5 Top Things Baby Boomers Must Do Before Starting a Home Business

Don’t quit your day job just yet.If you are a baby boomer looking to start a home business, there are 5 essentials things you must do first.

Leaving the security of a job with an established 401(k) plan, health insurance or other benefits can create a real tug of war for baby boomers who want to pursue their dreams of owning their own business.

Analyze Your Exit Strategy

At the time of this writing, the youngest of the baby boomers are turning 42 and the oldest are turning 60. No matter where you fall into this group, analyzing and preparing your exit strategy from your job will be crucial to your long-term success as a home business entrepreneur. Do you have adequate savings? If you’re married, will you be able to participate in your spouse’s health insurance?

Create a Financial Plan

How much is your salary now? What are your fixed, variable and frivilous expenses? Creating a solid plan so that you and your family will know exactly what the financial picture will be until your business gets off the ground and starts generating revenue.
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One of the toughest obstacles we face when working from home is making it appear that we’re not, in fact, working from home. When clients call and there are kids screaming in the background, pets barking and meowing and timers going off for laundry and cooking, it doesn’t appear professional. So, how can we appear more professional?

Tip # 1: Have a clean, professional website with your own domain name.
Do not, under any circumstances, have a “free” website hosted on another domain name with other company’s ads all over the place! This is one of the biggest no-no’s out there! Decide, instead, that in order to appear professional, you must invest in a professional website. If you aren’t skilled in web design, hire someone to do it for you or barter with another home-based business owner who does do web design. Choose a domain name that is closely related to your business’s name.

Tip # 2: Invest in a separate phone line or in a distinctive ring tone for that line.
Most phone companies offer a plan where you can have two or more numbers ringing to one phone line with distinctive rings. It’s usually better to have a separate phone line in your office, in order to avoid after-hours phone calls from clients. This also enables you to “shut the door” on work when you’re not there. Use a professional voicemail message or answering machine message and check the messages often.

Tip # 3: Think about how to display your business address.
How are you going to display your physical location? There are a few different options available. Most home-based business owners will say that they accept meetings by appointment only, to discourage clients from “dropping in” while they’re still in their jammies and haven’t had their morning coffee yet. If you don’t want your customers to know you work from home, two other options are using a P.O. Box or attaching a “Suite” number to your address. If you use a P.O. Box, you will have to give your home address out for packages and anything they want to courier to you, but it does provide anonymity and discourages drop-in visitors. If you attach a suite number to your address in order to make it appear a “business office,” make sure you mention to your postal carrier that you’re running a home-based business and that’s why there’s a different address on there.
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Creating a steady income from home can be a daunting process. Being successful from home can often take more work than your regular 9 to 5. But, if you learn to break things down and follow a simple forumla, your home business can give you all the income and time freedom that you are seeking in a work from home business.

My successful business formula involves 5 steps. I follow these same five steps with every person I come into contact with. Having a system not only makes my days more organized, but also it opens up more time for me to enjoy the financial rewards that the system creates.

Here is my simple formula:

Step 1; Collect Leads:

This is an entire article in itself (which is in the works). For the sake of keeping this article on track, I will touch on this only briefly. There are many ways to get leads. You can buy leads, place ads in papers and on the net, use ad words, submit your site to search engines, mail postcards, etc. There are literally 100’s of ways to advertise. The trick is finding a couple of advertising techniques that you like best and that fit your budget and then try them out. Those that bring you the most success can be tweaked further to give you the results you want. Just remember to always test each ad or lead generating technique you use. From my own experience, I like to talk to those that are in my business and find out what they are doing. They have most often been through the trial and error process and can save you some time.

Step 2; Call Leads:

This is the step that most people have reservations about. If you want to be successful in any home business, you must pick up the phone. This does not mean “cold” calling people. I never call anybody that has not asked to hear about my home business. Use your lead generating techniques in step one to create leads that want to hear from you and then contact them. Whether you business costs $5 or $5000 to join, people want to know that there is a real person behind the business that they can consult with questions. Talking to them and establishing a rapport and trust will go a long way to making sure that the prospect joins you in your home business. When still a “rookie” to making calls, it is best to have a script or outline to follow. This is not to say that you read directly from that. Just use it as a guide to keep you on track and in control of the call. Most importantly in regards to calls……LISTEN. Listen and take notes about what the prospect is telling you. Remember, you are trying to get to know this person and establish their trust.
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One of the attractions of working at home is the vision of freedom it invokes — no time clock, no time sheets, and no one to account to for how you spend your time. Yes, it is an attractive proposition, but like so many attractive propositions there is a heavy downside — you are likely wasting a lot of time.

My husband spends time every day filling out these large spreadsheets to account for his day. He works for a large engineering company and his day often encompasses work on a variety of projects for different clients. He loathes the activity and I have always dismissed it as a waste of time — that is until my home business recently took off and I realized there simply wasn’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all my goals.

I now have my own spread sheet and agenda for the day and I have improved my productivity and reduced my stress immeasurably. If you don’t think you need a schedule for your home business then think again — and read on.

After a spate of relatively unproductive days when my “To Do” list seemed to grow exponentially every time I looked at it I knew something had to change.

Granted I was going through a rough patch. My home business was experiencing growing pains and taking up more than the usual time, my four-year-old was only in preschool part-time, my husband wasn’t pulling his weight on the home front, and my extended family was experiencing a number of crises. But I’m also old enough to know there is never a perfect time in life — you just live the one you’ve got. These are simply the problems I’m dealing with this year. Next year these problems will be traded in for new fresh ones.
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