So what will your new home business be about? That’s the biggest hurdle which most people face. Most people go for the instant answer of MLM (bleh…nasty) or some other pyramid marketing fiasco that only makes others rich and poor people ever poorer. Then there are franchises and business opportunity fairs but you normally have to fork out thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to even get started in these ventures.

Remember we want to start generating a second income here. Make money. Not spend even more money you don’t have. It’s amazing how many people will max out their credit card(s) on a business opportunity that goes nowhere. Crazy!

So how can you generate ideas for a home based business?

Take a notepad and write down every single hobby, interest or skill you have. Don’t think about it too much. Just brainstorm it and write down anything that comes to mind. It could be surfing, flower arranging, antique collecting, owning pets, being a computer whizz, shopping on e-bay. They’re just random ideas that came to mind while I was writing this.

Keep writing for at least 30 minutes. Don’t stop. Don’t ring a friend to chat. Don’t watch some TV. Just write and keep writing until you have no more ideas left.

Okay now take the list you’ve just written and read through it.

Circle all the ideas that appeal to you.

Narrow that list down to the top 9 ideas.

Now narrow it down to 3 ideas.

Which of the 3 ideas or topics jumps off the page at you?

Which of them sets a fire in your belly and makes you feel passionate about it?

Which of them is something you’d love to do each day as a full time job?

That’s how you track down the perfect business idea for generating a secondary (or maybe full-time) income from home.

Oh and keep that ideas list in a safe place!! You’ve just done some excellent brainstorming - it will come in useful in the future.

If you’re interested in learning how I make money from home then I can highly recommend the following book for you to read:

How to become an affiliate marketer.

Am I bothered that friends called me for help with this type of computer problem? Not at all - I’m a total nerd at heart and always will be to some extent.

No my problem is that these people were using freebie anti-virus programs that are months out-of-date and of absolutely no use in stopping an actual virus. All for the sake of a few dollars they’re willing to risk losing hours of time (in one case a lifetime of digital photographs) and frustration just because they’re too cheap to go and buy a decent anti-virus and firewall solution.

The attitude I see is “It won’t happen to me because I don’t download pirated movies/mp3s/games”. That’s about as shortsighted an approach to computer security as I can think of. It’s just plain dumb to be blunt.

What I can’t understand is that these people have zero clue about the risks they’re taking getting hit with virus and spyware infections. Viruses don’t announce their presence on your system like in those dumb hacker movies - there’s no skull and crossbones on your screen. No cryptic messages or any of the other nonsense that Hollywood would have you believe. The best and most dangerous viruses are the ones that do their very, very best to stay hidden.

Listen up folks. If you are not using a firewall package AND anti-virus software then I can promise that you are going to get hit with a virus and probably a nasty one at that. You cannot use one and not use the other. You’d also be wise to download and run Spybot or Ad-Aware at least once a month also to clear up spyware problems.

If you’re happy to risk financial disaster and identity theft then continue on taking risks online. Soon enough you’ll become a statistic with the rest of the “It won’t happen to me because…” crowd.

Worst part is that I’ll probably wind up writing Part III of this series…. shame.

For now let’s just say that I’ve been busy and flat out for the last month. Apologies.

Here’s the thing - avoiding success can be a conscious thing but more often than not it’s subconscious. We often aim to avoid success without even realizing it. The way we live our lives each day is often enough to prevent success. Sometimes it’s because of the influence of those around us. Sometimes it’s because of the what we learned from our parents and peers as we grew up.

The point is that being unsuccessful is a learned behaviour; it’s something we learned how to do over time. Until it became a habit. For some people it becomes instinct. They can avoid success and successful situations almost at will.

Does that sound unfair? Think about this. You all know that person in your life who displays this ability to avoid success. That one person who will pick the loser every single time. That person who could walk into a room full of billionaires, visionaries and gurus and would hook up with the only total loser in the place. That’s the reality of it. Some people are not only attracted to avoid success but actively pursue it in a very subconscious way.

