So, you've made the decision to begin a business from your home. The creation of a brand new concept is the important first step in establishing any business, but choice of a business could make or break your entrepreneurial venture. However, a home business will not be for everyone. So, the question is – do you know what business you should start?

Any new home business you start must have the following criteria:

CRITERIA 1: You must have the ability to learn the business thoroughly and quickly.
CRITERIA 2: The business must be in high demand, be stable and sustainable.
CRITERIA 3: The business must be profitable.

One business that we know of that meets all of those standards is that of a freight broker.

Cisco Innovators Forum guest blogger Marilyn Suttle interviews some customer service superstars – the leaders and front line staff of highly successful companies who excel in customer care:
I was invited to participate in a spectacular train-the-trainer program run by Jack Canfield (best known for co-creating the multi-billion dollar Chicken Soup for the Soul brand.) This year-long intense training granted me permission to teach the success principles developed by Jack over the last 30+ years. It's exciting to notice how the lessons I've learned from Jack and his employees paralleled the interviews from the other company leaders featured in my book, “Who's Your Gladys?”
During one of the trainings, Jack introduced a success pie chart that had a huge impact on me. It originated from business builder Jim Bunch. The chart shows that 50% of success comes from your environment, 40% from your mindset, and only 10% from skill. It makes sense when you think about it. Many capable people don't live up to their potential because of their beliefs systems and unsupportive environments.
If 50% of success comes from creating environments that support your goals, how can you upgrade your workplace environment to attract and retain more long-term customers?
-What can you remove to make room for something better?
-What can you add to the environment to uplift and inspire better business practices?
-As I looked at the weight that environment plays on success, example after example sprang up based on my interviews with successful professionals.
One example came from Sky Lakes Hospital. Its customer satisfaction scores rose from the 41st percentile to the top 10% in the nation after a three year customer service culture change. Custom Learning Systems was hired to give the leaders at Sky Lakes tools to support service excellence. One wonderful tool that Sky Lakes adopted was the “Six Foot Rule.”
Every employee, hospital-wide, is required to look up, make eye-contact, and say something pleasant when they pass within six feet of anyone – a patient, visitor, or even a fellow employee. This rule has changed the environment at Sky Lakes. The expectation was non-negotiable. People were held accountable. What happened?
For some, the workplace got a whole lot friendlier and much more enjoyable. Unfortunately, for some of the Sky Lakes staff, this new rule was intolerable. In fact, some of the employees actually quit their jobs because they didn't want to follow the new rule. It didn't match their cynical dispositions. The upside? This new environment organically weeded out those who didn't fit the new service excellence culture.
This serves as a great illustration of the power of your environment in creating success. Just imagine being an employee of this hospital. Let's say your name is George. You're not great with customer service but it's okay because your particular job doesn't require customer contact.
According to Jim Bunch's pie chart, your environment counts for 50% of your success. Put in an environment where there are no expectations that George socialize, he won't. However the Six Foot Rule changed the expectations and the environment.
The environment George works in now calls forth a new degree of interpersonal warmth and connection. His coworkers are his internal customers and are positively affected whenever George looks up and greets them. This rule improves his coworker relationships and delights the occasional patient that he passes in the halls.
Brian Lee, the President of Custom Learning Systems explained that the moment you take your eye off of customer service, it reverts back to the way it was. It makes sense, especially when you think about it from a personal standpoint.
You don't just put gas in your car, shower or eat a meal once. You do it on an ongoing basis, monitoring your levels of fuel, cleanliness, or hunger, and taking action to keep things running effectively. You don't just organize your office once, you need to keep your eye on it, or it won't take long for it to revert back to chaos. Are you keeping an eye on your workplace environment? Is it supporting all the time, money, and training efforts you've invested in service excellence?
I met a disillusioned sales person who was recently hired into a new company. She said, “The Company I came from paid less salary, gave smaller expense accounts, and less substantial health care, but the employees LOVED working there. The environment was charged. The company was run smart and lean and the quality of the product along with a strong team commitment made customers happy. I was proud to work there.
The company I'm at now pays more, we have longer vacation time, bigger expense accounts, and better health care coverage, but . . . the environment is depressing. My manager is uncomfortable with conflict so there are ongoing issues that pollute the workplace, and the products we sell aren't as impressive as I hoped they would be.” An environment filled with communication breakdowns and unclear expectations will cause confident, talented employees to look elsewhere for a workplace that will support them in achieving and enjoying an environment of excellence.
If 50% of your success with customers comes from the environment, what can you add to it, and remove from it, to draw out the best in yourself, your coworkers, and staff? Here are three quick tips to upgrade your environment. Please feel free to add your tips to this blog entry. Your contribution may make a positive impact on the way readers approach their workplace environments.
1. Observe your workplace. Walk through your company as if you had absolutely no ties to it. As a customer, what would make you want to do business with this company? What might push you away? As an employee, what would make you want to get up in the morning and come to work each day? What might be hindering your enthusiasm?
2. Be accessible – consistently. Create an environment that encourages management to communicate with staff. Make a habit of walking around on a regular basis, specifically to create opportunities for casual conversation. Offer a customer service box that employees can use to leave anonymous messages to management for those issues that are too uncomfortable for them to share openly. One example: A spa employee complained that the room she spends eight hours a day in was not being kept clean enough for her comfort. She didn't want to be known as a complainer so without this form of communication, the issue would have continued to hinder her workplace satisfaction. By having an anonymous way to complain, management stepped in and addressed the issue with the cleaning staff. Set specific time aside to ask your employees what's working and what's not working. Encourage them to share what might be helpful to them so that they can be more helpful to their customers.
3. Set environmental expectations – You get what you measure. Whether you use a secret shopper, an outside customer rating system, or your own internal reviews, make sure your people understand what you expect from them. Make every department accountable for their service excellence scores. Spend time focusing on what they are doing right. Clear expectations combined with a positive focus draws the best out of all concerned.

