I believe there is one main component that makes someone either successful or unsuccessful in their home business. This is extreme determination. I’m going to break this down into three different parts: desire, knowledge and action.

I truly believe in order to be successful you need to have a strong burning desire to achieve your goal. If considering being a work from home mum then ask yourself why? Would you be happy if things stayed exactly the way they are now? The reason I ask this is honestly if you are happy now then you want have the determination required to get through the learning stage. So I would suggest don’t waste your time starting. You need to have reached your snap point, the point where you will no longer accept how things are in your life right now and you will do what ever it takes to change your current situation and achieve what you set out to accomplish. That is determination combined with desire.

Knowledge leads to power when you are a work from home mum. The more you know about marketing, sales and how your business runs the more successful you will be. Determination plays an important role here because it takes determination to learn and conquer new skills. You don’t need to know about marketing, sales and your business before you get started but you need to be willing to learn.

Take massive action everyday. It is no good knowing all this new found knowledge if you do not apply it to your work from home business, every day. Make sure you do some form of income producing activities, meaning marketing and sales everyday. I will let you in on some statistics here. Only 5% of all your competition are constantly taking massive action every day. Here is another statistic for you. 5% of your competition are the ones making 95% of the money in your field. Why? Because most people are not determined and they get distracted and don’t constantly take massive action on a regular basis.

There are three stages that successful people experience when they start their business. The first stage is when you start out off full of excitement and energy but after around two weeks when reality that it does take consistent effort to have results they use their determination to continue going. Others will give up and join the next income making band wagon. These people will never do well in any venture as they are wanting to get rich quick without any effort and that just does not occur.

The second stage is the learning phase. Those that are not determined will get caught in this phase. They realise they need to learn a lot before they get started but they feel as though they need to have everything perfect before they take any action. This is not the case. I believe you need to know the bare skeletons of what you are learning and then just get out there and start putting it into action. You will learn the rest as you go on. It is important to learn a little, apply it, learn a little more. Don’t fall into the trap of wanting to be an expert before you take any action. Those that do fall into this trap get stuck in this stage and don’t have any or little results as they don’t take action.

Those that have success go through both of the above stages. Meaning when they start out they are full of enthusiasm and excitement and they may lose this slightly after two weeks when reality kicks in but knowing the end goal keeps them going. They do get into the learning stage but they are the people that take massive action on what they learn. They understand they do not need to know absolutely everything before taking action. They will learn on the way.

So my question to all those that are considering becoming a work from home mum, Do you have the determination that leads to success? If you do and you are aware of the stages you may experience during your start up phase then there will be no stopping you from achieving your goal as your strong burning desire to change your current situation will make sure you will go through all the stages new business people will experience and not give up.

Setting time boundaries can sometimes be the hardest task to stick to, when you are a work from home mum. It is easy to make one more call, or just duck into the office to finish that task then 2 hours later you are still there. With that said, effective time management is at the heart of a productive, healthy and profitable business. After all, that is what you want from your work from home business. So here are some tips to help you start your business the right way.

Availability:
When you are starting your work from home business, it can be tempting to want to be available to everyone, any time, any day. Doing this can be very tiring.
So I suggest you think very carefully about the hours you are going to operate your business. Then once you set them make sure you stick with them. What is important is that when you are working that you are highly organized and you get done what most unorganized people will take days longer to do.

Break Time:
It can be hard to walk away in the middle of a work day but it is very important to schedule breaks into your day. Make sure you are eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is very common for people working from home, to go straight to the office and then look up and realize that they missed breakfast or lunch.
Also look at every day including exercise, some form of mediation or visualization into your daily life. You may find yourself coming up with excuses not to do this but your business will be so much more productive if you do.

Reward Yourself:
You do not have a boss who will give you bonuses or reward you when you reach your goals. This can be both a good and bad thing. It can be bad if you don’t have a plan to reward yourself but it can be great as you don’t get company bonuses or corporate incentives it actually means you get to create your own. Make sure your incentives are always positive. Positive incentives will always be far more effective in keeping you motivated than negative ones. You can’t stay motivated with the incentive of just not going out of business. If you hit your financial goal this month, take yourself out for a massage or book a weekend away or what ever you consider is a treat.
Smaller incentives during the week help, too. Occasionally I set myself a list of work and aim to finish by a certain time in the evening so I can spend guilt-free time watching television. Setting yourself intermittent goal rewards helps you to be refreshed on a regular basis which helps prevent feeling rundown or overwhelmed.

Income Producing Activities:
When you are running your own business from home it is important to always do your income producing activities straight away. Income producing activities can be put down to marketing and sales. So any activity that is either to do with getting you more potential clients to talk to and getting new clients. All other activities should be done later in the day. Here is a tool that I use to keep myself on task http://e.ggtimer.com/

Diary:
Before you go to bed each night, spend some time working out what you are going to do the following day. Write a list of all the activities you need to get done on a piece of paper. Then go through the list and prioritize them in order of importance. When you have done this, write them into your diary so you know exactly what you are going to do and when the following day.

Performance Diary:
Every day keep a diary of what you got done. Not so much the tasks you completed but more specific. What marketing you did that day, what results you got from your marketing that day, how many new clients and write down how they found you, how many returning clients and write down whether they came back without any incentive from you or not. This data is important information to look back on. The reason being the month that you have an exceptional month go to the performance diary see exactly what you did there, go to a poor month and compare what you did different.

Emails:
To get the most out of your work hours here are some tips that I use in my work from home business. Set times in the day when you check your emails. Do not check them at any other time and don’t make them the first thing you do in the morning as it can take you off task straight away. When you do check your emails designate a time amount to how long you are going to spend on it, them go through as many emails as you can. Make sure you deal with every email there and then don’t put any off to later. The ones you don’t get to read in your next scheduled times.

Overall these are just some strategies that you can apply to your work from home business. If you are wanting to be a work from home mums then visit my website and I will share with you what I exactly do to earn an executive income from home.