Successful Blog

Top 3 Little Challenges of Working From Home

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A Guest Post by
Rachel Carlson

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Last week, we covered some of the big, client-end challenges of working from home, but what about those little challenges you’ll face on a daily basis? The top three little challenges of working from home are:

Trouble Staying Motivated –

Without a big bad boss checking your every keystroke, motivation can tank when you work from home. Remember that you’re working to survive, not to please a boss. Set an honest goal just above what you need to do each day and do everything you can to achieve it. It takes a while to switch your mindset over to working because you want to, not because you need to make someone else money. But you will get the hang of it.

Too Many Distractions –

This is a big one. You can literally do almost anything you want when you work from home. I often put a movie on when I’m working on something boring, but this doesn’t work for most people. Try different things when working from home and pay attention to how they impact your productivity. Sometimes having some music on while working can make you more productive, but again, this isn’t the case for everyone. This challenge will require some trial and error.

Taxes –

Most people can look forward to tax season with the possibility of a refund. Work-from-home people dread April. Keep track of everything you do in a spreadsheet, and have it ready for tax season. Try to save 20% of all the money you make in a separate account meant only for taxes. Better yet, pay the government 20% of your earnings every quarter. If you put off taxes until the last minute, you could find yourself in a terrible money pit with the government. I still owe taxes from my first year working from home because tax season caught me by surprise. Don’t make this same mistake – it can cost you thousands of dollars in fees and more than a few sleepless nights.

Every job has challenges. What are the little challenges that get in your way when you work at home?

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Author’s Bio:
Rachel Carlson is a writer and student that works from home. While she spends a lot of her time writing, she also helps different companies like Clear Wireless with gaining exposure through various blogs and websites. She has recently started a new Twitter account and is finally going to give it a real shot. She can be followed at @carlson_rachel.

Thanks, Rachel. Great follow up to last week’s post!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

No Time this Week to Do It Right? Stop! Right There!

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Why Those Four Day Weeks Seem Even Longer

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I’m not sure who make the sure that most holidays would be celebrated on Mondays, but I’d like to to talk to … ahem … brilliant person who first had that backward idea.

The way I see it play out in reality often looks something like this …

  • The Sunday night “impending doom” of the new work week that usually sets in some time Sunday afternoon still shows up sometime Sunday afternoon as we forget that we have Monday off. For just a few moment, thoughts of work intrude on what is supposed to be a “free day,” before we brush them off.

  • The usual Monday buffer that eases us into the rituals of the work week     becomes another Sunday with that “impending doom.” We enjoy the off time, but feel it going, going, and then gone — knowing, knowing and then well aware that we’re facing a week with 20% less time.
  • Tues must rise to the challenge of handling the Monday rituals

    • while carrying the weight of the regularly scheduled Tuesday catch up meetings.

  • And Wednesday through Friday – we fret the time we lost, while reminding each other quite often which day it is because our weekly calendars are screwed up.

Certainly, a better way would have been to choose to offer Fridays as the recurring holiday – Then we’d get our work in order and be able to enjoy the day off without guilt or confusion that the Monday holiday causes. Just a thought.

Of course until that happens, we really ought to give our responses to recurring short weeks a little more thought.

No Time this Week to Do It Right? Stop! Right There!

Rather than “hit the ground,” might I suggest that we stop there, reflect on what actually needs doing and then slow down to thoughtful walk.

Early in my career I heard this saying …

We never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over.

