You know that I am a fan of small business, and a successful entrepreneur. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that I am also a fan of home businesses. Although there are only two broad home business categories, those which sell ‘services,’ and those which sell ‘products,’ the viable home business opportunities are unlimited!

First, let’s talk about some of the types of home business opportunities which sell products. You can decide to sell products which you create/make yourself, or you can buy products from someone else, and re-sell them. You can launch a successful home business venture selling products which you make yourself, if you have a unique product or a niche product. If you have a unique product or line of products, you can notify potential customers about your ‘one-of-a kind’ products through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. You may also decide to design a website, use local consignment vendors, trade shows, and online sources such as eBay, Craigslist, or Amazon Auction to sell your products.

You may choose instead to launch a successful home business venture, by building an online re-sale home business. You may decide to find your products at yard sales and consignment shops, or decide to purchase them wholesale, or decide to work with a drop shipper (usually a larger company, which will ship their products to your customers, using your business name). Once you determine how your products are supplied for your home business, you must then decide what your best online resale options are for your products. Are you going to sell your products from your website, or on eBay, Amazon Auction, or Craigslist?

In order to have a successful home business which sells products, you must have a well thought out marketing plan. If you do, there is no limit to how many products you can sell a year, and of course that equates to cha-ching at the cash register!

Second, there are home business opportunities which sell services. Some of the most successful ‘service provider’ home business opportunities are computers, virtual assistant, bookkeeping, consulting, coaching, teaching, catering, and event planning; to name a few. You may be interested in these facts about service based businesses. Persons, who are web designers, software support gurus, and transcriptionists, are some of the highest paid hourly home business freelancers in the computer services business. You may also be surprised to learn that the virtual assistant business is a 130 billion dollar industry. Last but not least, event planners typically incur some of the lowest start-up costs when launching a small business.

I could go on and on. The home business industry is booming! The key is to find your personal niche or a passion area in which you have specialized knowledge or skills, and then dream up an idea, outline a one, three, and five year business plan, and if the concept is viable…go for it!

The best advice I can give you is to due diligence before you start any type of home business. Many home business owner wannabes consult with a business coach to tap into their skills, expertise, and advice before taking off on a tangent, to make sure that they don’t make some of the common mistakes first time business owners make when starting out. It is also important to have a great lawyer and a tax advisor to teach you the basics about forming a business entity, and how to handle sales tax, licensing, business taxes, and other typical start-up issues. So what are you waiting for? Get busy pursuing your dream, you’re not getting any younger!

Business blogging allows you to connect and interact with your clients and customers, no matter where you are, and no matter where they are. We work in a global marketplace, yet, business blogging helps you connect and interact in a way that none of the traditional marketing methods have allowed…at all hours of the day and night, 365 days a year!

Business blogging is appealing to customers and clients because of the personal nature of the ‘conversation.’ In my business blogs, you learn about my hobbies, pet peeves, and the ‘inside scoop’ on how I’ve succeeded in business. You get a chance to get inside my head…scary though it’s true.

Business blogging allows you to target those cutting edge topics of interest to your audience. It allows them the benefit of your expertise, and it gives you an ability to build a reputation and a persona.

Business blogging is FREE. Locate a group such as wordpress or blogger to be the host for your business blog. There are positive and negative factors for both of these blog locations, but the most important factor is that you design your blog so that it is easy to update and change. It’s a great way to market your products and services. Approach your local post office or TV station and ask them to run a free promo or advertisement for you and they will look at you as if you have lost your fucking mind. But, I can blog forever! No stamps. No contracts. No overhead. If you don’t want to write it, outsource it.

Although these are just four reasons to have a business blog, let me give you some pointers on ‘how’ to business blog.
♦Before you start

• Decide what you want to accomplish with the business blog.
• Are you highlighting various products?
• Are you advertising sales items?
• Are you giving words of wisdom?
• Are you promoting a book or a service?
• Have a vision of what the business blog can accomplish if it is successful. Then, brainstorm the action steps required to realize success.
• Decide who your target audience is and write to appeal to them.
• Identify the interests of your target audience and then make sure you ‘give them what they want.’

