The following tips are from an article we contributed to Compute magazine. These are ideas that we all should know, but many times forget. It constantly amazes us how quickly a basic tenent of business can be shoved by the wayside in the heat of daily transactions.
If we all try to keep these simple principles in mind, they may keep us on the straight and narrow in our pursuit of home office bliss.
1. Buy an answering machine. This will allow you to give your attention to a client and not the telephone. Be sure your message is done in a professional manner and includes business name, telephone number and hours of operation.
2. Be sure to have a separate telephone line for business. This will avoid your family using the same line and busy signals to prospects and clients. Keep your personal calls separate and insure your business line is always answered in a professional manner.
3. Read, read and read some more. You will constantly be learning about your business. Reading will allow for additional knowledge, change and growth.
4. Buy a fax machine. This will allow you to give your clients prompt responses and in many cases save on postage and telephone costs. It will also avoid having to leave your office to go and fax something at $1.25 or more per page.
5. Have an identity package professionally done. Your logo, letterhead, business card, envelope and brochure will be the first impression a prospect or client has of you. To insure the impression is a good one, have your business package done by a professional designer. The cost is worth it.
6. If possible set up your office in a separate room of your home. This will allow you to close the door at the end of the business day and allow better separation of your personal and business life.
7. To project a professional appearance be sure your home is always neat and clean-nothing lying about. In addition be sure your yard is well kept. Remember, first impressions count.
8. Be sure your business name is descriptive of what you do. Business names that don't relate to your services can hurt a business. Avoid using just initials, that's fine when you get to be the size of AT&T, but remember, in the beginning no one knows you.
9. Make up a business plan. This will help you research, define and outline your market. It also avoids starting a business in a field that may be overcrowded.
10. If possible, be sure to have at least six months worth of living expenses in reserve. This will allow you to concentrate on getting your business up and running without worrying about paying the bills.
11. If possible, buy a copy machine. This avoids having to go out every time you need to make a copy. Also, it allows you to give a client a copy on the spot. This can go a long way towards enhancing your image as a real business.
Copyright DeFiore Enterprises 2002
Interested in having your own successful, home based creative real estate investing business? Chuck and Sue have been helping folks start successful home based businesses for over 19 years, and we can help you too! To see how, visit www.homebusinesssolutions.com">http://www.homebusinesssolutions.com for the latest FREE tips and tricks, educational products and coaching in creative real estate investing and home based businesses. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to our "how to" Home Business Solutions Digest, it's like having your own personal coach: subscribeHBS@homebusinesssolutions.com
Here’s a little round up of some Guardian commentary on today’s split. The paper’s editorial says the decision by the seven MPs to leave was a mistake, but also acts as a warning that Labour “is in the midst of one of its periodic tacks, to the Corbynite left in this case, which put the broader, long-term coalition of Labour at some risk”.
The Guardian view on the Labour split: a mistake but also a warning | Editorial https://t.co/0lU1hxeE8z
A leading Labour critic of Jeremy Corbyn, the former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, has said a majority of the party’s Scottish MPs and MSPs now backed a second EU referendum.
Speaking at a People’s Vote press conference in Edinburgh, Dugdale suggested there was deepening opposition among backbenchers to Corbyn’s stance on Brexit, even among those who are otherwise loyal to his leadership.
When young people are fighting for action on climate change, it is time to come together for the future, not divide. The Tory party’s failed solutions represent a dead end. We must do nothing to let them off the hook.
I believe there’s a majority of Labour MSPs in the parliament who would back a final say [on Brexit] but crucially over the weekend you saw a big development in the Scottish parliamentary Labour group with Paul Sweeney saying he would back having a final say.
That means a majority of Scottish Labour MPs back it too so the momentum towards a people’s vote is growing in the Labour party and as a consequence I think the likelihood of a people’s vote across the country is also increasing. I have never been more optimistic about a people’s vote taking place than I am today.
Israeli foreign minister accuses Poles of hatred towards Jews in remarks described as ‘racist’ by Polish PM
Poland’s prime minister has accused Israel’s foreign minister of racism in an escalating diplomatic row over the Holocaust that resulted in the cancellation on Monday of an international summit in Jerusalem.
