The answer to this question is a definite YES! I have lots of business associates in the USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand who are working in home based businesses and making thousands of dollars each month. In fact the lady who introduced me to my new business is only 25 years of age and she made over $500,000 in her first 12 months of her business.

I am now replicating her results, but please read on and you will learn about what I have actually done and experienced in 3 very different situations and how in the end I succeeded in taking control of my life.

My Traditional Business Experience
I used to own and manage a very profitable and high profile restaurant and bar in Brisbane, Queensland for a period of over 12 years. I started it from scratch and like most traditional businesses it was really expensive to set up and the running costs were enormous.

Although I made a lot of money with this business, I finally decided to sell it when I came to realise that the long hours and constant stress of managing over 30 staff, dealing with various government authorities, endless paper work and hundreds of customers per week was absolutely destroying my life.

You can become very wealthy with a standard business but you will need to be extremely committed as you won’t be able to walk out and close the door anytime you want. There will be lots of work to do and deadlines to meet, customers to service and more than likely, staff to hire and mentor unless you want to do all the work yourself. The hours are generally very long and in most cases the business can end up being your life. Another point to consider is that you’ll be on your own to work things out and solve any problems as they arise.

My Job Experience
After selling the business, I decided that a job would be a better alternative to being in business so I set about finding one and little did I know what I was in for! I spent 8 hours a day scouring the employment classifieds, networking, perfecting my resume and attending interviews for jobs I didn’t even want. I felt undervalued and demoralised and almost gave up hope before I finally won a job with a firm as an Events Manager.

All good you might well think, but unfortunately this was not the case as now I was into something that would cost me 12 hours of my time, 5 days a week as I got dressed up for work, traveled to and from work and actually did the work. I was working under considerable stress and was totally stressed out by having to answer to a boss and co-ordinate every single element of each event from travel and accommodation arrangements, key note speakers, entertainment and right down to sorting out what type of lettuce should go on the dinner plates of the attendees. What a nightmare! But the thing that irked me the most was that I was doing all of this to make my boss richer while I had to settle for a small pay packet at the end of each week. JOB = Just over broke.

My Home Business Experience
As you might have guessed, I didn’t stay in my job as an Event Manager for long. I had spent seven months of my life trying to find the right career and after only 1 month I resigned.

I had no idea what to try next but I was determined to find something that would tick ALL the boxes for me and knew that I first needed to get very clear about what I really wanted.

I did not want to:
Own and manage a stressful, traditional type of business
Outlay a lot of money to get started in a new business
Answer to a boss and have to beg for time off work

I did want to
Earn a lot of money
Work from home
Take control of my future

With the above in mind, I spent the next couple of months researching my options until I was eventually attracted to an advertisement (placed by a 25 year old lady) about a home based business opportunity. I must admit that I was pretty hesitant to begin with but I decided I had nothing to lose by finding out more so I answered the ad and within 1 week I was up and running with my very own home based business.

On my best day so far, I earned five thousand dollars but what I really love about my home business most is that I actually took back control of my own life. I now work the hours I choose, from the comfort of home or anywhere I like really with my laptop and phone. I don’t have to juggle and manage staff anymore and gone is all the stress. I fit my work around my life, generally about 25 hours per week and I absolutely love what I do.

It’s not for everyone however and if you are considering getting started in a home business you should ask yourself the following important questions:

1. Is the business aligned with your income and lifestyle goals?
2. Do you have some money and time to invest into the business?
3. Can you work diligently as your own boss and without supervision?
4. Will there be anyone to help or guide you if you get stuck along the way?

Yes! You can make money with home based businesses. Lots of money!

Christine Hamilton is currently making money in with home based businesses. For more information about what she is actually doing, click work at home BSCH110509

“I can’t sell”, I hear you say. Nonsense, everybody can sell. If you ever got hired, sold your car or sold yourself to another person (ie. got married or formed a relationship), you have demonstrated an ability to sell. We sell ideas to others all the time, we just don’t view it as selling.

The role of a sales person is to find out what the customer wants rather than whether the customer wants something at all. Once this is done, a sales professional should then help the customer satisfy that need to the customers’ satisfaction. The principle skills a winning salesman needs are:

* Putting your customers in a acceptance state of mind, making them feel at ease and unpressured.
* Showing interest in their questions or issues.
* Using opinions as selling points (both yours and theirs).
* Supplying facts and helpful data.
* Meeting objections in a positive way and never becoming defensive or aggressive.
* Agreeing with customers.
* Suggesting additional products or services.(Value adding)
* Building repeat business.

It’s important that you learn to apply these skills, although if you apply tact, friendliness, honesty and you know what you’re talking about, you’re 90% there. Not difficult when you consider it.

