Many of us start our home businesses with a bucket full of great ideas for how we want to do things. If we are coming from another career or years of working in a traditional job, perhaps we have saved up all of our ideas for how to do things better or ways that we want to NOT make the same mistakes we have witnessed. Still, for the good of our home businesses, we need to branch out and get ideas from other people too. Networking, mentoring and just sharing ideas about how to do business can be extremely beneficial activities for our business operations.
Think of it this way—no matter how many books you read or how long you are in business, you cannot possibly come up with every single good idea. Even if you are dedicated and brilliant, your home business does not operate in a vacuum. You need to get outside opinions and talk things over with individuals who have something to offer and exchange. Besides, you may have something helpful that you can share with someone else too.
Some of us feel like we cannot possibly talk about what is going on in our business because we will be “giving away the secrets.” An overly-skeptical concern for competition or insecurity about whether or not people will think we are stupid can prevent us from opening up and talking about how we are doing business. This conservatism can actually hurt our businesses, however. We need new ideas and new blood and it helps us to talk things through with other people doing the same or similar things. Ask questions, share stories, swap information and you will likely find that you get some fantastic ideas and inspiration for how to improve your home business. We need to access the people and resources around us in order to make the most of things!