And I am not referring to their diligence when it comes to goal setting, reading mindset books, or tapping into the training.

I’m talking about the work that must be done before you even get to that stage.

It really is critical that you are properly set up from the very first. Just because you work an online business from home, it doesn’t mean that the you are exempt from the same rules that apply to brick and mortar businesses. You can’t hide online.

Now, I make this point for a couple of reasons. Firstly, you are running a legitimate business, and for taxation and compliance purposes, it is important that you dot the ‘i”s and cross the ‘t”s. Pain in the neck though it is, the set up administration must be done for you to operate your business legally (can you say “random audit”?).

Secondly, from a psychological perspective, if you don’t make the commitment to set yourself up properly from the first, if you are “dabbling”, or just “having a bit of a go to see what happens”, I promise you, you will not make a cent from your business, and you will waste a lot of time, energy and money to figure this out. Being set up as you intend to go on is a critical element of a sound business strategy.

A profitable business is a marathon. It is a long term commitment. The network marketing industry does a very good job of facilitating the notion that you can expect to see results and profits immediately after purchasing the product and signing on the dotted line.

Now, this is not a bald faced lie, because some people (very, very few I’ll add) do run their businesses hard and smart straight up, and enjoy incredible results. But for the average person coming into business for the first time, this is highly unlikely to be the case. Tempering your expectations and having a realistic understanding of what you are getting involved with, and what your commitment is to the process is also important.

So, where to begin?

I can speak about what this process looks like for someone in Australia, the general principles will be the same wherever you are, but you will need to seek specific advice from your own local tax professional or accountant, in the context of your local business laws, and existing financial and employment circumstances.

The first thing you will want to do is set up a company structure to run your business through. We personally use a Trust, which provides us with protection from personal liability (very important, we live in a highly litigious society, unfortunately). Check with your own accountant regarding what would be the most appropriate structure for you. Most accountants are very helpful regarding the steps you need to take, and the information you will need to supply to get this going.

The next thing you will need to do is set up a business bank account in the name of your newly formed company. You must keep your business and personal finances separate.

Check with your own banking institution regarding products that will be appropriate for you. Evaluate business banking facilities that have a credit card attached, and think about whether they have a rewards program that includes Frequent Flyer points.

If you are working your business Internationally, you will be wanting to attend conferences and company events. Having a Frequent Flyer rewards program can help you with the cost of your air tickets, or may enable you to upgrade on long haul flights.

When you establish a company structure and business bank account, you will need to apply for an ABN (Australian Business Number). You can do this fairly simply by logging on to www.ato.com

The first reason why you will need an ABN, is to comply with Government regulations for all business owners. The second reason is for the purposes of verifying an online merchant account.

As you can imagine, money laundering is an illegal practice that is rampant online, and merchant facilities such as Paypal are legally required to make sure that their account holders are not using accounts for this purpose. When you set up a business account with Paypal (or any other merchant facility), you will be asked to supply your business bank account details as well as your ABN. Failure to do this can lead to your funds being frozen. This is obviously not something that you want to have happen.

Next, you will want to make sure that you have an economical communication plan in place. It is a good idea to establish a phone line just for your business (nothing is more unprofessional than having your five year old pick up the phone to a business prospect). If you have a separate phone and broad band account in your business name, you will be able to run these expenses through your business.

It is possible to claim a percentage of your home power bill on your business tax return, but before you go ahead and put this in place – check with your accountant. Be aware that if you sell your home at any point in the future, the tax office will put up their hand to take a chunk of capital gains tax on the sale. It may not be worth your while to run utilities through your business if you own your home.

You will need to also seek advice from your accountant about the necessity for you to submit a quarterly BAS (Business Activity Statement) to the ATO. Your own particular circumstances will be the deciding factor for this decision.

Keeping an accurate set of books on your business is mandatory. It does not need to be overly complex, and there are some very good bookkeeping programs available to make this task simpler. Quick Books is a great program that is very user friendly, and if you are a Mac user, MYOB is probably the best call.

This is one area though, that I would suggest you outsource. It can be very time consuming, and it is not a sales generating activity, so unless you are experienced at bookkeeping, and can input and reconcile your own data quickly and with a minimum of fuss, I would definitely be outsourcing it. Your primary focus in your business should always be on the activities that generate leads, and convert sales. ALWAYS.

Either way, you will need to keep all tax invoices, tax receipts, and bank and credit card statements together in chronological order, so that it is easy for whoever does your books to work through them quickly and methodically. Otherwise it will cost you a fortune in bookkeeping fees, or wasteful hours of your own time.

So, that is a quick guide to some of the issues you will want to be working on and settling straight up, before you get too immersed in your training and marketing. It will give you a clean slate to move forward with, and allow you to get on with the business of making money.

Make today a great one.

Respectfully,

How seriously should you take your home based business?

Ian Shilton, Duke Street, Myrtleford, Victoria Australia 3737.
Email Me Here: ianshiltonpromarketing@gmail.com
Meet Me Here: http://IanShiltonMarketing.com/AboutMe
Join Me Here: http://IanShiltonMarketing.com/Welcome
Ask Me Here: http://IanShiltonMarketing.com/FAQ

NOW … If you are serious about creating a real, substantial, wealth building income for yourself, CLICK HERE. My colleague Jay Kubassek has an important message for you.

How seriously should you take your home based business?

Click here … to see Jay’s inspiring message.