One of the most overlooked utilities for small businesses is the plastic card. While in recent years there has been a negative stigma given to credit, smart companies have been able to utilize them for maximum benefits without going into terrible debt by over spending.

One of the most overlooked utilities for small businesses is the plastic card. While in recent years there has been a negative stigma given to credit, smart companies have been able to utilize them for maximum benefits without going into terrible debt by over spending.

Running a small business can be one of the most rewarding and stressful things in your life. You probably run on pure passion half the time and on pure necessity the other half. Doing too much just comes with the territory. You may think that it's too expensive to hire an assistant, but how much is your sanity worth?

Ask yourself why you are working. Why did you choose to start this business in the first place? The reason probably wasn't so that you could run yourself into the ground. You most likely really love what you are doing or you see potential for a great profit in the business. Reevaluating your goals and making your vision a priority can help you put things into perspective.

How can you start a small business

These days, home based businesses are thriving. Owe it to the growing complexity of big companies, most people now favor the simple and direct services of a home based business.

Starting a home-based business is not as complicated as you think it is. You just have to follow certain steps to be able to establish one that actually makes money.

The following covers the most important points that you will need to consider as you try your hand in home based business.

Want to be a small entrepreneur? Read about why the online home business is best for you.

Are you looking to become an entrepreneur? Is it because you want to free yourself from the grind of a corporate life, or just looking to add a little extra to your income? If so, you can build a new small business on a budget with an online home business.

What's an online home business? It's where you work your niche of choice online from your home computer. This is opposed to online big businesses, which are full sized corporations making money with huge online auction sites, mall sites, or anything else requiring a full staff and their own server banks. These types of sites are out of your reach as a small home entrepreneur, but there is still plenty you can do.

The economy of China is improving as well as increasing in a consistent manner. It is quite easy to import from China markets be it in large scale or in small quantities. Services related to freight and freight forwarding are a result of the various infrastructure changes that are taking place due to fast growing economy of the country. People who are involved in the field of business, be it a small business or a business of large scale, a significant role is played by the suppliers in China. This would be of much help for doing business in those products that small business owners import from China.

small business owners have traditionally been at a disadvantage when it comes to marketing. Larger companies have tremendous amounts of money to throw into their marketing campaigns. However, small businesses have usually been forced to rely on small print or radio ads, word of mouth and "sales flyers" delivered to their customers' doors. This is no longer the case. The Internet has leveled the playing field considerably and provides small business owners with numerous options for their marketing needs.

If you own a small business you likely spend more time marketing than everything else put together. You also know that in marketing there’s an order and a system to the process and when you follow the system correctly, it works and it brings you more clients.

One of the biggest mistakes small business people make is trying to sell to people before building a relationship and before they have shown an interest. If you love your products and you know your service is amazing, you want to tell them and pass on your excitement. However, if you do that part too soon, you lose people because you haven’t developed a relationship, listened to them and genuinely learned who they are and what they care about.

If you're a small business owner, like myself, you understand how important it is to have a reliable and trustworthy team to help you run your day-to-day operations. Unfortunately, even with the additional productivity that additional employees can provide for your business, there is an increasingly large amount of time that needs to be spent on the daily management of those resources.

If it fits your business model, Outsourcing is one great way to minimize your labor costs and to maximize your return-on-investment…both in real dollar terms and also in terms of your allocation of management time.

There are many inexpensive, web-based tools available today that can provide you with a real time application to systematize and document your business processes, which can then be used on an ongoing basis to answer many of the frequently asked questions that typically take up your time…