Mateusz Morawiecki withdrew his country’s involvement in the summit after Yisrael Katz, who was appointed acting Israeli foreign minister on Sunday, said Poles “suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk” and accused all Polish people of harbouring “innate” antisemitism.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer reprises role as cleaning lady during festivities in home state of Saarland
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democrat party, returned to her home state of Saarland over the weekend to reprise her annual role as Putzfrau Gretel (Gretel the cleaning lady) during carnival celebrations.
Dressed in an apron and checkered headscarf, Kramp-Karrenbauer cracked jokes about December’s CDU leadership election, the fight banning diesel vehicles and political dysfunction in Berlin in front of a crowd of more than a thousand people.
Shamima Begum says she regrets innocent people died in attacks in both UK and Syria
The east London schoolgirl who left the UK to join Islamic State has compared the Manchester Arena bombing to airstrikes by the western allies that killed non-combatants in Isis-held areas.
Shamima Begum, 19, says she wants to return to Britain and is asking for “forgiveness”, having given birth to a son on Saturday while in a refugee camp in Syria.
Elin Ersson received a £250 fine for refusing to take her seat on a plane in Sweden last year
A Swedish student who livestreamed her protest against the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker last year has been found guilty of violating Sweden’s aviation laws and fined £250.
Elin Ersson, 22, avoided a prison sentence at the Gothenburg district court, where she was sentenced to a fine of 3,000 Swedish krona.
Internet expert exposes unsecured database believed to be targeting Muslim minorities
A Chinese surveillance company has been tracking the movements of at least 2.5 million residents in a province where Muslim minorities have been the target of a far-reaching security clampdown, internet experts have found.
Victor Gevers, of the non-profit group GDI.Foundation, which supports an open internet, discovered an unsecured database online that contained the name, sex, ethnicity, ID number, birth date and employer of residents in China’s western province of Xinjiang.
European People’s party and Socialists & Democrats have run parliament for 40 years
The “grand coalition” of centre-right and centre-left that has run the European parliament for 40 years is set to lose its majority for the first time following elections in May, according to the institution’s internal forecasts.
The centre-right European People’s party and centre-left Socialists & Democrats have long called the shots in the EU parliament, but polls suggest the two big groups will win only 45% of seats, down from 53%.
Donald Trump returned to the attack against Andrew McCabe on Monday, in response to an interview in which the former deputy FBI director discussed his new book and made claims damaging to the president.
Damian Collins warns of ‘deepfake films’ showing doctored footage of politicians
Online disinformation is only going to get more sophisticated, the chair of the committee investigating disinformation and fake news, Damian Collins, has warned.
Two former military pilots, a customs officer and celebrity bodyguard among the accused
Sitting on the asphalt at Punta Cana international airport in the Dominican Republic, the private plane was about to take off for an overnight flight to Saint-Tropez in France when police swooped.
Inside the aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 50, officers found four Frenchmen – two pilots and two passengers – along with 680kg of cocaine, with an estimated street value of €20m (£17.5m), in 26 battered suitcases.
Hans Leo Maes captures the bridges and stairways that link up the hilly, population-dense city
Hong Kong is known for its flashing lights, neon signs and high-rise skylines. But the architect and photographer Hans Leo Maes documents an alternative side – the city’s interconnecting staircases and bridges.
“The extreme population density in Hong Kong means [structures] are stacked and linked by stairs, often external and very visible,” Maes says.
There’s a whole new craze in east Africa, fuelled by secondhand inline skates – and a desire to unite
Photos and story by Duncan Moore
Nairobi’s traffic congestion is notorious. Minibuses known as matatus battle for space with cars, motorbikes and hand-drawn carts, causing excruciating gridlock.
Through this automotive battleground dart the daring members of the Kenyan city’s inline skating community, deftly weaving between moving vehicles, holding on to buses for speed and jumping over potholes.
Idea of topping municipal plant in Copenhagen with urban ski resort won accolades for Danish architecture firm
It might be the first waste incinerator the neighbours actually want next door. The shop at the foot of the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy project in Copenhagen is packed with families desperate to be among the first to try its unique selling point: the ski slope on the roof.
“I live so close by that I could follow the development,” says Ole Fredslund, who lives in neighbouring Amager, as he helped his sons Felix and Victor strap on their boots as the slope opened its lifts for the first time on Tuesday. “I guess 90% of the focus is on the fact that there’s a skiing hill coming, so in a way it’s very clever. Everybody talks about the ski hill to be, not the waste plant to be.”
