Whether your home-based business involves a lot of driving or not, it is important that you have a road map. I’m not talking about the kind of road map that you keep in the car – you know, the one with all of the streets and highways on it. I’m talking about a different type of “road map”, a set of goals and guiding principles for your home-based business.
Where can a home-based professional get that kind of a road map for his or her home-based business? These maps are not available at a store or online. They are created by each individual home-based professional for his or her business. In order to create the road map for your home-based business, you will have to set aside some time because developing an effective road map for a home-based business involves daydreaming, deep thought, and self-assessment, among other things.
You may feel that you do not have the time to stop and do the thinking that is required to create your road map because you are so busy and have many other things that you need to do. If you feel this way, now may not be the right time to develop your road map. You can just keep your business going along the same path that it is on until you feel a strong enough desire to change course. When this happens, you may want to think again about creating a road map to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
To begin creating the road map for your home-based business, start with a simple exercise. Divide a sheet of paper into two columns. In the first column, describe a typical day in your life, including the details of your work like when you work, what kind of work you do, your pay, and so on. Next, use the other column to describe your ideal day. After you have thought through these two things, take a clean sheet of paper and note the similarities and differences between the two descriptions. The items that are contained in both the description of your average day and your ideal day are the things that you can appreciate right now because you already have them. The things that you have in your ideal day that you do not have in your average day now are the things that you will work towards with your road map, your goals.
Now that you have established the goals that you are going to work towards as destinations on your home-based business road map, you have to think about what roads will lead you to those goals. Specifically, for each goal, what are two or three action items that you can do to move you closer to that goal. If a goal is particularly lofty, then you may need more action items to get there. The key is to make the steps towards your goal specific and doable. Once you can see the routes (made of action items) that lead towards your goal, you have your road map. Choose a destination and begin driving your business in the direction of your goals today.