♦Once you start

• Commit to a regular schedule of business blogging; preferably once a week; on a particular day of the week. This strategy gives your target audience something predictable to look forward to.
• Consider allowing your followers to take a poll, answer and submit questions, and vote. Make sure that your blog is linked to your facebook account so that your followers can ‘like’ you on Facebook and re-tweet your posts. This is critical.

The most important thing is to get busy. Dive in. Decide on a title for your business blog and a purpose. Your customers and your clients will be thrilled that they can ‘hear your voice’ and ‘get close’ to you, even if they live half way around the world.

 
These days, some of the most fulfilled entrepreneurs are social entrepreneurs. Do you know why? It’s because they’ve found a way to work and make a living while achieving social change. “Wow, what a novel concept!” you’d say. And I’d say… “WTF, haven’t you listened to a word I’ve been saying? Really?”

 
Just so we’re clear, a social entrepreneur is a person who recognizes a social problem and applies business principles to create, manage, and carry on a business which has as its primary focus, achieving social or environmental change.

 
Take for example NIKA Water Company which sells bottled water in the United States and uses 100% of the profits to bring clean water to people living in underdeveloped nations. Or, think of actor/producer, Paul Newman, who prior to his passing founded, Newman’s Own, a business with a line of food products sold in grocery stores, which donates 100% of its profits to educational charities.

 
Here’s how it may come about that you consider becoming a social entrepreneur. You’re kicking back with an ice cold beverage and you’re sitting around on a day when you are bored on your vacation, and you say to yourself, “There’s got to be something more to life. Or, there’s got to be a way that I can earn a living and solve a local, or a world problem?” Now, you’re talking like a social entrepreneur! So what do you do?

• Identify your local/world problem like hunger, clean water, domestic violence, high school kids with great grades who can’t afford college, or whatever you are passionate about, or something that ‘gets your goat,’ or pisses you off.
• Then, come up with an invention or a solution to the problem.
• Devise a ‘big picture’ plan for realizing your vision.
• Brainstorm the action steps with a business coach which are needed to move forward.
• Create a time line and milestones for moving forward with your action steps.
• Don’t look back!

That’s what Millard Fuller did when he founded Habitat for Humanity. He was a hot shot lawyer, who was jaded with practicing law. Due to several circumstances, it came to him that there were still a lot of people, who hadn’t realized the American dream of owning a home. He decided that his passion was to make home ownership a reality for more people. He determined that the problem was that families could not come up with the down payment, or qualify for a home loan. So he devised the Habitat for Humanity program, where individuals with a building area of expertise, partnered with local volunteers to build high quality, low income housing. Potential home owners put in ‘sweat equity’ hours in the building of their house and those of their ‘soon to be’ neighbors in exchange for not having to come up with a down payment. Low monthly interest free loan payments were negotiated to allow homeowners to make monthly payments thereafter…and the rest is social entrepreneurship at its finest!

 
For some of you, to become a social entrepreneur, will mean forming a new business entity, complete with name, logo, website, the whole ‘new business’ ball of yarn. For others, it will mean merely finding the method for integrating this new venture into an existing business, or expanding an existing business. Whichever route you choose, you can enjoy a lifetime of living, working, and making a profound change on society or the environment as a social entrepreneur. At the end of the day, you will know that you have accomplished the nirvana of entrepreneurship because you have combined your business savvy with your heart to do great things.

America’s greatest past-time…baseball. You sit outdoors for a few hours, watch the competition, get some sun, and maybe even drink a few beers. Hell yeah, it’s awesome! Pro baseball season is right around the corner…and the season for Internet business opportunities is already in full swing! Follow me on this one. You really don’t wanna sit this one out. If you’re not taking advantage of Internet business opportunities…you’re missing the game.

 
I don’t care if you’re a stuffy law firm or a buttoned up accounting firm. You need to have at least a basic Internet presence in order to survive today. While these professions, and others, have advertising rules and limitations, you still need to have your name, contact information, and the services you provide ‘out there’ so that people can find you, and so that potential clients can read about your credentials and the type of work you do.

