How to go to Work for Yourself with a Home-Based Business

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MONEY DOES MATTER . . . AND TIME IS MONEY!

In almost every case, the person who goes into a self-employment venture with quickmoney attitudes is doomed to failure. While "get rich quick" may have been the Great American Dream during the first half of this century, it is indeed not one of the realities of the century's second half. Even the government is dead set against such "nonsense", as federal tax forms show (short-term gains are now taxed at twice the rate of longterm gains).

The people with the healthiest attitude toward money are those who regard it as a tool. A few lucky individuals, moreover, are able to view this tool with a minimum of emotion.

One friend of mine, for instance, uses his extra money to buy good floor coverings, usually Persian rugs that need repair. And, once he's fixed a rug, he enjoys it! The brick walls of his loft are covered with rugs, and so are the floors.

Once, while visiting this friend, I said that I was afraid to walk on his "art collection" . . . especially after he'd told me that some of the Persian carpets are worth as much as $1,500 apiece. "Don't be silly!" he said. "They're made to be walked on. They can take it. When I buy a rug I'm paying for all of the hours and hours that some person dedicated to making it. That time-not the rug-is what has value."

That was an important lesson for me. For, if time truly has value, it's obvious that one of the biggest mistakes you can make when working for yourself is to un dervalue your time. Remember, it isn't just the time you spend in the act of performing the work you do . . . but all the additional time that gets used up as you arrange sales, deliver goods, clean up, and generally ponder your next move.

Which explains why a lot of self-employed people-who usually do not punch out, "turn it all off", and go home at 5 p.m.--so easily get into the rut of working 60- to 80-hour weeks for subsistence pay. Often, this spirit-crushing grind results simply because the entrepreneurs involved fail to add up all the hours which go into their products or services . . . and then fail to raise their prices by the few cents or dollars that their customers would never begrudge them for their quality work.

Remember, then: Money does matter and time is money. The folks who succeed at their own businesses never forget these facts. Which is why so many of the most prosperous entrepreneurs I've interviewed insist that the one universal rule of money management for the small enterprise which must always be observed is: Keep a written record of every transaction you make.

Now, granted . . . the variety of methods for organizing this mass of facts and figures is one of the frightening (to many of us, anyway) aspects of "doing business". All those numbers on all those lined pages in book after book-it's true -can be not only confusing, but dull, if we allow them to be.

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