Russian agent allegedly in Bulgaria when Emilian Gebrev poisoned in 2015 and in UK when Skripals attacked
The first sign that something was wrong with Emilian Gebrev was an itchy, bloodshot eye after a dinner in April 2015. The next day he had strange visions of flashing lasers, followed by uncontrollable vomiting. As friends rushed him to hospital, everything went black and he slipped into a coma.
Teenager accused of murder of six-year-old Googled ‘how do police find DNA’, court told
A phone belonging to a teenager accused of the abduction, rape and murder of a six-year-old girl was used to Google “how do police find DNA”, a court has heard.
Peter Benson, the leader of a cybercrime team, told the Alesha MacPhail murder trial he helped compile a report of relevant information following a forensic investigation of the 16-year-old boy’s phone.
Swiss actor best known for his portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the 2004 film Downfall
The Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, who has died aged 77 from cancer, was a wise and contemplative presence, as familiar, consoling and crumpled as a favourite overcoat.
He came to prominence in three films by the director Wim Wenders. In The American Friend (1977), adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game, he was a shy picture-framer who is persuaded, under the misapprehension that he is dying, to become an assassin in order to provide for his family.
Communities clash over natural resources as arrivals from South Sudan and DRC plunder environment for fuel and construction
The cutting down of millions of trees has sparked angry clashes in parts of Uganda between local people and refugees who have been fleeing conflict in neighbouring South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The timber is being used for house construction, fuel and to make charcoal. In the north and west of the country, where an estimated 1.1 million refugees are living, massive deforestation is drawing protests by local communities.
Actor’s lawyers angrily reject reports he may have staged attack
Police spokesman says trajectory of investigation ‘shifted’
Chicago police have said they want to conduct a follow-up interview with the Empire actor Jussie Smollett, because new information has prompted a shift in the investigation of his claim he was attacked.
Attempt to hustle Japan into a trade deal highlights the problems facing ‘global Britain’
It takes a lot to anger the unfailingly polite, anglophile Japanese. But Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, and Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, appear to have managed it with their ill-judged attempt to hustle Tokyo into a quick-fire Brexit trade deal.
The diplomatic fumble has highlighted rapidly escalating difficulties facing “global Britain” – the government’s nebulous vision for life after the EU – in forging new business and trade relationships around the world without an agreed post-Brexit strategy.
Mike Pezzullo admits department faced ‘urgent’ circumstances when deal done with little known firm Paladin
The head of the department of home affairs concedes bureaucrats awarded a controversial $423m contract to Paladin to provide services on Manus Island because of an “urgent” set of circumstances, but Mike Pezzullo denies he was “desperate”.
Officials from the home affairs department told estimates on Monday they were, in essence, forced to conduct a closed tender process for the contract because the government of Papua New Guinea advised the then Turnbull government in July it could not provide services it had signalled it would provide because it had entered a caretaker period.
Analysis of community where 73% of residents contracted Zika in 2015 offers new clues about epidemic
Scientists studying the 2015 Zika outbreak in Brazil have discovered that people previously exposed to dengue may have been protected from the virus.
Three-quarters of the inhabitants of a favela in the country’s north-east caught the mosquito-borne Zika virus during the epidemic. The outbreak left more than 3,000 babies across Brazil with microcephaly, a birth defect caused by mothers catching the virus during pregnancy.
We hear much about Yemen’s crisis, but far less about the hypocrisy of states fuelling the very conflict they condemn
During his historic recent visit to the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis condemned the war in my home country, Yemen, as a terrible humanitarian crisis.
Addressing the world he said: “Let us pray strongly, because there are children who are hungry, who are thirsty – they don’t have medicine and they are in danger of death”.
Campaigners demand external investigation after human rights organisation dismisses their claims
Prominent Indian rights activists have withdrawn their support for Amnesty India amid allegations of caste discrimination and harassment within the organisation, the Guardian has learned.
The allegations include claims that staff were humiliated, ill-treated and discriminated against because of their caste, a system of social hierarchy among Hindus.