I know of quite a few owners of small businesses who would never consider themselves sales people but have remarkable success at selling their offers by just being themselves. Is this being a good sales person? Probably.

An old friend of mine, Rastass owns a adult store in one of Sydney’s trendier suburbs. He spent many years of his life working for a hospital. It never ceases to amaze me, and his business partner, how this “untrained” person can sell products by just being himself. He is a natural salesman.

On the days he looks after the shop instead of his partner, the numbers are always up compared to when he’s not there. If you were to ask him if he thought he was a good salesman he would probably say no, but the sales figures speak for themselves.

He does it by being a friendly, genuine guy that loves a joke and a talk with his customers. Most of his customers would never go elsewhere because they like him. I’m sure even if he put his prices up, he would still attract the same clients because they have a rapport with him. They feel good about shopping at his store; he makes sure they do. Everybody can sell, simply use your own personality and be friendly and courteous. Treat customers the way you would like to be treated.

Top sales people make a point of remembering regular customers’ names, ensuring each time they come to the store they receive a small discount or offering other little extras like helping them to the car with their parcels. As I mentioned before with my friend, he fosters friendships with his regular customers. This fosters loyalty to the business by the customer, quite often regardless of price, because they get preferential treatment. You’ve probably had the feeling yourself when you constantly use a particular business and each time you walk in the people don’t just ask for the order.

Generally, sales people feel awkward about asking the customer for the order. These sales people will never be really successful in sales. A lot of sales are lost simply because the sales person doesn’t put the onus back on the customer to make a decision, they simply leave the whole matter up in the air which allows the potential customer to quietly drift out the door without having to commit themselves to a buying decision. How many times do you do this? I do it all the time and think to myself, “I’m glad nobody put me under pressure, I probably would have spent money”.

This article supplied by forex trading, sale training course and web designer brisbane.

The laser we use at our clinic for laser hair removal is a genuine Polylase Alexandrite medical grade laser not an IPL, SPL, SIPL (Intense Pulsed Light). Since lasers deliver light at one specific frequency, that which is most specific for hair, the energy that can be used is much more effective in deadening the hair follicle.

You will be more effectively treated per session with a laser and will therefore need fewer sessions than with other light based techniques.

Our Polylase laser uses a special cooling system that lowers the temperature of the skin during, and after laser {use|exposure}. Therefore, the laser hair treatment is usually not irritating and is well tolerated.

Be sure the laser hair removal treatment you choose is with a genuine laser and not intense pulsed light. Most clinics cannot use a true laser, and try to claim that intense pulsed light machine is an equal substitute.

This treatment is suitable for both males and females and great for people that have ingrown hairs.

The requirements to own and operate lasers in Brisbane is highly regulated this is why we are one of a few clinics who are fully licensed. At Image by Laser our safety net to our clients is that all our Laser operators for hair removal are fully licensed and accredited through Queensland Health.

Consultations are Free…..Results Priceless. To make a booking for a free consultation, and more information including video’s on our laser hair removal website.

Time management is an area of business management often overlooked or ignored. We all know someone in small business who races around like a madman all day, never enough hours in a day, all they do is rush and get worked up - maybe this person is you!

At the end of the day, when the dust settles, what have you achieved? Do you review the day and wonder “what happened to the day, I didn’t get as much done as I thought I would”. If this sounds familiar, then you may have an organisational and time management problem.

Successful people never seem to rush, they remain composed and unflustered. The difference between them and everybody else is they have mastered time management.

What is time management? It is simply allocating time in your day in an organised and efficient way. Before we can really understand how to time manage our day, we must ask ourselves what are we trying to achieve today, this week, this year and possibly ten years from now. This is “Goal setting”.

The best way in my opinion to achieve goals is to write them down. You should review these goals from time to time to ensure that they are relevant and achievable but not so achievable that you don’t have to try hard to achieve them otherwise what is the purpose of the goals in the first place?

At the start of each working year you should sit down and think about what you want to achieve this year, it could be that you want to increase your profits by 20%, you may want to move into larger premises, you may want to reduce your debt substantially. At the start of each working week you should write down on a note pad or in your diary the major jobs that need to be done this week, and review them each day to ensure you’re making progress and hopefully mark some of the tasks off the list.

You should keep the list on your desk or in a place where you will be constantly reminded what needs to be done this week. This list should be in order of priority so that the most important tasks at the top of the list get done first. Anything not achieved this week will be carried forward next week on a higher priority, this will ensure it gets done.

The next thing you should be doing is having a daily list of jobs to do. This will help keep you on track each day. Again, this list should be displayed where you can constantly refer to it and mark off the jobs completed. Marking off the jobs will give you a sense of achievement and let you know how you are progressing through the day. Always stick to the list where possible and keep working from high priority to low priority.

