Jeffrey A. Landers, a work at home business expert and author, shares his professional insight on home business success, stating that outsourcing and focusing on work that will generate revenue is the secret to growing a successful work at home business.Work from home business owners often try to do everything themselves. They're mavericks and they're used to multi-tasking -- sending out invoices, managing accounts, returning phone calls, handling vendors, checking e-mail, filing and hundreds of other time-consuming jobs that are necessary, but take up huge amounts of time. Landers believes home-based entrepreneurs are missing out on opportunities when they focus on these menial tasks. He believes home business owners should focus on the revenue-generating aspects and leave the time-consuming drudge work to an outsourced professional.
This is a bit controversial because many home-based businesses and start-ups are not in a position to bring on staff, pay taxes and unemployment insurance and manage people, especially when the owners are still working out of their spare bedroom and trying to save what little money they have.
"This is where many work from home business owners get stuck," says Landers, "they need to grow, but they don't have the resources and revenue to take the first step, so they go nowhere."
That's why Landers' book, The Home Office From Hell Cure helps home-based entrepreneurs not only realize they are doing a disservice to their business by getting bogged down in the menial tasks, but also helps them find a simple, cost-effective way to start focusing on revenue-producing, business-growing work.
"If a work at home business owner spends four hours tomorrow filing papers and trying to pay vendors, that's four hours he isn't putting together a new client campaign, marketing his business or meeting with potential clients," Landers says. "You add up all those little housekeeping jobs every week and you've got hours in the double digits where he isn't doing the work that will help grow his home-based business."
The first step? Landers advises readers to begin outsourcing by hiring a virtual assistant.
"Virtual assistants are a low-cost, low-commitment way to start getting some of that suffocating, time-sucking work off the desk and into the hands of a professional who is trained to get it done correctly in the least amount of time," says Landers.
In fact, virtual assistants work off-site from their own home offices and can be hired hourly on an as needed basis. If a work from home business owner has only two hours of telephone calls for the virtual assistant, that's all he pays for and by Landers' standards, "That's money well-spent."
Having a virtual assistant also means there are no employee benefits, payroll taxes, office supplies or vacations to worry about. Virtual assistants are in business for themselves, so they provide their own supplies and equipment.
Landers thinks outsourcing a virtual assistant is like having staff but without all the hassles and responsibilities.
"If a home-based entrepreneur wants to make more money, get better clients or just have more leisure time, he must come to terms with the fact that his time is valuable and should be treated that way," Landers says. "The best way to kill a home-based business is to focus on the work that doesn't translate into money and growth."
About the author
Jeffrey A. Landers has more than three decades of business experience. He is a serial entrepreneur who has founded five companies and has been advising small businesses since 1988. His company, Home Office Success, Inc. (http://www.homeofficesuccess.com/), has helped thousands of home-based businesses become more professional, more productive, and more profitable.