So how can you avoid being successful? Just follow these simple tips:

Friendships
Surround yourself with people with no ambition, desire nor dreams. Spend as much time as possible with them in bars or coffee shops moaning about how unfair life is and how opportunities always just seem to pass them by. Buy into their apathy until you feel as hopeless as they do. Don’t forget to reinforce just how awful and hopeless life is at least once every six months as a group. “All men are bastards” or “All women are bitches” are good mottos to start off these friendships with.

Affirmations
Each day you wake up and get out of bed remind yourself of how inadequate you feel and how your life is just a pointless journey with no excitement or joy. Put all your mental focus into having a rotten day and focus on coming home each day unhappy and upset. Visualize it until it’s as real in your mind as it is in real life.

Distractions
Keep yourself constantly distracted with the opinion and advice of others. Make sure you never, ever make up your own mind on any matter - business, personal or otherwise. If for some reason you find some element of success in your life then immediately find something else to distract you until the potential of success has vanished. This is especially true in business; if you find a business idea that works well then immediately start doing something else to distract you.

Excuses
Whenever you’re inspired to do something or set a new goal then immediately find a reason for not doing it. The standard of excuses of being tired, not having enough money, not having enough time are all acceptable. Especially if you’ve just spent the last 5 hours eating pizza in front of your cable TV. The more excuses you can find for not even trying the more you can truly learn to avoid any form of success.

Mindset
Being successful is a mindset as much as it is a tangible thing. True success can’t become real in your life until you adopt a mental attitude that fosters success in your life. Beware - avoid all forms of positive mental attitude. Steer clear of inspirational books, movies or people. In as much as you can stay mentally negative - especially when presented with a positive/inspiring idea, situation or person. Always find some reason to criticize positive things.

Other People
Always remember and never forget that your problems are always caused by other people. Always and without fail. Nothing is your responsibility. You are accountable for nothing nor anyone in your life for any reason whatsoever. Everything that goes wrong for you is the fault of somebody else.

You now have a blueprint on “How To Avoid Being Successful” - go forth and be negative right now!

Wrong.

It’s always the same. The same people who assume “It can never happen to me” are the exact people who get caught with their drawers down. One recent example is of a friend I chatted with on MSN one night recently. A few minutes later her MSN sends me a link with a virus in it. Luckily enough my anti-virus software caught it. Sadly for her that virus had been sent to all her MSN contacts and everyone in her Outlook address book. She’d been using a free anti-virus package which simply hadn’t been protecting her PC properly - something is free for a reason; usually because it’s not very good.

She then said “I’d die if I lost all my college work on this laptop”. So I asked “So you’ve got all your files backed up right?”. Her reply? Go on guess what she replied? “No I don’t have them backed up”.

DOH!!

This is an intelligent young woman training to become a teacher. Her laptop was expensive and her school work is priceless (she could never have replaced it) yet she’ll use a free anti-virus tool and no backup system! Does that make sense to you? It certainly doesn’t to me.

She was lucky - the virus didn’t destroy any data so she won’t have to drop out of college. Luck was on her side this time and the fact that the following day she went and invested in Norton Antivirus on my recommendation. She also got herself signed up Mozy Online Backup and invested in a USB memory key to store her data on.

She had to spend some cash yes but now her lifes work is protected.

You’re either protecting your computer data or you’re not. Period.

After 30 minutes I turned the movie off. It was truly and utterly awful. The worst kind of crap you could imagine. I think I managed one small giggle in all that time. I was so disappointed. What happened to the movie I loved when I was younger?

Time has colored my memories of this movie. I made it funnier in my head than it ever was in real life. Seeing it again kinda woke me up to the reality that time does change us and how we see and feel about things. There are things which are timeless (in movie terms we can say Star Wars for example) and other things date in our lives very quickly.

We’re told that time is a great healer and a great destroyer. Both are equally true. In this case time neither healed nor destroyed for me - it simply showed me that what was once important and precious to us can change; sometimes a lot sooner than we think.

What has time changed in your life?