I know things can come up through the day that can throw the whole day out, but you must either deal with the crisis and return to your list or if the new task isn’t as important as some of the jobs on the list put it at the bottom of the list and continue doing what you were doing.

Every task you have to do should be written down for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so you don’t forget to do it and secondly, so you keep your day organised and you achieve your daily goals.

Beware starting jobs and not finishing them. This will turn tomorrow into a mess of half finished jobs and will cause “list blowout”. You will end up with a list a mile long and you will give up in despair and revert back to old habits of being in confusion all day and achieving nothing.

Remember each day you achieve your goals and tick off everything on your list, you get a little closer to achieving your weekly and ultimately your yearly and long term goals.
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Windows has dominated the personal computer operating system market for the last 14 years. And with every new version of Windows Microsoft releases, it seems there’s a higher price tag to go with it —just look at the retail prices for Windows Vista and you’ll see what I mean. New versions of Windows often means an expensive hardware upgrade just to run the operating system, especially a memory upgrade.

But if you thought your options ended with back-grading to XP, think again. There’s another operating system that’s growing in popularity around the world and it’s not Apple’s Mac OS X.

It’s called Linux and while it has had the reputation in the past of being the geek’s alternative, Linux is quickly becoming a viable alternative to Windows for everyday users.

It is already appearing in PCs and notebooks from Dell as well as the little Eee PC from ASUS, but best of all, Linux is absolutely free. Yes my friends, it’s fast, reliable and free.

There’s an investment in time required, but the actual operating system is free and there’s heaps of free support available via the Internet with Linux support forumns offering world-class support and information springing up like weeds.

Welcome to Xubuntu Linux

There are dozens of different versions of Linux available and that’s because Linux is a bit like a Lego set set — you can pick and choose the bits you want and leave out those you don’t.

But if you’ve never tried Linux before, there are one or two versions, or distributions (that’s short for distribution), that are perfect for beginners — they mimic things that Windows does and in many cases, can actually do them better.

The one we’re going to look at is called Xubuntu. It’s a spin-off of Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution to date, but I think Xubuntu is ideal for beginners, because it’s almost the ‘Windows 98′ of the Linux world — it has a neat, user-friendly interface, but can happily run on older computers. So, if you have an older computer lying around, now’s the time to flash it up and give it a coat of paint.

Try before you install

Unlike Windows, many of the Linux distributions, including Xubuntu, allow you to use them on an almost try before you install basis, meaning you can actually use the operating system direct from the installation CD without having to install anything on your computer’s hard drive.

This special type of installation CD is known as a live CD, because the operating system is ready to go live on the CD — all you need to do is setup your PC to boot from the CD drive, load in the live CD, boot up and Xubuntu will start up.

It can take 2-3 minutes to finish booting. Not much longer than Windows Vista !

Your Windows hard drive remains intact. All you have to do to get back into Windows is to remove the CD, reboot and Windows will load as usual.

Some people always carry a Linux live CD with them so that if their Windows system breaks, they can at least boot into Linux and recover important files. In many cases they will be able to continue editing these files using applications like Open Office which comes bundled free with many Linux Live CD distributions.

However, Xubuntu is ideal if you have an old computer lying around and you’d like to learn and play around with Linux. It just needs a PC with a lOG hard drive and 256M of memory. If it has a 400MHz or faster processor, you’re good to go.

Download your new operating system

The first thing you need to do is download the operating system, which you can do directly from the Xubuntu Web site. Just go to Google and do a search on Xubuntu 8.04 download. Alternatively search on Xubuntu Live CD.

This software is a completely free operating system that you download as what’s called an ISO image, which just means the data of a CD stored as a single file. It’s about 590M of download, but that’s smaller than most similar versions. Your best bet is to set this up to download overnight if you’re on dialup or low-speed broadband.

Once you have your ISO you will need to burn it to a bootable CD. Programs like Nero or Burn4free can help you there.

Setting up your PC

The last thing you need to do before giving Linux a go is to make sure your PC or notebook is ready to boot up from your CD-ROM drive. For the vast majority of PCs this will be the default setting, so the best bet is to try and boot the Xubuntu disk.

If the disk doesn’t boot automatically when you restart, you’ll need to check either the notebook or desktop motherboard manual to locate how to make the CD drive the first priority boot device. This involves getting into the CMOS or BIOS setup of the computer. If you’re not sure about doing this, rope in a knowledgeable mate who can help you. At worst, your local computer shop should be able to set it up for you in about three minutes.

Linux is one of the best value downloads on the Internet. It can make an old PC useful again, help recover a Windows PC and comes with a bunch of powerful applications. You will find that for most Windows applications, there is a free Linux equivalent.

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