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The federal
court of appeals judge I clerked for had a phrase he would
often quote to his clerks.
¨The
first rule of warfare,¨ he would say, ¨is ´Define
the Objective´.¨
What´s
your objective? What goal are you trying to reach?
There´s
no one answer. You might want to take your home based business,
and grow it into a major public company - as Michael Dell
did with his dorm-room based Dell Computer and the folks at
Hewlett Packard did with their garage-based technical instruments
company.
You might
want to enjoy being at home, with your family, as much as
possible - while generating some revenue and building value
in the business.
You might
want to create something substantial enough, working part-time
at home, to enable you one day soon to leave the corporate
world and answer to no one but yourself.
All worthy
aims - and all requiring different plans and approaches.
If you
don´t yet have a defined goal, set one. It may help
if you set one for one year out, or three years out, so that
the goal is more nearly immediate and real.
Once you
have this goal, write it down. Reflect on it, and begin thinking
about how you can achieve it. It can become the starting point
for a more detailed business plan, but it certainly should
become a touchstone against which you test every major decision
in your business.
If your
goal is to be with your family, there are customers and accounts
that will be well worth turning down - the money they generate
won´t outweigh the downside if they take you away from
your family more than you want.
If your
goal is to be a public company, you should start networking
right away with experienced people who can give you seasoned
guidance. Michael Dell lined up a blue chip advisory board
when his company was still in its infancy, and those links
helped him build toward being a far larger company.
If your
goal is to build a business that replaces your current day
job, you should test constantly whether what you are building
can grow large enough to support your financial needs.
By defining
your goal, and testing decisions against it, you can keep
focus both in your business and your life.
So here´s
the takeaway point. Define your objective. It´s not
only the first rule of warfare, it´s the first rule
of home business.
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