Short weeks seem to bring out more of that “never have time to do it right thinking” than ever. Part of what gets the momentum of a over-stressed, “no time to do it right” short week going is that we buy into having the same amount to do in less time. We think of ourselves as “time poor.” Time poor thinking is running into a situation because we start out sure that we don’t have enough time to walk. That leads us to

  • shallow planning
  • half-attention
  • inefficient participation
  • false engagement as we “multi-task”
  • unfriendly, hurried responses – that make the work more important than the people we work with
  • hyper-responses to small interruptions
  • an air of contagious agitation

all of which can be alleviated by walking with a “time rich” approach to the the week.
“Time rich” is being generous with the time we have and realizing that we have all of the time we need for important things. We’re more aware of what it means to connect for others who need help. In a short week, that would bring …

  • setting realistic priorities
  • listening and participating fully in important events and conversations
  • focusing and engaging in what can move things forward most efficiently
  • knowing that taking care of the people will often make it so they can take care of the work they do.
  • a welcome response to news and a easy way of making a later date for less urgent to dos
  • an atmosphere of breathing easy and control

I’ve found it’s a truth in my life that
Every time my brain needs to run faster — that’s a time that I need to slow to walk. So I remind myself that …

If we plan it and do it right the first time, we won’t have to do it over at all.

How do you get to “time rich” thinking to do right, when everyone is thinking “time poor”?

Be irresistible
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

The Big Challenges of Working at Home

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A Guest Post by
Rachel Carlson

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BIG Challenges of Working From Home

One memory of my experience working from home sticks out to me – a video Skype meeting with one of my first clients. I rushed to put on some nice clothes, cleaned up my office a little and prepared as best I could. When the meeting finally happened, the client remarked “I expected to see a person in their pajamas in a tiny one bedroom apartment.”

And that’s a part of the “work from home problem” isn’t it? Normal business people, as they like to think of themselves, have some fairly critical prejudices against work-from-home workers. With that one remark, I realized that the client thought of people who work from home with two things in mind:

  • I was probably too lazy to put on some decent clothes for a meeting.
  • I was more than likely not making enough money to have more than a studio apartment.

This misconception is one of the biggest challenges of working from home – among many others. Once you convince your clients that you aren’t some slob, furiously clamoring for a living from the scraps of “real businesses,” you have an opportunity to overcome all the challenges and become a successful entrepreneur.

Setting Reasonable Hours

It’s true that few of us work the 9-5 grind. And why do so if you don’t have to? What is it really about that eight-hour period that makes it so “work-worthy?” I honestly admit that I hate working 9-5, and I don’t normally work in periods longer than four hours. When you work with clients, however, you have to set reasonable hours for when they can contact you. Try the following to keep those hours, without interfering with your preferred work schedule:

  • Make yourself available for calls at a normal schedule (like 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.). If you’re getting so many calls that it’s interfering with your life, you have a very good problem and might need to consider hiring some help. It should go without saying that a mobile phone is essential.
  • If you don’t want your mobile number published, simply forward your number through Phone.com with a more professional 888 number that you can give your clients. This has the added benefit of allowing you to see when it’s a work call (and avoid answering with a hearty “what’s up?”).

Competing With the “Big Box” Providers

This seems to be a bit of a misconception carried over from the brick and mortar business world. You can actually compete with larger companies quite easily. In fact, you have some decisive advantages:

  • You don’t have much overhead, meaning you can usually undercut like crazy. But don’t get carried away. Do some research to find out how much your major competitors are charging for similar services and set your prices just under theirs. If you go too cheap, clients won’t believe that you do good work.
  • You are a single person. Always highlight the fact that you are the only person a client needs to speak to – you take the order and finish it yourself. Clients usually love this. In many situations, you can even beat the turnaround times offered by large companies simply because of the lack of red tape.
  • Do research on every client and gear your pitch towards their needs. If they are a small company, they’ll love that you work alone. Larger companies might get concerned with your slower turnaround time. With these types of clients, you don’t need to stress that you work from home. You do need to stress that you have an unprecedented personal dedication to each client.
  • You can establish a deeply personal brand. If you design business cards, for example, and have received many compliments on your attention to raised print designs, leverage this with future clients. While larger companies have an army of professionals doing the same thing, nothing can beat your personal approach.

