Introduction
Welcome, future rulers of the work-at-home empire. We’re about to siege the walls of misinformation surrounding home-based entrepreneurship and bust the most common work-at-home myths. Is opening a business from your home a free pass to Disney World? And do you need to be the next Elon Musk?
The answer is no. We’re about to debunk the common fallacies that lead people astray faster than Grandpa’s 20-year-old GPS. So, grab your coffee or stronger—no judgment here—and let’s dispel some myths.
1. Less Work
Don’t fall for the lazy girl TikTok posts. Working from home offers flexibility but is far from easy. The unique challenges of home-based entrepreneurship, such as uncertainty, responsibility, and competition, demand more work, not less. You may not punch the clock, but you are the only one working.
The uncertainty of being a work-at-home entrepreneur manifests itself as unstable income. To mitigate fluctuating income, owners hedge by exploring multiple paths to earn money. Invariably, profitable opportunities present themselves in spikes and valleys. Bills don’t pay for themselves during valleys, causing owners to seek extra work to cover monthly expenses.
Responsibility also requires an increased workload. With little or no team and small budgets, entrepreneurs complete most of the work. Being the boss means more work.
Unceasing competition calls for additional commitment to maintaining an edge through constant innovation. Failing to update offerings will allow competitors’ products to surpass yours. Further, meeting industry certifications and standards involves additional commitment.
Drop the less is more trope. Work is not a burden to be minimized. It’s enjoyable when carried out for your benefit. Running a business may be more challenging than a job, but you won’t notice.
2. Must be an Expert
Is expertise necessary to begin a business? Not at all. Entrepreneurs must possess a learning mindset, passion, and problem-solving skills, not expertise.
Given enough time and focus, learners can do anything. Admittedly, experience and education help in technical fields. Yet, many home-based businesses, such as blogging, podcasting, course creation, and affiliate marketing, require only basic technical skills. Further, entrepreneurs succeed with minimal preexisting knowledge in more technical home-based businesses such as app building and programming.
Pick passion over being an expert. For example, if you blog, choose a topic based on your interests, not your prior experience. You’ll thrive discussing a topic you enjoy. Combine passion with a learning mindset, and you’ll soon be an expert.
Knowledge has limits, but problem-solving doesn’t. Expertise decays over time due to constant change. Conversely, soft skills stay valuable over a lifetime. Additionally, no expert has seen every variation of a challenge in a field. Therefore, even experts resort to problem-solving.
Creativity and resourcefulness win over previous knowledge. Don’t be intimidated by a lack of expertise. Choose your passion and get to work. Learn and resolve issues as you progress.
3. Need a Great Idea
Here’s a virtual job fiction. The perfect idea floats from above and enlightens you. Then, you wake up. Aha’s are the stuff of dreams, fairies, and unicorns. Besides, with 8 billion people on the planet, is it realistic to be the first to think of any idea? Great ideas are unnecessary. A sufficient market, execution skills, and a network are essential.
The Market
The market your business addresses dwarfs the importance of a great idea. For instance, the ultimate surfboard for Arctic surfers won’t sustain a business, while a surfboard designed for beginning surfers has potential. Small companies should select a market large enough to be profitable and small enough to be a significant player.
Some markets have almost insurmountable barriers to entry. Despite the vastness of the banking field, opening a bank is problematic due to the effort required to untangle intricate rules and regulations. Choose your market carefully.
Execution
What differentiates mediocre from great companies? Usually, the answer is execution—planning, organizing, managing, and delivering the work. Unless an idea is ridiculous, execution is more important than the idea. Stellar execution turns decent ideas into great ones.
Your Network
Finally, a network is more important than a great idea. A network determines available resources, provides a feedback loop, and identifies work opportunities. Moreover, having the network to find and develop customers is invaluable. A well-developed network is almost a standalone business.
