In a struggling economy, like the one we are experiencing now, a lot of people think it’s a bad time to start a work from home or home based business. But that’s just not true. Not true at all. It is really a great time to start a home-based business – especially one in the solar energy business.

Working From Home is Viable with a Solar Energy Business

Starting a home based business or a work from home business is one of the best ways to secure your financial future. People all across America free themselves every day from the oppressiveness of the daily 9 to 5 job. There are many ways throughout the renewable energy industry where you can do it too.

Fossil fuels and other non-renewable energy sources are running out. Solar power is quickly moving to replace these antiquated energy sources. Green collar jobs and the energy sector are growing faster than ever before. As nonrenewable energy supplies dwindle, green solutions like solar energy will continue to grow in order to meet our higher energy demands.

What could be better than combining solar energy with work from home business?

The short answer is nothing. Green is growing and so are the options for a home based business. These two fields together make the perfect opportunity for a self-motivated entrepreneur. If you’re a self motivated, hard working and have a taste for adventure then you can start working from home in the solar energy business. Entrepreneurs are self-starters who drive America. Solar energy needs these entrepreneurs to help fill the void that will inevitably be left by the failing supplies of fossil fuels.

You can build a green business right from your living room. Starting a home based business involving renewable energy is possible. And it’s possible to do it with minimal up-front costs. A good business shouldn’t be a risk. Green energy only makes up 2 percent of the energy market. That means there is a lot of room to grow. With a field that has so much room to grow as renewable energy does, there shouldn’t be a requirement for an upfront investment or a fee to become an associate. Companies in the coming months will be dying for help as wind, solar, and many other industries really take off.

No pun intended but the future of residential solar energy is very bright. There is a wide open market for eager start up companies to establish new “Green Googles”. There is a huge and growing market for new entrepreneurs to start a fresh with something new.

For everyone a little down on their luck in this down economy, there will be ample opportunities to start a small business for energy and solar power will lead the way into the Green Economy. Throughout the rest of 2009 and in the coming years, green jobs like those created by solar energy will continue to grow in number.

Fossil fuels are going away and the world will look to alternative, renewable sources to drive their lives. Good entrepreneurs can sense an opportunity. A work from home or home based business in the renewable or solar energy sector is an opportunity. With no investment needed and a future this bright, there is no reason not to invest.

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This article is intended for probably your significant other or spouse to read… I felt compelled to write it talking to them about your needs since my marriage went south due to the lack of much of this. If you currently don’t have one, give it to a family member or friend and/or save for Mr. Right later! Enjoy and hope it helps!

Did you know (you, meaning the non-entrepreneurial spouse of an entrepreneur) that your entrepreneurial spouse (or significant other – just as important in this scenario) takes on a huge responsibility when they start their own business?

Granted, some of the smaller, home based type business owners could be out there just to make a few extra bucks for fun or they’re doing their business for a hobby, not truly a serious business venture.

However, I’m not talking about them here, I’m talking about actual entrepreneurs (home based or not) who are in business to turn a profit AND provide products and services they are passionate about.

I’m also talking about the ones who are your significant others or spouses (so forward this to them if this is the other party – you’ll be glad you did) in which case YOU are also NOT an entrepreneur yourself and frankly wouldn’t want to be….is this you? Did you know that your spouse may not be getting the kind of support they need in order to be fully confident and successful in their business? (yes, by you) And in order to be completely successful at running your own business CONFIDENCE is the key!

When you have a job working for someone else, often you can succeed without that much confidence but when it’s your own business…there’s absolutely NO way.

Did you know that your spouse may not know how to communicate this need to you?

Now, two things can happen here….

1 – you won’t care and you’ll stop reading this or 2 – you’ll care but you’ll have no idea if this is true or even how to find out what your spouse needs exactly (hopefully you’re still reading…)

If #1 occurred then you’re probably on your way to divorce anyway so your situation is most likely not fixable.