Meeting With Clients

It’s fairly rare that a client requests a face-to-face meeting. Actually, most of your clients will be very busy (or will want to seem like they are) and will convert after a single phone call or email. Some will prefer to do a video chat. If you serve some local clients, they might want to meet. But as a general rule, never invite the client to your home to do business. Instead, learn to love lunch meetings. Offering to take a client out to lunch to discuss a new contract is a great way to avoid having to reveal that you work from home, while showing a potential client that you have a professional attitude towards business.

On the other hand, I’ve secured more contracts over a beer than over lunch. If you work in a particularly casual industry like web development, SEO, or content writing, your best tool can be a clean, quiet bar. This works well for meetings after 5 p.m.

But remember that working from home is just an alternative to working in an office, not necessarily a license to show up in shorts and a t-shirt. Business people will still expect you to look professional, and you have to be very careful about casual business conversations. You still have a product to sell, and you need to project an image of professionalism at all times.

Sure there are little challenges that we face at home or in an office, but …

What do you find are the big challenges of working at home for you?

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Author’s Bio:
Rachel Carlson is a writer and student that works from home. While she spends a lot of her time writing, she also helps different companies like Clear Wireless with gaining exposure through various blogs and websites. She has recently started a new Twitter account and is finally going to give it a real shot. She can be followed at @carlson_rachel.

Thanks, Rachel. You covered this big topic in fresh way.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

5 Focus Strategies to Seize the Right Opportunity Right Now!

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The Signal to Noise Issue Isn’t Only On the Internet

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Has it happened to you that you’ve invested your best strategy into landing a chance — an introduction, a project, small job for a potential client. Now is your moment! You can move forward your mission, change your position, take advantage of the changing conditions this chance affords you to leverage your expertise into new rewards and new experiences.

Even on a small scale a new opportunity ripe with potential can set off a world of thinking that undoes our ability to get down to what needs doing. We find ourselves over researching, procrastinating, contemplating the future, and social networking to see what others have done who have had the same experience.

The signal to noise ratio ratio on the Internet may be a distracting influence, but nothing undermines our ability to seize the opportunity right in front of us more than the signal to noise ratio that we allow in our heads.

What We Do That Undoes Us

In faster than you can fragment a computer, we fragment our heads and convince our hearts that they’re not a part of what we’re doing. We get busy with thoughts past and future and irrelevant arguments about what we could, should, or might be doing. Does any of this sound the least bit familiar? We fill our heads with

  • how we’re the wrong person to do this.
  • how we’re much better suited to be doing what we’re always doing. .
  • how people won’t respond well to what we end up doing.
  • how while we do this we might be missing other exciting opportunities.
  • how our results have backfired or fallen flat in the past.

    • And the big one …

  • how boring, uninteresting, long, hard, difficult, not fun, time-consuming and beyond our abilities we’ll find this new opportunity — among the 23,067 other reasons we might have for not doing it.

All of which are centered in the past or the future, not the current reality.

5 Focus Strategies to Seize the Right Opportunity Right in Front of You Now!

How do you know that you’ve got the right opportunity? A well-chosen opportunity is a match of our skills with enough challenge that we’re the perfect halfway between anxiety and boredom. We’ll need to stretch just a little bit, learn a few things as we’re doing it, but that will keep our concentration.

If you’ve chosen the right opportunity, the key is to focus and to stay completely in the moment. NOW is the only moment and the opportunity is the only the focus. Here’s how to do that successfully.

