Business Basics

I get it. Finally. Now I know what people mean when they say they want to earn some extra money from home.

I can't count how many times someone has asked me if I know of any jobs that can be done from home to earn a few extra bucks, usually by a spouse who works outside the home. In my experience, the economy has either blocked that spouse's promotion and flat-lined their pay scale, actually reduced their salary or, God forbid, threatened their job entirely. Not to mention those who are laid off and remain unemployed. Naturally these folks want their household to be as financially secure as possible, and on at least a dozen occasions I have tried to help people start their own home-based business. And none, not one of them, has ever taken me up on my offer to help. Not one.

I realize I'm not a financial genius, but I have run my own home-based business since 1998 and I offered my assistance to all of these people for free. FREE. My time, your potential earnings. Mr. Nice Guy just likes to see his friends succeed and wanted to helped them just to be a good friend. Yet none of those people ever took me up on my offer. Not one. And today I finally realized why.

See, those people did not actually want to start their own business. What they wanted was a home-based job built with somebody else's money, where they could earn a lot of money without taking too much time or effort, and preferably one that was easy. They did not want to build their own business, they wanted somebody to hire them to do simple tasks at high wages that took little time.

Sounds good, right? Except, such jobs don't actually exist. They just don't. If you want to work from home, with a few exceptions, you are going to need to start some sort of business. But if I brought this up to these people and even mentioned spending a few bucks, such as the $700-plus to build a decent website, with associated fees (like hosting and domain names), and on-going expenses, they looked at me like I was nuts. What? Spend money to make money? Are you crazy?

If you want to make money from home, you can. It's going to be hard and it's going to require effort and you're going to have to invest some capital, although probably a lot less than you think. But the point is, you are going to have to invest in yourself, because nobody else is going to. I think the reason it took me so long to figure this out is because, for me, this has always been so obvious. I have lots and lots of capital at risk in my book business, far more than I do in The VTL Team, so for me this was just Life 101.

The folks who turned down my offer are all good people, they all have much to offer and most of them would probably be great business owners, if they would only trust the one person that matters most: themselves.