You don’t need a great idea. Instead, focus on strong execution, finding a viable market, and building a solid network. Aspiring entrepreneurs, stop dipping your toes into the water by considering ideas and dive into your dream business armed with the ideas you already have.
4. Get Rich Quick
Other than hitting the lottery or winning some contest, there is no “Get Rich Quick.” Success stories appear fast-paced but disguise the fact that founders spent years learning skills, cultivating a network, and understanding a market. Competition and investment requirements prevent businesses from getting rich quickly.
If an entrepreneur finds a target market, competition will already exist or soon follow. To attract and retain customers, a business’s offerings must be distinctive. Standing out takes considerable time and effort.
The second obstacle to “Get Rich Quick” is resource requirements. Time, energy, and money are finite. You establish a thriving business by managing these resources over time. However, it’s possible to get rich a little quicker by being more productive. Check out the following posts if you want a productivity boost—Productivity Secrets 1: Love Your Home-Based Business With Extra Time, Productivity Secrets 2: Unstoppable Strategies to Energize Your Work, and Stop Procrastination: Break Free to Unlock Your Hidden Potential.
Don’t let “Get rich quick” being a misnomer deter you. Use the realization to inspire action, as most potential competitors quit when they don’t immediately strike gold. If opening home-based businesses were easy, there would be little room for your offering.
5. Work-at-Home Entrepreneurship is a Scam
Countless hucksters are hawking their wares to work-at-home entrepreneurs, which is the apparent source of this myth. Thankfully, they’re like bad toupees—easy to spot. When buying products in this space, avoid gurus charging hefty fees for a starter kit and promising instant riches. Trust your judgment.
You don’t have to be a scammer to profit within this market. Let’s examine the rise of the solo entrepreneur by reviewing government data.
Based on data from IRS tax returns, the United States Census Bureau reports businesses labeled Nonemployer—a company with no employees—grew by over 5.7 million (11%) from 2012 to 2021 (click here to see the raw data). I bet the trend will continue when the IRS finishes its 2022–23 tax returns. How about some anecdotes to back the data? Visit Home Business Magazine’s list of inspiring entrepreneur stories.
As a home-based owner, you can avoid scams. With your integrity intact, join the ranks of work-from-home entrepreneurs. The digital age brought more than cat videos; it spawned a new era of opportunity for entrepreneurs.
6. I am Too Young or Old
Your age is irrelevant, whether young, old or somewhere in the middle. Calendars count days, not vision and passion. Entrepreneurs utilize these two qualities to establish startups and disprove this remote work misconception every day.
Picture a teenager in a hoodie and a retiree in Velcro rollers typing all day. What do these two have in common? A burning desire to ignite their businesses. Whether the ink is drying on your high school diploma or AARP sent you a renewal notice, passion is the eternal flame fueling entrepreneurs. Stop worrying about age and find passion in your work-at-home business.
Vision is not about if you need glasses. It’s about finding potential where others fail to look. Both ends of the age spectrum contribute to a diverse entrepreneurial landscape where vision is the common denominator. The clarity of one’s vision, not the number of candles on a birthday cake, predicts a business’s fate.
Don’t fall for the age tropes. Older entrepreneurs possess innovative perspectives and disrupt industries, while younger ones frequently have significant experience in their field. Age is merely a page number in the book of life, not the story. Vision and passion are the protagonists of an entrepreneur’s story; use them to write the next classic.
7. Wait for the Perfect Time
There is no perfect time to open a business. It is perhaps the most crippling remote work misconception. Picking the ideal time requires seeing the future. If you are clairvoyant, bet on sports and day trade stocks. For the rest of us mortals, waiting for a perfect time leads to procrastination, perfectionism, and doubt.
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”—Walt Disney, interview with Hedda Hopper July 1957.