 
If you sell a product like pizza, or a service like car detailing, you need to max out on Internet business opportunities. These days you can get your message and your product out to tons of folks with coupon offers, loyal customer discounts, and membership clubs, for little or no upfront costs. If you don’t generate this type of low cost advertising for your business, you are missing the game! And you will quickly conclude that you are a dumbass because your competition is doing it and leaving you in the dust!

 
You also need to evaluate whether or not you are missing out by not designing an affiliate Internet marketing program. Now don’t tune me out. Affiliate marketing in the Internet age, is simply signing up other people to advertise and sell your product or service for a cut or a commission. This idea isn’t new. It’s been around forever.

 
For example, let’s say that you sell pet supplies…maybe you are Pets R Us. You have brick and mortar storefront locations and a website where customers can go and buy pet products. It’s doing great, but you want to expand your dynasty. One way to expand is through using affiliate marketing as another Internet business opportunity.

 
How does this work? You allow a ‘little guy,’ say an entrepreneur with a business called Cats R Cuddly, to become an affiliate and sell your cat supplies in one location storefront and from his or her Internet site. He or she sets up a simple Cats R Cuddly website with pictures of local pet owners’ cats, pictures of your products, and a shopping cart. When customers go to this website to see if their cute fur ball is featured, they also place orders, and you drop ship your products to his or her clients when they buy something. The little local guy gets some of the money off of the total purchase price and you have another income stream coming in.

 
Get it? What’s stopping you? Let me guess…fear of failure? Typical. Well, let me share this statistic. Remember the great home run hitter, Hank Aaron? He held the record, for a number of years, for the most home runs hit in a professional baseball career. Everybody knows this. What most people don’t know is that Hank Aaron also struck out 1,383 times in his career. That’s right, he heard the umpire say, “Strike three!” 1,383 times.

 
Internet business opportunities are no different. You’ve got to march up to the plate and play the game if you ever expect a chance at winning. So do some research, hire a business coach, and develop an action plan for implementing an Internet business opportunity into your overall business plan. You’ll hit a grand slam!

 
The life coaching business evolved out of the idea that most people need a sounding board, but not everyone needs a shrink. Right? Humans are meant to interact, and usually we get perspective when we bounce ideas off someone we respect.

 
Sometimes the people I encounter confuse coaching with counseling. The life coaching business differs from counseling in many ways, but the most significant one is that a psychiatrist delves into your past to find the root causes of your unhappiness. A life coach focuses on the present. Where are you now? What do you want to accomplish in the future? The life coaching business is for the healthy, who are at a point where they need some guidance and encouragement.

 
So, if you’re thinking about approaching someone in the life coaching business, what can you expect? There are five top areas that I teach in my life coaching business. These areas include:

 
■Personal Vision
Business leaders are always talking about having vision or a mission statement, but you need to have a personal vision for your life too! You see, I think that the things you can accomplish in your personal life can be as important, or even more important than what you accomplish in business. Think about it. If you put my business strategies into place, you will spend less time at work…so then what are you going to be about when you’re not there? What is your personal legacy gonna be?

 
■Professional Vision
Whether you’re a CEO or an entry level employee, you need a professional vision in order to be successful. What is your approach to business going to be? Do you want to be an innovator and a trailblazer, or are you just showing up to get a pay check? What is your work ethic? Are you a ‘hit it hard and go home’ kind of person? Or are you gonna live at the JOB? You need to have a vision for your professional life and life coaching can help you explore these topics.

 
■Balance
The life coaching business addresses your need for balance. Did you hear about the kid, who has eaten nothing but Chicken McNuggets, since she was 2 years old? That child’s system is out of balance! Likewise, if you focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else whether it is work, a relationship, or play time, your life will get out of balance and crash. Sessions with a professional life coach can help you assess your balance and work on getting you back on track if you’re off on a tangent.

 
■Thinking outside the box
It is all about creativity! A person who interacts with a life coach can learn how to see things from a creative perspective. If you can tap into your creative side, you can accomplish more than those who only see things from an analytical perspective. Neurologists are doing amazing research studies on the brain and learning how to help us utilize this amazing mind we have at our disposal. Life coaches are helping people to tap into this undervalued technique of thinking outside the box.