  1. Focus in on seeing the project finished. As Tim Sanders says and my experience agrees with, when our brains know that we plan to succeed, our subconscious releases the chemicals we need to help us do that. Call it flow or in the zone, but it’s the optimal experience. In order to get there, we have first have to know exactly what the task is. Every task you successfully finished had as many roadblocks and snags as those you left by the ditches. The difference in your successes was that you knew, you had decided you would finished and that became your first point of focus.
  2. Focus on the process and resources you need to do it well. In your mind plan through the process and see yourself doing it. Break that process into stages and determine what resources you need to complete each piece of the process. Bring the resources you need to where you will need them. Get serious about dedicating a true workspace to the project.
  3. Focus on making that opportunity a priority.Decide how much time you will dedicate to moving it forward every day and allow yourself no excuses. Include time for rests, rewards, breaks, and some play away from it — but don’t let the play be more important than the opportunity you’re ready to seize right now.
  4. Focus on working in the moment. Keep every step of completing the process in the NOW. Don’t relate to past successes, except to move this process forward. Don’t think about future rewards until it’s over. Don’t let other things interrupt you.
  5. Focus on how any opportunity can be the vehicle you need to learn what you should be learning. Love the faults and flaws of the project. Challenge yourself to value everything that you wouldn’t normally like doing. Find the fun in the most mundane tasks and huge overwhelming challenges. Turn every bit of the opportunity into a smaller, exciting opportunity of its own.

If you can master those five strategies, the payoff for you will be huge and long lasting. You’ll find that your life is more in control because it’s more focused, less hurried. The things you’ll be doing will be more efficient because you’ll be choosing to focus on doing only one of them at a time, which means it will get your concentration and best thinking.

Listening will be easier and you’ll be more likely to know what to ask and what to listen for.. Fewer communication problems will be happening. You’ll find yourself easier to work with and other people will agree with that assessment. Your confidence will rise.

Work will be more enjoyable and you may find that you like doing more kinds of work than you ever thought you would. Proof of concept is that what I’ve written here is exactly what I did when I didn’t want to write this blog post. And I had a blast doing it.

It’s really just a matter of turning down the signal to noise ratio in your mind. Are you ready to seize the opportunity right in front of you now?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

5 Ways to Appreciate Yourself and Enjoy Your Life!

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A Guest Post
by Dia Thabet

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“The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.” ~Sonya Friedman

Self appreciation is an important component for building self esteem and confidence. Appreciating yourself is necessary for your growth in this world as you won’t be able to grow if you think and view yourself negatively.

To learn how to appreciate yourself, follow the 5 steps below:

1. Love yourself

You can not appreciate yourself if you don’t love and value yourself. Loving yourself is not a form of arrogance and narcissism. It is appreciating the gifts that God has given you and the beauties that God has bestowed upon you.

Start today taking 5 minutes a day to express your love for yourself. The more you do this exercise, the more it will become ingrained in you. You can’t ask for a better habit to acquire than loving yourself.

2. Laugh

This is simple, yet people don’t do it often. Make it a habit to laugh every day. Spend time with your children, watch a comedy show, and look at funny pictures. The important is you take action and make laughter a habit in your life.

If you can’t find anything to laugh at, then just fake it. Studies show that even a fake laugh has powerful effects on the individual’s overall well being.

Remember when you laugh, you are showing that you are appreciating your health, hence you will reduce anxiety and stress in your life.

3. Meditate

Taking 15 minutes a day to quiet your mind and thoughts is necessary. Most of the great people who accomplish great goals in life know the importance of meditation; hence they appreciate the art of silencing their thoughts.

Guess what? You are great too and taking those 15 minutes a day to meditate shows that you appreciate inner peace and that you are willing to take the time to clear your thoughts from the negative and harmful thoughts.

4. Exercise

Let’s face it; your body needs to move to stay healthy. Do yoga, aerobics, swim, jog, walk, or join the gym. Find whatever type of exercise you like and enjoy doing and start doing it daily.

5. Talk kindly to yourself

Let me ask you, do you talk to yourself in a kind way? Do you use encouraging and positive words or negative talk? According to studies, more than 80% of people’s self talk is negative. When the majorities make a mistake, instead of looking for the lessons, they start blaming themselves.

