Looking back on the transition from a "brick & Mortar" business operator to an online marketer, a home business operator, seems so long ago in prospective, but 5 years is just a drop in the bucket in ones life time of achievements and failures over that specific time frame in life. When looking at blocks of five year increments, do you ever just ponder what you accomplished in each of those specific five year periods throughout your life. From your birth to five years old, you were able to learn to crawl, walk upright, dress, bathe, eat, play, change the channel on the remote, pop a dvd into the player, and formulate a few articulate sentences to communicate sufficiently at the time. Now, these seem like very obvious mundane skills that take no thought process to accomplish but for a infant child, these were monumental tasks necessary to successfully compete and prosper in the world. Now Look at you, pondering whether you have what it takes to succeed at a home business.

Piece of cake, Right? You may want to tread softly and really consider what your getting yourself into. It can be done. But like that infant child, taking the first steps can be pretty darn scary and you better hold on for dear life.

Here is what you may wish to consider. Are you a multi-tasker, as in, can you do it all, and do you want to? Unlike working for the large corporation, resources and trained staff that send out invoices, fix problems with the computer equipment, fax machines, phone systems, video and audio equipment, deal with the necessary human resource requirements, marketing campaigns, advertising, legal mumbo jumbo, financial requirements and so forth, falls squarely on the home based business owners' shoulders, solely. Tag your it, and there is no one else to do it for you. This means that in order to be successful one must master the skills that it takes to do your own accounting, solve equipment problems, develop marketing systems, advertise, the art of juggling many hats so to speak, that may be new territories never explored before stepping out on your own. Will you be at ease setting your own work schedule? Two things happen right away when you decide to start your own home based business.

One, you no longer have a boss, and two, you no longer have a boss. On the one hand you no longer have someone that dictates the when and where and what time that you should show up for work. On the other hand, you have to dictate the when and where and what time to show up for work.

If you are used to showing up for work at a pre-determined set time, this may be the most difficult change to make. Everyone thinks how incredible it would be to not have an employer and have the freedom to come and go as you wish, but the truth is we are all creatures of habit and if you cannot structure yourself to maintain a scheduled routine, your home based business will experience a failure to launch. Are you goal oriented or simply task oriented? Well in reality there is a difference. I cannot count the number of times I have sat at my desk and explored the inner workings of my stapler, and counted how many staples that it really holds when it is full. Not a very productive goal and quite a tedious task to say the least. Goals need to be set to establish specific milestones to achieve.

In order achieve success at a home based business you will have to challenge yourself to establish real solid specific goals, then develop the necessary action plan of tasks to complete each and every goal. Understanding the difference between the tasks and goals you lay out each day, week, month or quarter will help establish a series of routine behavior that will develop solid organized daily habits that need to be accomplished to achieve the desired goals in your business. The hard work and discipline that develops will reward you much greater and counting staples probably won't cross your mind. Speaking of that stapler, are you the type of person that is easily distracted? House phone ringing, the neighbors mowing the lawn, the kids playing outside, the TV on in the background, laundry in the washer, that dripping faucet in the bathroom, The pets running through the living room on the hardwood floor, and well, hey lets face it, the refrigerator at home is probably stocked better than at the office. As you organize your your work space, careful consideration should be arranged so that distractions would be minimized or eliminated to achieve the highest level of productivity you can. Your inner most work area should be just that, the area that you perform the tasks that create the revenue, that successfully accomplishes your goals.

Anything that interrupts you will slowly eat away at your business like a parasitic tick on a camels back, not enough to stop work but enough to reduce the amount of things you may be able to accomplish while at work. Finally, will the inner workaholic, or procrastinator finally emerge from hiding? A balance will need to be achieved to avoid chronic meltdown, or fizzle, so that each day, you may allow yourself the luxury of enjoying why you are working at home, so you can enjoy being at home. No matter how much work needs to be done, it will be vital for your sanity to shut down for the day, and call it quitting time at a specific time. If you are procrastinating, reset your goals and get more aggressive at your tasks so you can knock off at a decent hour the next day. Most new home based business owners overdue what needs to be done in the infancy of their business and learn not to enjoy what they are doing very early causing personal strife on the home front that was never there before and tend to through the towel in at this point, when a simple injection of self discipline will set the standards necessary for a successful home based business to co-exist with family, friends, neighbors, and customers or clients. Keeping everyone in your sphere of influence happy will help your business succeed.

Terry Sauerbier is a successful marketing consultant and entreprenuer. He has launched several successful start-up businesses on and off line. To learn more about his secrets to success and how you can achieve the same financial freedom, visit http://www.real-income-real-success.com