If you’re in alignment with #2 though then GREAT! But now what?

There are basically 2 things you can do to support your spouse in business (even if you don’t have any involvement in their business, know what they do or want to know).

You can either take Action or Non-Actions. Actions consist of ways to physically help out or support your spouse.

Non-Actions consist of ways to emotionally and mentally help out or support your spouse.

Your spouse unfortunately needs both in order to feel fully supported, loved and encouraged (that’s the hard part, it requires some work).

But let’s break it down…

Actions

o helping – when asked for help

o learning – about what they do and how else you can support them

o listening – to requests, feelings, emotions and needs o loving – at all times in various ways that are noticeable

Non-actions o understanding – they need to do it ‘their way’

o giving – of your energy when they need it the most regardless if asked

o sharing – feelings, emotions, questions and concerns

o expecting – nothing but complete and utter happiness among all

Of course there’s so much more to it than this but that’s what marriage counselors are for right?

No, seriously…the one way to learn better how to communicate and support your entrepreneurial spouse is to start the dialog, practice this stuff, ask what they need, learn more about what others are doing and then get help as needed

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Follow Your Passion

It is not enough to want your own business. You must find the business that you are passionate about! Your business must be in alignment with your personal goals, values and passion. When I was growing up, I was heavily involved in theatre and dancing. I toyed with the idea of obtaining a degree in musical theatre and moving to New York to pursue a career on Broadway. However, I was cautioned not to do this unless I was wildly passionate about it because the rejection was so incredible and the industry was so competitive. Do these obstacles sound familiar? They are very similar to those experienced by entrepreneurs. However, when you do something that you are truly passionate about, it’s easy to get out of bed and feel excited and energized by your work! In addition, it is much easier to find ways to stand out in a competitive market and to do great work for your clients.

Have a Vision

In business, it is critical to pay attention to the right details. Planning is crucial to success. It’s a well-known axiom that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and yet I regularly hear from entrepreneurs who do not plan! Without a plan in place, it is too easy to get distracted by whatever happens to come your way. If the opportunities (seminars, speaking engagements, networking opportunities, article requests, etc) are not in alignment with your vision, they will take you off course, and you may not meet your end goal and your vision will become, well… blurred! Think about this before you say “yes” to the next thing that comes your way. If it is not going to help support your goals for this year, month, or week, your decision should be very easy. Just say no.

Find a Way to Be Held Accountable

Many of us go into business to be able to flex our creative muscle. We like coming up with wonderful ideas, but implementing them is not as fun as the big-picture thinking! Our new idea sounds great, and the potential revenue is exciting, but the tasks we need to do to get there are overwhelming and we can’t seem to make any headway on the project! So we procrastinate and find other things to occupy our time, until we eventually take the wonderful creative idea off our “to do” list because we don’t want to or know how to do the work to get us there. This is a waste of your creative spirit! Successful entrepreneurs find ways to be held accountable, whether it’s through membership in a round table or mastermind group, forming an advisory board, entering a formal partnership or hiring a coach to keep them on track.

Spend Your Time on High-Payoff Tasks

Everyone knows that in order to stay in business, we must continue to bring in revenue. However, many entrepreneurs spend too much of their time doing activities that don’t generate income! So what is an entrepreneur to do? Delegate! By outsourcing all the tasks that don’t include generating money or building relationships, you will be able to use your newly found time to make more money! Your time for high-payoff activities (planning, forecasting, developing your marketing funnel, training, and so forth) will increase and in turn, your productivity will increase. There are many virtual professionals who you can hire to do the work you need to outsource and could include anything from accounting to administration and beyond. Once you do this the first time, be prepared to be addicted to this concept!

Focus

How many projects do you have going on at any one time? Or worse, how many businesses are you running at one time? I recently met a woman who has three businesses, and she was complaining that none of them were doing well. Gee, I wonder why? Having too many projects at one time, particularly if you do not have a way of managing each of them properly, means that you’re likely to become overwhelmed. Pick a project or two and focus on those. You will feel so great to knock something out and will be motivated to continue onto your next task. If you are spread too thin, I can guarantee you that you will sabotage your chances of meeting your goals.

