“Leaving corporate America to run a homebased business is the ideal situation for many people: There’s no boss breathing down your neck, no boring meetings to attend and no 45-minute drives in rush hour traffic. Working from home can be a rewarding experience, but it’s easy to forget the basic rules of running a successful business when it’s 10 hours of just you, your computer and the distractions of home.

To help you stay on track, we’ve contacted homebased business expert Rosalind Resnick, CEO of Axxess Business Centers Inc., a New York small-business consulting firm. Resnick is a former business journalist who has regularly contributed her expertise to Entrepreneur.com. She’s put together eight helpful tips for keeping your homebased business running smoothly.

Structure your day. The problem a lot of homebased business owners have is that they no longer have a boss standing over them making sure they get their work done, or a tangible start and end of each workday. It’s easy to let time slip by as you head to the refrigerator, catch a few minutes of TV, or dive into a project first thing in the morning, neglecting the other tasks you need to perform to keep your business running smoothly.

Create a structure that mimics what you had in the workplace. Structure your day so you have a start and finish time, with certain hours set aside for specific activities. A general rule is to spend the first hour of the day prospecting for new clients. Send your emails, write your letters and make your phone calls first thing so you don’t forget to do it later.

Use Outlook or some sort of contact management software to serve as a visual reminder of what you need to accomplish that day. Live and die by your to-do-list. Try to have everything crossed off by the end of the day. Even my own children know that if they want me to do something for them during working hours, they have to put it on my to-do-list or it will never get done. ”

[Read Tips 2 - 8 from Yahoo Small Business]

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Home Business Education, Home Based Business, Home Based Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.