Choosing The Right Home Business For YOU

Choosing The Right Home Business For You

© 2002 Elena Fawkner

Pay any attention at all to your email inbox and you’d be
forgiven for thinking that the only way to run a business
from home is on the Internet. Sure, many people are
running spectacularly successful Internet-based home
businesses. Many, many more are doing so even more
spectacularly unsuccessfully.

But what if you’re not interested in running an Internet
business? What if you want to start and run a home
business the old-fashioned way? Where do you start?

Actually starting any home business is the easy part.
The hard part’s deciding what that business should be.

So how do you even start the process of deciding on the
right home business for you? The key is to be methodical,
realistic, objective and patient.

Step 1 : Personal Inventory

The first place to start is to inventory your skills,
experience, interests, and personality characteristics.
These are what you have to work with – your raw
ingredients, so to speak.

Make a list of personal qualities and factors that you can
throw into the mix. Include things like:

=> your personal background;
=> training and education;
=> work and volunteer experience;
=> special interests and hobbies;
=> leisure activities;
=> your personality and temperament.

All of these qualities and factors make up what you know
and what you’re good at.

Step 2 : Identify What You Like

It’s one thing to know a lot about something or be good at
it. It’s quite another to enjoy it enough to want to make it
your life’s work. So, remove from the list you created in
Step 1 anything that you don’t really, really like doing or
which plain doesn’t interest you. No matter how good you
are at it. If you’re lucky enough to like what you’re good at,
as a general rule, stick with what you know.

Step 3 : Match Your Likes With Marketable Activities

If Steps 1 and 2 still haven’t suggested feasible home
business ideas, review the following activities that have
proven marketable for others and weigh them against
your “likes” from Step 2:

Crafts – pottery, ceramics, leadlighting
Health and Fitness – aerobics instructor, network marketing
for a health products company, home health care
Household Services – cleaning, gardening, shopping
Professional Services – attorney, architect, interior
designer
Personal Services – make-up artist, hairdresser
Business Services – business plan writer, meeting planner
Wholesale Sales – antique dealer, dropshipper
Retail Sales – children’s clothing, widgets
Computers – web design, internet training.

You get the idea. This is not an exhaustive list, obviously.
You can visit the AHBBO Ideas Page for a list of over 500
home business ideas at http://www.ahbbo.com/ideas.html .

Step 4 : Make a List of Business Ideas That Fit With Your
Likes From Step 2