For bigger businesses this isn’t something that’s focused on straight away. Indeed many businesses expect to simply break even for their first or second year if they’re lucky. After that they set out plans for generating actual profits.

For somebody who’s working from a home office running at a loss or simply breaking even isn’t enough. The business needs to be generating some profit above operating costs otherwise you’re operating in debt - which is just plain stupid. Oh I’ve done it. Operated in debt that is. Twice in my life - never, ever again. Seriously it’s a dumb thing to do.

What I want to focus on here though is profit not debt. Profit and something that hit me the other day. For those of you who don’t know I run a web development business which has very low overheads (which I love). This has been generating a healthy profit for a while and I’ve been enjoying the entire experience of being financially stable (and a bit more than that for the first time in many years if truth be told.

So all along I’ve been enjoying the profits from the business but I lost sight of something. I haven’t been reinvesting in my own business as much as I should be. The philosophy of “Hey it’s running ok as it is” is where I’d become shortsighted. I’ve realized that for investing about 15% of my income from the business each month back into the business I can potentially double my net profits. What would this mean to me? It would put me in a six figure income bracket within 12 months (if not less).

DOH!

It took investment of time and money (blood, sweat and tears also of course) to get the business up and running. I forgot to reinvest in the business now as much as I did then. Over the 14 days I’ve been reinvesting in the business and am already seeing the results of this. Oh and a client came back and bought three websites from me for several thousand so that was nice too

The point I’m making is this. You have to invest in your life, your relationships, your health and your business if you expect any return from them. It’s that simple.

Hope this sparks something in the grey matter of some of you reading this!

The first thing that will come to mind you will see as a “reason”.

Here’s the problem - more often than not it’s an excuse. Usually based on fear. Fear of failure. For some it’s a fear of success. Either way it’s an excuse.

Don’t believe me?

Ok that’s cool but try this. Keep asking yourself why you didn’t achieve that goal. When you come up with your next “reason” then ask the question “Why?” again. Keep using the question “Why?” until you get to the real “reason” for you not reaching your goal. 99% of the time it’s because you made an excuse not to. It’s only when you truly question yourself that you’ll see that.

Example. I used to do Tae Kwan Do years and years ago. I was pretty good at it too. One night I got jumped by 3 guys and after 15 minutes of fighting they eventually took me down. It hurt my confidence A LOT. For years I wanted to get back into martial arts and regain that confidence I’d lost that night. I put it off for so many years that in the end I figured at 36 I’d simply be too old to go back training. I finally got over that excuse and went back training 2 months ago and have been loving every minute of it - bruised ribs and battered knee included.

My reason was that I was too old. Horse shit! There are guys there at leat 5 years older than me. My reason was an excuse. My excuse was based on fear of failure or not being able to keep up. In the end I wanted it badly enough to get over my excuses and took the risk of trying again. I’m glad I did. I’ve exorcised an old ghost by doing it.

Personally I have no time for reasons. Sure I come up with “reasons” for things I haven’t done. The honest truth is that 95% of those reasons are just excuses in disguise. “I’m tired”, “I have more important stuff to do”, “I’ll get that done tomorrow”. My reality is that I see these as excuses now and work to get past them immediately.

You’ll find a lot of people make these excuses for not having time or being tired while they’re:

1. Sitting at a bar feeling sorry for themselves!

2. Sitting in front of the TV feeling lazy!

3. Playing computer games because they’re bored!

How can you possibly argue that you don’t have time or resources while you’re sittin on your ass effectively doing nothing?

Is it okay to have downtime or offdays? Of course. You’re only human and we all have bad days when we simply can’t gather the mental or physical energy to work. Sometimes it might even be a week or so when that happens. It happens to me about twice a year. I snap the hell out of it as soon as I can though because I know that I’m working with a commodity that I can’t replace - time.

Be honest about your reasons. Most of them are excuses and you know it.

Actually if you found yourself getting angry or upset reading this then you’ve definitely been making a lot of excuses in your life. I have. You have. We all have. Stop doing it.