Self Employed And Rich 7

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 1:53 pm  
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Day 7: “Nine Keys to Choosing the Right Company — a Company That Can Provide $1,000-$100,000 A Month Residual Income in Less than 12 Months”

Online businesses are no different to normal brick and mortar businesses. If you do your due diligence and follow a simple game plan, you’ll find a business that is the right fit for you. Here are the crucial questions you need answers to…

  1. An Unselfish Mission: Is the Company involved in any charities or programs to help others? Is the company doing something to benefit others in the future? Do they understand the universal principal of “what goes around comes around” or are they just in it for a quick buck? You’ve got to have a mission that puts the success of others first. Remember, helping other people to get what they want is the key to getting what you want. At CCPro, our goal is to help 100 people become millionaires within the next three years, and we’re on track to reach that goal. Plus CCPro assists a number of charities. Look at the leadership of the company. Are the leaders people of integrity?

  2. A Go-Ahead Industry: Direct Sales via Network Marketing. No other business model offers so much potential with so few barriers to entry (like start-up costs).

  3. A Fair Compensation Plan: Direct Sales rules, but only if it has a residual income based compensation plan. Stay away from the ‘two-up’ compensation plan found in most direct sales companies. This compensation plan is not fair and does not harbor team spirit because your over-rides on partners is limited to their first two customers.


    Off-course, “fair” means different things to different people but the bottom line is that if you are going to be marketing a product for commission, you want to be earning a high commission bonus upfront as well as a residual income on the back end. Most compensation plans either have high upfront income and low residuals, or the other way round, with low upfront income and high residuals.


    You need to find a company with an equal balance of the two. 

Why is this so important when searching for a home-based business? When you start out in a new business, unless you have a great deal of capital behind you to “tide you over”, you will need to make high upfront commissions. Because otherwise you will find it impossible to build momentum.

  4. Products That Are In Demand & Can Stand-Alone: The long term profitability and viability of any company will be determined by the actual value of the products being sold. Remove the business opportunity and step back and examine the product on its own merits and ask yourself: “Would I want this product, would this product benefit me (or anyone else for that matter) if it didn’t have a business opportunity attached?” If you can’t honestly say that the product would be of value to you for its own sake then you are, in effect, selling buckets of air. And this means that the product is going to have a very short lifespan, because no one really wants it.


    Forty percent of the products promoted by CarbonCopyPro are sold to product customers only, i.e. people not looking for a business opportunity. If the product being marketed won’t stand on its own, in other words if no one would buy it without the money-making incentive, then it’s not the right product.

 Almost every day, new companies which are simply copying other companies spring out of nowhere.


    Example: Does the world really need another weight loss or vitamin company? Are people crying out for another juice from a berry found only at the base of the Himalayas? The reality is “no”, because the marketplace is already flooded with this type of product. Plus, you’ll be competing against companies which have had products on the market for 50 or 60 years.

 So what you need to find is a product that is unique and hard to copy. Because if it isn’t hard to copy, someone else will come along and try to replicate it very quickly.

  5. A Worthy Mentor: Find a mentor. Someone you can trust. Someone who has a system. Someone who is already getting the results you’re looking for. This has to be someone who is willing to listen to your needs and actually cares about your success. He/she must also have a financial interest in your success.

  6. Turnkey Duplicatable Marketing System: Use an Attraction Marketing system that does the sorting, selling, training, and follow-up for you. This system must not only attract (right keywords, ads etc) the right type of person (entrepreneur vs get-rich-quick lottery mentality), but be able to present the information in such a way that is clear, concise, to the point and not full of hype fluff or crazy promises.


    Then figure out how to get 100-200 QUALITY targeted prospects into your marketing pipeline EACH week. (Remember, there are close to a million people looking for businesses every week and 79 million people in the USA alone plan to start their own business in the next 3-5 years!)

  7. Up To The Minute Training: Make sure you have access to one-on-one, and group training designed to dramatically shorten your learning curve and reduce the number of variables that come with “trial and error”. The CCPro system is designed to “share” the knowledge and experience with EVERY member through the daily training calls and forum. You can listen to the top producers working their businesses LIVE, 4 days a week, as if they were sitting in the office with you.

  8. Real Support: Unparalleled support is mandatory. With Carbon Copy Pro you get a team support list of 40 contacts and EVERYONE is highly motivated to help you reach the level of financial prosperity that you’re seeking, because we’re compensated extremely well in order to ensure that you do! If you do well, we do well.

  9. Plans To Expand: Make sure that whichever company you partner with has room to expand. If it is already close to reaching full market penetration then eventually your competition will become too fierce. There will be too many fish in a small pond. Also, if you are marketing online, can your product be shipped worldwide? Many nutritional products suffer from a maze of complicated legalities in different regions which may prevent you building a global business (and they are also perishable).

    Information products are not normally subject to the same restrictions and are thus much more suitable for global online marketing. So look at the products you are planning to market, ask yourself if they can be marketed globally, and find out if the company has plans to expand globally in the future.

The average person in the home business industry will typically try out 7 different business opportunities before finding the right one. This not only wastes time, effort and money but creates huge frustration both to the individual and everyone close to them.

If you choose your new business using the 7 key questions in this report as a template, you’ll be better able to make the right decision first time round and create the ideal foundation for your future success.

This concludes your 7-day bootcamp. If you have any questions, you know how to reach us…

Our only question to you is, “What are you waiting for?” Learn more about earning a multiple six-figure income from home with CarbonCopyPRO…

Respectfully,

Self Employed And Rich 7

Ian Shilton, Duke Street, Myrtleford, Victoria Australia 3737.
Email Me Here: ianshiltonpromarketing@gmail.com
Meet Me Here: http://IanShiltonMarketing.com/AboutMe
Join Me Here: http://IanShiltonMarketing.com/Welcome
Ask Me Here: http://IanShiltonMarketing.com/FAQ

NOW … If you are serious about creating a real, substantial, wealth building income for yourself, CLICK HERE. My colleague Jay Kubassek has an important message for you.

Self Employed And Rich 7

Click here … to see Jay’s inspiring message.