Procrastination
Biding time for the ideal moment breeds procrastination. Visit my post: Break Free: A Procrastinator’s Guide to Unlocking Hidden Potential for tips on fighting procrastination. Plus, initiating a work-at-home business earlier provides more time for learning and experimentation. Stop thinking. Cure procrastination with action.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism occurs when striving for the best turns obsessive. The result is excessive planning, fear of failure, and decision paralysis. Overplanning wastes time and locks entrepreneurs into perpetual preparation. Fear of failure paralyzes them, resulting in their avoiding feedback and new ideas. Moreover, decision paralysis causes owners to avoid decisions, stalling all progress. When aiming for high standards morphs into perfectionism, it hinders the action and risk-taking mindset critical to owners.
Doubt
Waiting for a perfect time engenders doubt. Entrepreneurs grapple with feelings of insecurity and uncertainty while they wait. Doubt fuels the wait, and waiting fuels doubt, placing potential business owners in a negative loop. Doubt is like a rocking chair—moving a lot and going nowhere. Get out of the chair, or better yet, hatchet the rocker into kindling.
Belief in ideal timing is like cave people waiting for a falling star to plant crops. Stop looking to the sky for answers. Rely on yourself.
8. A Work-At-Home Business is Riskier Than a Job
Oddly, people believe jobs are secure. Glance at the news. You’ll find countless stories about layoffs. Running a home-based business has risks but is less than working for others. Why? Work-at-home entrepreneurs gain control and the potential for growth versus having a job.
Control is an underrecognized risk factor of jobs. Ongoing employment depends on the company’s success. Yet, the impact of one individual on an organization is negligible. Without impact, control is minimal. While there is no 100% control, entrepreneurs have more control than any job provides.
What happens when an employee does well at a company? If they’re lucky, they get a slight bump in pay and expanded job duties within their narrow field of expertise. Contrast that outcome with entrepreneurs who pocket all additional profits and continually refine job duties as they desire. Grow both your skills and your bank account as an entrepreneur.
Being an entrepreneur is not riskier than working for The Man. A home business offers more control and opportunity. Tighten the reins on risk and establish your business today. Destroy this work-at-home myth.
9. Need a Formal Business Plan
Google—start a new business. Top articles suggest you construct a detailed business plan. Terrible advice. They are a waste of time and detrimental to launching a business. You don’t need a formal business plan for four reasons:
- Limits Creativity
- Wastes Time & Resources
- Unrealistic Expectations
- Killjoy
Limits Creativity
Founders need creativity to adapt to changing market conditions and customer preferences. A detailed business plan discourages pursuing unforeseen opportunities, which is the hallmark of a small business. An entrepreneur must be agile like a cat, landing on the feet in any scenario.
Waste Time & Resources
Detailed business plans waste time and resources. They take months to prepare and become obsolete when finished. Spend less time planning where to put the timber and more time chopping wood. Drop the formal business plans for simpler ones.
Unrealistic Expectations
Business plans spawn unrealistic expectations. Under pressure from unattainable goals, owners avoid uncertainty and risk, even though they should embrace them. These expectations also lead to constant work, which degrades work-life balance. To avoid this fate, visit my post: Whip Work-Life Balance: Proven Ways to Win in Both Worlds. A home-based business should be flexible and resilient, not tied to an inflexible plan.
Killjoy
Detailed business plans are a killjoy. A home-based business must be driven by a vision and a purpose, not documents and formulas. These plans stifle innovation and decrease morale and productivity. Like your favorite songs, your home-based business should inspire and fulfill you.
In-depth business plans are for MBAs to ask other MBAs for money. They are too detailed to be worth the effort. Running a home business does not require a detailed business plan. A simple one will suffice.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”—George S. Patton Jr. in a letter to his son on June 6, 1944.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve busted more myths than Scooby Doo. Forget the possible negatives and embrace the adventure—the world of work-at-home entrepreneurs awaits. Consider why so many sayings exist, such as:
- Rome wasn’t built in a day.
- Good things come to those who wait.
- No pain, no gain.
- Slow and steady wins the race.
Cultivating greatness requires time.
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