In the midst of Venezuela’s spiralling economic crisis, Natalia and fellow members of a Chavista collective have stepped in to take over production at a local bakery, La Minka. Authorities had suspended operations when the owners were accused of overpricing their loaves and hoarding flour. In March 2017, with the tacit support of the government, the collective began selling affordable bread. This is the story of their fight to safeguard the bakery’s future and keep the Chavista dream alive
I had to gain the confidence that always seemed to come naturally to my partner to release my inner handywoman
Last year my partner and I moved into a new house. The whole exercise was exhilarating – finally, a place we owned – but it also unearthed in me a desperation, a deep frustration. For a long time I’ve wanted to be someone who fixes things, builds things, someone who is capable in practical day-to-day tasks. I own tools, I have ideas and I tinker with my surroundings, but I’ve never felt completely at ease in the tasks that various men in my life seem to take on with no backward glance.
In our just-built house there were so many jobs to do with drills, hammers, caulking guns. My drive to learn by doing was offset by disorientation and self-doubt. I wanted to begin improving our house, but I didn’t know what sort of screws I needed for the curtain rod brackets, or whether I could just drill straight into the plasterboard. My partner, a man, didn’t have much more experience in these things than I did, but approached the situation with a confidence and bluster that only confused me more.
Cardinals around the world are joining the pope at a forum on tackling abuse. But only radical reform can solve the crisis
When the first meeting in the Vatican of cardinals from around the world to discuss clerical sexual abuse was announced, hopes were high among Catholics. Finally, it seemed, the courageous, mould-breaking Pope Francis was going to force through root-and-branch reforms to tackle the scandal that has done such damage to the reputation of the institution he leads.
Yet even before 180 cardinals assemble on Thursday in Rome for this unprecedented four-day summit, the chance of such prayers being answered is looking increasingly remote. The Vatican press office has been downplaying the event as simply an opportunity to remind senior clerics of the patchy efforts that global Catholicism has made this past quarter of a century to address the thousands upon thousands of cases of priests molesting, abusing and traumatising children in their care.
From Russia to Turkey and Iraq, the rout of the caliphate brings new political considerations and shifting alliances
The collapse of the Isis caliphate’s last stronghold in Syria is sending shockwaves across the region, changing the calculations of the major powers as they jockey for advantage. Triumphalism in Washington, Moscow and Damascus risks obscuring the human cost of a “victory” that may quickly prove transitory.
Of immediate concern is the fate of civilians, mainly women and children, displaced from formerly Isis-controlled areas where many were held against their will. The independent International Rescue Committee says up to 4,000 people are fleeing towards the al-Hawl refugee camp in north-east Syria.
Four years ago, 24-year-old Hoda Muthana left her family in the US to travel to Syria and join Islamic State. Now, after being captured by Kurdish forces, she is pleading to return home to Alabama
* Hear the Guardian's Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, speak to Hoda Muthana about her life with Isis and eventual escape on tomorrow's Today in Focus
Since 1992, more than 11,500 Colombians have been killed or injured by landmines, a legacy of more than 50 years of internal conflict. Many impoverished amputees without access to the healthcare system have resorted to making homemade prosthetics from wood, leather, metal and plastic bottles
Radziwill, the younger sister of Jackie Kennedy, has died at the age of 85. Married three times, she was a well-known socialite and a successful interior designer
The US vice-president rebuked European powers over Iran and Venezuela on Saturday, in a renewed attack on traditional US allies, rejecting a call by Germany’s chancellor to include Russia in global cooperation efforts. Describing the results of Donald Trump’s presidency as 'remarkable' and 'extraordinary', Pence told senior European and Asian officials that the European Union should follow the US in quitting the Iran nuclear deal and recognising the head of Venezuela’s congress, Juan Guaidó, as president
A man opened fire on Friday in a warehouse in Aurora, Illinois, an hour's drive west of Chicago. The shooter, identified as 45-year-old Gary Martin, was an employee at the industrial complex in Aurora. He also wounded five police officers before he was shot dead
Donald Trump has declared a national emergency to secure extra funding for his wall at the US-Mexico border. Trump’s decision came after weeks of wrangling over his campaign promise, which led to a record 35-day partial government shutdown, damaging his approval rating.
Residents of a coalmining region in Siberia have been posting online videos showing entire streets and districts covered in toxic black snow that critics say highlight a man-made ecological catastrophe in which British industry is compliant.
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