Make a decision right now to start talking to yourself in a kind and compassionate way. God has sent you to this earth for a purpose. Know that you are a beautiful person and true gift to the world. Remember, the more appreciation and kindness you show to yourself, the more kindness you will be able to give others.

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”
Kahlil Gibran

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Dia Thabet writes for the coaching site 2 Achieve Your Goals , You can find her on Twitter as @Dia_Thabet

Thanks Dia! Great start to a weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Home Sick? 7 Productivity Tips So You Don’t Get Sick of Working at Home

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A Guest Post By Ripley Daniels

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So, you’ve been given the opportunity of working from home and the excitement of skipping your daily commute, navigating office politics and being chained to your cubicle have all but completely overtaken you. You are free to work from home and be productive without the confines of an office environment. For the first few months, all is well as you love falling out of bed in your favorite pajamas only to stumble a few feet into your home office. The freedom and autonomy is absolutely priceless. A few months later, the isolation begins to set in. You miss the office chatter and the scheduled breaks with your co-workers. There’s something unnatural about spending several hours a day in front of a computer screen with no one to interact with.

If you find yourself running into the issue of restlessness, isolation and depression while working from home; there is no need to worry. Like with anything new, you must learn to adapt to your new work environment. Follow these seven simple steps and you will be whizzing through your work day in no time.

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  1. Set up or maintain a regular work schedule. Nothing causes anxiety more than not having an organized daily routine which is what the traditional office environment automatically creates. In order to get into a happy, healthy work rhythm, you must create a work schedule that is realistic and doable and then stick to it. If you are used to starting work at 9AM and shutting down for the day at 5PM, this should be the work routine that you commit to while working from home.
  2. Allow yourself an hour break for lunch and a few small breaks throughout the day. Just as it is legally mandated that employees take lunch breaks and small breaks, you must follow the same guidelines or run the risk of burning yourself out. It is nearly impossible to work eight hours or more without stepping away from your desk so don’t feel pressured to slave away in front of your computer because you’re no longer officially on the clock. Set your lunch time and breaks at the same time every day so you can keep a regular schedule.
  3. Get outside and get active. Living a sedentary lifestyle is harmful to your health, sanity and confidence. When you are required to sit in front of a computer while working from home, it can be easy to forget the importance of fresh air and exercise and sunshine. When you do take your lunch break or small periodic breaks, try and get outside for a walk or to make a leisure call to friends/family. Take advantage of your new work environment and fit in some exercise via an exercise DVD or take a mid-day work out class at the gym on your lunch break.
  4. Set up Skype or Google Chat so you can maintain contact with your fellow co-workers while working from home. Telecommuting can be an isolating experience but with the help of social media and various programs, you can stay in touch with your co-workers as if you were right back in your cubicle or office. This is also a good way to keep your socialization skills sharp as telecommuting can easily dull your sensibilities from the lack of human interaction.
  5. Set goals for yourself both professionally and personally. Unlike a traditional job, a telecommuter has the opportunity of enhancing both their work life and personal life at the same time. You have the ability of using your breaks to complete various projects around the house which also serves as a mental break from your daily work load.
  6. Attend industry events and conferences so that you can stay current on the latest technology, products, services and inventions within your field. There is nothing worse than falling behind in your position because you’re working from home and no longer have access to the same information regarding classes or programs. Just because you are a telecommuter doesn’t mean that you can mentally check out and not deliver outstanding work performance.
  7. Step away from your desk at the end of each business day and don’t look back. If your schedule is 9AM-5PM, you should resist working past your scheduled hours as you will soon find that your energy levels, confidence and productivity will all drastically be affected. Turn your computer off and shut down your home office during the evenings and weekends so that you can maintain some semblance of a normal work/life balance.

Do you have other tricks you use to keep your business well and working?
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Ripley Daniels is an editor at Without The Stress, a passport, travel visa and immigration advisory firm located in Los Angeles.

Thanks, Ripley, for your insight into the problems that are unique to working at home!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!