After assessing where you are in these five lessons, you can start to see what you need to focus on. Whether you feel confused, struggle with self-confidence or lack tangible results, I suggest taking action to find out if you’re following your passion and determine your measuring stick for success. If you are easily distracted or overwhelmed, I suggest finding a coach who can help you align your goals, priorities and values to create the life and business you desire. By paying attention to these key areas, you can start to shift to creating a business that fits your lifestyle, not one that dictates it, which is one of my personal measures of success.

Copyright © 2009 Meredith Liepelt

Meredith Liepelt, President of Rich Life Marketing, publishes Smart Marketing, a free bi-weekly ezine featuring marketing tips, insider secrets and thought provoking articles designed to help the busy female entrepreneur become known as an expert in her field, build trust with clients and prospects and generate more income than ever before. Claim your free subscription today at http://www.richlifemarketing.com

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I’ve done the same thing. I’ve invested more money than I care to admit to learn how to grow my business. And, I grew my business to a point that many would consider incredibly successful. But, what I didn’t realize is that I was growing the business on a cracked foundation. Why? Because I listened to others more than I listened to myself. I tried to model others, more than I created a unique model that worked for me. I did what I thought I should do rather than what was 100% right for me and my life. I allowed some of my decisions to be made from my ego, rather than my heart.

You may find this ironic to hear from the woman who is known for her authenticity and for being a pioneer in conscious entrepreneurship. It surprised me, too, when with the help of my spiritual teacher I looked more closely at the business I had created and saw many things about it (and myself) that needed to shift.

What scared me the most, when I realized I hadn’t been listening to my SELF, is how many other people this is happening to. I teach about conscious entrepreneurship, I make it a discipline to be awake and aware to what’s really happening in my business. I focus on the conscious journey I’m on. And, yet I was asleep in some ways. I felt such compassion for myself that I hadn’t truly listened to the depths of my soul and what it was saying to me, and I felt compassion for all entrepreneurs who are asleep in some way in their business.

So, I’ve been on a journey of learning to listen to myself at a deeper level. And, I invite you to join me on this journey, too. I want to share four of the ways I’ve been deepening my ability to listen to my self. And, conveniently, they spell S.E.L.F…

Silence In a world filled with noise, noise and more noise… silence truly is golden. As entrepreneurs, we’re overwhelmed by email, phone calls, TV, radio, social media, blogs, teleclasses, a long “to do” list, etc. And, it’s all draws your focus to the external. Yet, in order to succeed as a happy, fulfilled, successful conscious entrepreneur your focus needs to be inside of yourself. Silence is how this happens. So, today, please take five minutes to sit in silence. Breathe deeply and tune into your internal world. Enjoy the silence and time to simply be with yourself.

Evaluation Rather than rushing from one thing to another, chasing creative ideas as quickly as they arrive, allow yourself to evaluate everything. With each step you take in your business, be conscious about what’s happening. Does it feel right? Is it working? Is it fun and easy? Did you say “yes” when you wanted to say “no”? Is it worth it? Is it profitable? Too often, entrepreneurs get so excited about what’s next, that they move forward too fast and say “yes” too often. The biggest gift you can give yourself is to honestly evaluate what you’ve done and what you want to do to make sure it is completely aligned with you, your business and your life.

Listening Listening piggy backs on silence. Once you turn your focus inward to be present with your own beautiful being, it’s the perfect time and space in which to listen to your heart. For entrepreneurs, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the external world of money, success models, marketing, networking, creating, etc. But, none of the external aspects of your business will come together with grace if you don’t take time to listen to what’s TRUE for you.