 
■FUN
If you are thinking about approaching someone in the life coaching business to hire as a coach and their idea of having a good time is watching paint dry…then you need to re-think your coach! All successful life coaches I have met are high energy people who embrace life, and who want you to tap into the FUN of everyday living. If your life is missing that spark, then you owe it to yourself to see how the rest of us live…you will never go back!

Last week, on January 14th, I was surfing the web, and what do my eyes land on? The home page for MSN.com. Yep, that’s right. They were doing a story all bout CEO pay. They go into this elaborate story about what the top CEOs in the land make annually and what that breaks down to on an hourly basis. Wait for it. Wait for it. I know that you’re dying to know all about it.

The article says (and it’s documented) that the top 7 CEOs make between $60 to $145 million dollars a year. This breaks down to CEO pay rates between $33,000 to $48,000 an hour; compared to the $18.00- $30.00 an hour they pay most of their employees. It gets better. The top CEO in one company earned as much money in 75 minutes at work, as an engineer with the company made in an entire year! An entire year.

So here’s your deal. Read all of the articles I have posted on my blog in the last year, or so, about entrepreneurs and leadership. Hang on my every word and follow my suggestions. The information I share with you are real business strategies. They work in the real world of business, because, I’m living them! You can actually make this type of income in your own company or business, if you know the secrets to efficiently and effectively articulate your corporate vision, have a well-thought out plan, have daily strategies to execute your plan through your experienced team, and then you get the hell out of the way! It’s not impossible. CEOs all over the world are doing it and so can you!

If you still feel like you need more detailed information, then go ahead and buy a copy of my book, 1-800Awesome. It’s jam packed with insider tips about how to oversee a profitable business. In my book, I give you my formula for success in business. I also talk about breaking the rules, and doing things that they don’t teach at Harvard business school. I give you practical leadership strategies which teach you that while you may be a visionary, you’ve got to hire great people to execute your plan on a daily basis. I also discuss how to succeed once you have mastered the skill of living outside the box.

I am confident that reading my book will put you well on your way, but if you really want individualized assistance, hire me or another business expert as your professional business coach to help you jump start your 2012. Most people find that they fail at New Year’s resolutions unless they have someone to hold them accountable and gauge their progress. It’s not a sign of weakness to need help, it is the sign of a strong, insightful entrepreneur, who knows that to succeed, you must call on outsiders to bring their expertise to the table to help you make your dream a reality. You’re no exception.

Just remember, I’m starting you off easy. I’m only trying to help you make $10,000 an hour. That’s only one-third to half what the truly fat cat CEO’s make. That’s a doable, right?

Do you remember this show that first aired in the 80’s called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? Although I was just a kid, I used to like to watch that show. It came on way before reality TV shows like MTV’s Cribs had even been dreamt of. When I watched it, I wanted to live like a celebrity. I wanted the fancy house and cars…

Today, many people would say I have the lifestyle of a rich and famous person. While that is partially true, it would be more accurate to say that I have a business coaching life style. You see, I made my fortune in the business world, with my best known business venture being vanity phone numbers like 1-800-CONTACTS. Presently, I have a relatively new passion. It’s developing a business coaching life style.

I really get a great feeling sharing my business expertise and knowledge with business entrepreneurs. While I have a special interest in helping new business start-up owners, I love to work with the big corporate cats too. It’s because I’ve developed the business coaching life style.

I define the business coaching life style as one in which I use coaching techniques to share my insider’s knowledge of business and marketplace strategies with other business leaders. Let me demonstrate what the business coaching lifestyle is by contrasting it with business speaking.

I have been a public business speaker, or keynote speaker for years. In this setting, I give a presentation on a business topic of my choosing, or one selected by the group asking me to speak. I LOVE being a keynote speaker. It gives me a wonderful audience where I can inject humor and sarcasm into a speech on a business topic.

