How To Beat The Fear Of Starting Your Own Business

There is an old saying that goes "a job begun is half done". The best way to overcome inertia and get started with your own home-based business is to compile a plan for the business.

Business plans for a home business are different, though, for 2 reasons:

1. You are writing it for your own use, not to impress or convince someone else.
2. If you are getting started with your own business you won't want to spend precious hours writing a work-of-art business plan.

A few years ago I was employed as a marketing consultant for a fairly large brewery. I was asked to design a one page business dashboard, something I hadn't done before. A dashboard is a summary of all the key business measures that enable executives to monitor that the business is on track to achieve its goals.

In the process of creating the dashboard, I learned the enormous value of designing a document that fits onto a single page. It forces you to think about what matters in the business and exclude the "nice-to-haves".

A business plan is like a dashboard - it just precedes it. The best home- based business plans are those that can be written on a single sheet of paper, because they focus on the practical things that matter to home based entrepreneurs.

If you would like to learn more about it, have a look at this article about writing a one page home business plan. If you like the idea you can download a free one page home business plan template too.