Focus on Freedom Every decision you make in your business needs to bring you closer to Freedom! And not only financial freedom; but freedom in every area of your life. If you make a decision in your business that robs you of a freedom you want in your life, it’s not the right decision to make. Focusing exclusively on financial freedom can lead to overwhelm, confusion, exhaustion and frustration. When you focus on freedom on every level… financial, spiritual, physical and emotional… you will be guided to make the right decisions for your self.

I encourage you to write these four principles on a sticky note or index card right now and place it somewhere near your computer. Use it as a reminder to be silent, evaluate, listen and focus on freedom as you travel the path of conscious entrepreneurship.

Copyright © 2009 Christine Kloser

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A lack of skill, ability and experience in certain business areas need not be a barrier to success and starting your own business. The personal qualities exerted by a small business owner overcoming deficiencies over and over again are vital and present in many entrepreneurs much more so that specific technical knowledge.

Not everyone is a master of all business attributes in fact very few are. Certainly being a master of all is a fantastic position but unrealistic while certain personal qualities are essential to fight the inevitable battles to come. Business battles the successful entrepreneur wins.

Businesses that have grown and become medium sized and bigger are not reliant on the business owner entirely. Employees are engaged with specialist skills and abilities to develop and grow the business. A sole trader just starting out has to settle for a comfortable living or have the ability to grow the business to the point where more specialist abilities can be added to the business.

Most small business owners who start a new business do so in an area where that small business owner has some knowledge, experience and skill. It is a natural progression having acquired the business knowledge and experience to use those abilities to build the business under self employment rules rather than earn profits for an employer.

The personal qualities a small business owner possesses are more likely to determine the level of success. Abilities such as hard work, determination, persistence, intuition, tolerance and aggression can be the bedrock of success. But the road to success is not all slam wham bang for the entrepreneur. Small business owners invariably work longer and harder than employees. An employee works for wages and an adequate work performance is enough.

A small business owner is more likely to be on the job at first light, miss the coffee and dinner break and twelve hours later announce he has to finish off for the day because he has to go home and do the business accounting books that he started on Sunday. Determination and persistence go hand in glove with success. Every new business runs into problems at some time or reaches a stage where the business owner needs to be completely focused and stick with a strategy to make the plans work.

Things go wrong from time to time; its normal, determination and persistence are valuable qualities to see through these times. Aggression in forcing through a business plan may sometimes be the only viable option. Not physical violence but the heightened state of anxiety to push through the plan and make it work with controlled aggression and passion. On the other side of the coin there will be times when the small business owner has to exercise tolerance and just go with the flow.

Many small start up businesses go out of business within 2 to 3 years of starting a new business. A major cause is under capitalisation which basically means they run out of money. Liquidity is a major area of concern for every small business entrepreneur and a cautious approach to a new business can be of considerable value.

There is a strong tendency for a new business start up to borrow money and buy new equipment just to get started. Such businesses are taking a major risk the plans will work. Some plans do work but rarely it is a smooth path and a better option is to build the business and reinvest profits made.

A more cautious approach would be to start a new business without borrowing substantial funds because if the small business owner has the ability to make a success of the business and make money then they can usually do so without external funding and use the profits made to build the business in the future.

The sound reason for a small business or a start up business to borrow money is to already be showing a good financial performance and use extra funds to speed up future success while borrowing funds with no track record is a gamble and a gamble which fails only too often.

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How many times has a statement similar to that come out of your mouth? I know for me that it’s happened more often than I care to recount. I am a recovering perfectionist who used to utter some variation of the above sentence with great regularity.

What I’ve discovered in my time as an Internet entrepreneur is that my need for perfection in my products or marketing materials is simply another excuse to procrastinate. Yep, when I try and convince myself that the ebook needs more copy editing or that my website needs just a few more pages to make it say just what I want it to say, all I’m doing is creating plausible excuses to put something off for a few more days, or even weeks or months. Why?