In recent years, after hiring a business coach for guidance with my own personal business expansion, I realized that there is a need for public speakers AND business coaches. Over the years, I have developed my own business coaching life style. It is in this setting that I am able to assist my clients to realize their greatest potential. The reason I believe this is because business coaching is tailored specifically to the individual needs and goals of the client. The coaching relationship is usually ongoing, which gives me an ability to help a client work through a crisis or crossroads, and then follow up and hold them accountable.

By comparison, when I have offered a keynote address, it is usually a more generalized, one shot deal. I speak, the audience listens, laughs, and learns, but I am not walking along side them as they apply the information I have given them to ensure that they are successful in carrying it through to completion. The business coaching lifestyle approach gives me the ability to make sure that the information is learned, applied, and modified if necessary, to realize the corporate vision, and fulfill the marketplace goals.

Living the business coaching life style has also improved my personal life. As a professional business coach, I now do a better job of assessing the areas in my own personal life where I can improve. In looking for weaknesses, and pockets of resistance that my clients have, I’ve become better at recognizing these obstacles and barriers to change in myself.

I’ve concluded that making an accurate assessment of your business or personal situation is the biggest obstacle to your overall success. If your assessment is on target, you can then develop a systematic strategy for setting goals and achieving them. For most people, a coach is needed to ensure that the right questions are asked, so that the goals can be designed to identify the best strategy for success.

Before the popularity of the television show, ‘The Biggest Loser’, people who wanted to lose weight would sign up for Weight Watchers. What made these programs work over just trying to lose weight on your own was accountability. The thought of having another person weigh you and see that you were overweight or obese, was an incentive for weight loss in itself. Today, contestants on ‘The Biggest Loser’ know that not only is their coach watching their progress, but so is all of America! No pressure, right?

Life business coaching is tremendously successful for entrepreneurs because it works! The reason life business coaching works is because it is based on that same accountability factor. If another person is there to walk along side us and monitor our progress and to help us when we get stuck or reach a plateau, we are more likely to succeed. Otherwise, we bullshit and rationalize what we’re doing, and before we know it, our old habits are back.

Studies show that adults don’t like change. Why not? We are creatures of habit. We get a routine and we stick with it, even if we know that it’s unhealthy, dangerous, or not in our best interest. Studies also show that it takes 28 days to make something a habit. So whether you are trying to lose weight or reach a specific goal, the most crucial time is the first 28 days you are trying to implement it. Typically, if you give up within the first 28 days…you’re screwed. You will not take it back up or see it through.

Life business coaching can help you reach that specific goal, because the life business coach knows that change is hard, and that reaching a specific goal requires a plan. The life business coach also knows how to hold you accountable.

Let’s say you have a goal ‘to work smarter, not harder’. How do you go about this with a life business coach?

Think about it. If we were all self-starters and disciplined, we wouldn’t need life business coaching…but most people are not. They need that outside perspective or person who can monitor their ability to ‘change’ or take on something new. They need someone to challenge them to succeed.

Before you know it, 2011 will be in your rearview mirror and you will be motoring through 2012. Make it a priority to invest in yourself and your business success by hiring a life business coach to help you identify and reach the goals which are the most important to your success for the upcoming year. You’ll be glad that you implemented life business coaching into your company framework.

It basically lectures…b-o-r-i-n-g!
It’s one size fits all speeches…maybe they fit your company’s needs, maybe they don’t
The information presented tends to be general, not specific
It’s not the best ‘bang for your buck’ option
Feel free to add your own negative points like “the food is terrible,” “it’s tedious,” “it’s not interactive…”

Now, let’s talk about life and business coaching and why it’s a better fit for your company:

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you have formed a team to work on a new project. This team has never worked together before. It brings together an employee from IT, finance, HR, design, and logistics. These employees are exceptional individuals. There is just one problem…they are each leaders in their respective departments and when they’re thrown together, you have concerns that everyone is going to try to jockey into position to ‘be the leader’ and they won’t be collaborative and work well as a team.

This scenario cannot be handled in a seminar! You need a trained life and business coach to get in the trenches with your people to assess their strengths and weaknesses as individuals, so that they can be plugged in for maximum effectiveness in the team. The business coach also assists them in clarifying the vision for the project, and in setting goals and action steps for carrying the project through to success.

Happy Holidays to you and yours this Christmas season!