Your Own Home Enterprise: Your Own Dream

The job market is not exactly thriving despite some brief reports that unemployment claims are down. There is nothing in the news that points to a full job market recovery in 2011. If you have still have a job, you might consider yourself "lucky" but how long will it last? There are very few jobs that offer "immunity idols" (yes I swiped that concept from Survivor) against getting laid off.

As an employee, you are expendable; meaning you can be replaced, discarded, used and then thrown out. Cost cuts come, expendable employees go away. The reason for this is simple. When sales and profits are down, the principles in any Enterprise begin to look at things they can get rid of. What seemed like a necessary position last year, may be a prime candidate for dismissal now.

One of the largest overhead items for any company is its payroll expense and this is the first place they look to chop dollars. One person who recently started a home based Enterprise tells me he did so just in time. His employer didn't fire him, but gave him a 10% pay cut! Fortunately, this person has been steadily building a Enterprise and now has a buffer to cover that 10%. But he's not satisfied with that. He will keep building until he can tell his boss what to do with that job including that pay cut!

Despite it being a bad job market, it's a good time to have a home based Enterprise from which you cannot be fired!

Pears of the Home Enterprises

You've heard the term 'fruits of his/her labor' before haven't you? That is referring to a long term commitment that after some time, gives its payout. In terms of fruit, think of what would happen if you planted a pear tree in your yard. At first it would be a small sapling and in fact for two years it would be just a small tree not bearing any fruit at all. And during that time, you would have to pay close attention to it to see that it grows.

You would have to attend to propping it up during storms and making sure it has enough water during the dry season. But once the pear tree becomes mature, it will begin to bear fruit. Not only once, but season after season. Once it becomes a full grown tree, it will require less attention and will increasingly be a provider for you, providing you with more and more fruit.

I'm sure you see the analogy here when you consider what happens with a home based Enterprise. They generally don't just take off right away. In spite of what some web sites tend to advertise, they don't just start paying off overnight. They require continuous nurturing and lots of attention. Just like the tree, they require your regular vigilance and watch. Then one day, they will be profitable and give you the fruit of your labor.

Integrating Work and Home

Is there a difference between "Work from home" and "Home based Enterprise"? You bet there is. To a lot of people they mean the same thing but there is a fundamental difference between the two. A Work from Home arrangement implies just that -- that you will do some work from home. This could be a Enterprise or it could be just a job that you are able to work from home.

For example, many call centers have started to adopt the model of letting their call center agents work from home. Their technology allows not only for the routing of calls to the call center agents, but it tracks their time. This is an example of a "Work from Home" arrangement. But this is not a home based Enterprise.

In a home based Enterprise, you must commit to it and work to build it up just like any other Enterprise. And unlike the Work from Home arrangement example above, you will not get a steady paycheck from it. However, you can achieve an income if you work the Enterprise but it's not a pay-by-the-hour like the call center example above. When you are researching home based Enterprise opportunities make sure you make that distinction in your mind. Do you want to Work from Home or do you want a Home Based Enterprise?

Employment and Home Enterprises

Along with job cuts, pay cuts are now heading into the spotlight. A lot of companies are realizing that they can only cut so many jobs and that they can also save money by offering a pay cut instead to higher paid people. I suppose it then becomes a choice of taking the pay cut or quitting. Employers know full well this is not a good economy to be quitting a job and they leverage that to their advantage. I would guess most people who are offered pay cuts accept them without much of a fuss.

None of that exists with a home based Enterprise. You pay yourself and you decide how much you can pay yourself. At first it may not be very much, but over time, you can build your home based Enterprise into a full time income producer. A lot of home based Enterprises are marketed with the 'pie-in-the-sky' income levels and those levels can be reached over time.

But what a lot of people want is just a living income and home based Enterprises seldom advertise themselves as "make a living online" ventures. But it's a fair and worthy goal. The higher incomes can come later. And you may even have to give yourself a pay cut some month (followed by a pay raise the next month).

Home Enterprise for Spending Leisure Time

Have you ever heard the expression "procrastination is the thief of time"? What that is referring to is the more you procrastinate on something the more time just slips away and the less likely it is that that something will get done. Is your 'something' the idea of starting a home based Enterprise but somehow you might be thinking procrastinating thoughts? Two of the ones I hear a lot are of "Maybe I should wait until the economy gets better" or "Maybe I should wait until I learn more about running a Enterprise" (or some variation of those).

Maybe I should wait until ___ (fill in the blank). There are probably hundreds of things you could fill in there, but the point here is unnecessary procrastination. When is procrastination necessary? It may genuinely wise in some instances to put something off with good reason. But the difference between wisely putting something aside and outright procrastination is subtle but significant. If you are 100% serious about doing something and you put it aside, then you will come back to it. If you are only half serious or only toying with an idea, and you put it off, you may or may not come back to it Or you may keep finding things to fill in that blank with.

Operating the Home Enterprises

In most Enterprise ventures, much less home based Enterprises, it's important to have realistic expectations. Realistic expectations of long term profits not short term windfalls. So many home Enterprises are marketed with "make money fast" hoopla that it's no wonder people are disappointed when they join an Enterprise and can't 'fire their boss' right away.

Realistic expectations for a home based Enterprise means a long term commitment, not a short term fix. Therefore, you need to expect to operate your Enterprise at a loss; at least at first. It's actually quite normal for Enterprises to operate at a loss when they start and often even in their first few years. For example, Amazon.Com was founded in 1994 but it wasn't until nearly 10 years later when the company posted its first annual profit for the 2003 fiscal year.

Fortunately, home based Enterprises can get to the profitability mark a lot sooner than a company like Amazon.Com. There is less overhead with a home based Enterprise. That means no space to lease, no employees to pay, no equipment to invest in, etc. It is important however to be aware of your ongoing costs. How will you fund the Enterprise at first until it begins to make a profit? Ah, now that's the million dollar question.

You can stick with something that doesn't have a lot of start up costs and doesn't carry much in the way on ongoing costs. That means your risk of operating at a loss is minimized and your Enterprise will have a great chance of surviving until it can start to monetize.

Job Market Vs Home Enterprise

Unless you've been hiding under rock for the past few years, you read a lot of economic 'gloom and doom' in the news. While the current sets of problems are certainly unique, the normal cycles of economics include both growth and contraction (recession). That's been going on for a quite a long time and the current recession probably won't be the last one.

The problem I'm seeing over the past 10 years is that the last period of "growth" didn't really include a lot of prosperity for job seekers. The growth in the job market was mostly in low paying service jobs and the high paying jobs continued to dry up. I think this trend will continue on as companies look for ways to be more efficient and run their Enterprises in the most cost effective manner.

One group of people that became prosperous in the last period of growth was people who built their own Enterprise. This is why there is so much interest in home based Enterprises now. I think a lot of people are waking up to the fact that good paying jobs are becoming scarcer and more difficult to compete for. 

I gave up competing in the job market around 2004 because it felt like I was spinning my wheels. Schooled and trained in Information Technologies, I grew tired of having to always chase after the latest and greatest technical certification in order to stay current. I got tired of having to go out on endless interviews that never went anywhere. Talk about time consuming! That's about the time I decided to pursue my home based Enterprise. I mean after all, if you're going to compete for something, it may as well be building your own Enterprise against your competitors.