Because inaction is safe — you’re not putting yourself out there to the world to face possible criticism. The longer you excuse yourself from taking action, however, the more difficult it becomes to build a business and create the kind of life you want for yourself.

Don’t let yourself fall for your own fabricated excuses. Stop waiting for perfection. It’s never going to arrive. Better to release something that may not be perfect than to release nothing at all. How much money can you make on an ebook that no one knows about? Last time I checked, it wasn’t much!

Sure, you may fall under the scrutiny of other perfectionists in the Internet world who are gleefully waiting to tear you apart by pointing out your errors. Thank them for their constructive feedback, create a correction log, and let the criticism fall off of you like water off a duck’s back. In my experience, those critics who have the leisure time to point out the flaws of others really aren’t doing much with their own lives and businesses. That’s why they have the free time to correct the errors of others.

The whole notion of how perfectionism was holding me back was aptly illustrated at a Coachville conference I attended several years ago. The late Thomas Leonard, founder of Coachville, had brought up on stage a very successful Internet entrepreneur to speak to us about how he had found a great product to sell online and the process he used to uncover the hungry target market who would pay handsomely for the material he was selling. We were all given the 12-page handout of the long sales letter that was used to sell the product, and many of us were taking copious notes.

However, I noticed the guy next to me, an engineer, wasn’t taking notes. Instead it appeared he was going through the sales letter and was making grammatical and punctuation corrections. He disappeared during our next break, and when I returned to my seat afterwards, I discovered that he had returned as well, but seemed to be highly agitated.

Without waiting for an invitation, he proceeded to tell me what had happened over the break that had gotten him so upset. He showed me his copy of the sales letter and the corrections he had made and said that he’d gone up to the speaker during the break and offered to give him the corrections to the sales letter. The speaker took a look and told him, “No, thanks.”

The engineer couldn’t believe that this speaker wouldn’t take advantage of all the work that he (the engineer) had done to correct the sales copy. The engineer thought the speaker was being rather foolish and apparently told the speaker that he was being short-sighted not to take advantage of the offered corrections.

The speaker informed the engineer that the sales letter in question was making him $67,000 per month in sales and that he had no intention of “fixing” a good thing. Furthermore, the speaker explained that because he had worked so hard on crafting the wording of the sales letter and that the letter was bringing him so many sales that he’d be foolish to tinker with any portion of it.

Apparently the engineer left the conversation with the speaker in a huff and returned to his seat, still steaming, and still convinced that the speaker was making a grave mistake by not taking his copy editing advice. The engineer was so blinded by the need to be perfect and be right that he was blocking his path to online success. I bet today that he’s still tweaking his sales copy or his product and has yet to do anything with coaching business.

So, which do you want to be? The engineer with the grammatically correct sales letter that never sees the light of day, or the Internet entrepreneur making $67,000 per month off a product that has a sales letter with grammatical and punctuation mistakes?

Don’t let your need to be perfect hold you back any longer from taking the action you need to release your product or service to the world. In most cases, taking action, even though it might be a bit flawed, is always better than no action.

Copyright © 2009 OnlineBizU.com

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Although starting an online business does not guarantee a steady income, it does allow you to do what you enjoy doing, or what you are interested in. Plus, running your own online business allows for more flexibility in terms of times and working hours as compared to the strict, rigid work hours employees must abide by. But because of the modern-era internet boom, starting an online business has never been more lucrative.

Ever since the advent of the internet, it has been evolving at an exponential pace and has attracted more and more people every year. As of March 31, 2009, approximately 6,710,029,070 users access the internet on a regular basis – over 99% of the world’s population. This drastic figure only emphasizes the innumerable opportunities that have emerged for starting an online business since the dawn of the internet, and marks a time of a more technological and computer savvy world that relies on the computer more than ever before. But before you click your mouse and begin building your online business, you should know that researching is vital and essential to having a successful business; you must become intimately familiar with whatever facet of business you envision. This requires dedication, commitment, and passion on your part. Books, e-books, magazine articles, and online articles are among the plethora of resources that can and will help jump start your business and allow it to compete in the real world. On the other hand, self-employment offers you more chances to explore and challenge your limits, without having to deal with the pressures of running your own business.

In a way, to become self-employed successfully you must adopt a system, a sort of scientific approach to your job: hypothesizing, researching, testing, re-testing, analyzing, drawing a conclusion, and finally and most importantly, communicating that conclusion with the rest of the world. To become self-employed successfully, you must learn the advantages of becoming self-employed, and weigh that with the other options you have and choose which is best for you. Only then will you be on your way to becoming a successful individual.

What most people fail to recognize is that you can be self-employed and own your own business, simultaneously. Owning your own business while at the same time working for someone is a beneficial way to gain valuable experience that will assist you in establishing your business. There are several tools that you can utilize to help automate your online business, thus taking a major workload off you so you can manage your own business as well as be self-employed satisfactorily. The first is the auto-responder. This nifty program will automatically reply to en e-mail that is sent to a certain e-mail address. It can be programmed in such a way that it sends one e-mail the first day, a different e-mail a second day, and so on. This resourceful program will allow you, the owner, to salvage valuable time spent on responding to the same e-mails that would normally fritter away hours of precious time.

Another handy way of taking a workload off of you is by hiring drop-shippers. In a nut shell, drop-shippers hold products that are being sold through your website in a warehouse and when purchased, ship it directly to the customer. This way, your company does not have to be the retailer and the manufacturer, thus reducing expenses and increases profits. Your only job is to pay the drop-shipper for the shipping costs and they will do the dirty work for you. In addition to auto-responders and drop-shippers, if properly executed, search engine optimization (SEO) will attract customers to your site, without you having to go to them. Ideally, you want your company’s web page to appear in the first page of a search engine’s page when a certain term(s) (the broader the better) is entered into the search engine. These simple tools will drastically improve the amount of clients you have, while still allowing you to focus on something more important than responding to e-mails, shipping to clients, and having to physically go to a potential client to get them to commit.

Copyright © 2009 Ajay Prasad

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Yep, you can see where this is going… Last week we got caught out in the boat late at night and were using a flashlight to navigate lobster buoys and dry land. I freaked. I was trying to remain calm, but I was really scared. I felt as if I had been dropped onto a different planet. My heart was racing, my insecurities popped up, and it was as if I had never taken that path and had no clue what to do next.

Once I successfully navigated myself back to land, I was clear that this is what happens to so many entrepreneurs. When circumstance change, we forget everything we ever knew and we behave just like all the times we have traveled our business paths before.

I KNEW EXACTLY where to go… intuitively. I had done it before. I let the one change throw me off and that is what happens in business. We know what to do, we know where to go, we know what we need. It is always intuitive, but we just let the hiccups and changes convince us we don’t. The most authentic marketing strategy and the authentic approach to attracting clients is embracing our intuition and trusting ourselves to know the path.

If you feel stumped in growing your business or frustrated with what you should be doing, go back to the basics and embrace your inner marketing voice.

1. Stop believing you have to do it like “they” do. You are your unique brand… grasp the ideas and approaches that work for you and resonate with you. Disregard the rest and use your voice, your gifts, and your language to market.

2. Don’t make it complicated. You know how to get clients – ASK. Remember that you have traveled this path before. Look to your current circle: friends, family, colleagues, and community. Ask them to have a complimentary session with you, send a referral, or share a gift certificate with a friend.

3. Draw on your past success for the present. Remind yourself of what has worked in the past and leverage that. How did you get that client? Where did those referrals come from? And what brought in money before? Repeat success.

Just because the sun went down doesn’t mean you forget your marketing sense and abandon your inner voice. Your marketing success and your authentic message is within you already…you know what your path is. Embrace your intuition to be ready for what life throws you. That inner voice will navigate you through the business waters- even in the dark.

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