The 8 Mistakes I Made starting a Home based business!

We wish we Knew Before – The Ultimate Mistakes Starting a Home Based business! Avoid Them and Grow Fast!

Download and Listen on the go to the Mistakes starting a home based business below! 

When I walked away from my last job in 2010 it was both exciting & scary! I didn’t realise I was walking into some of my biggest mistakes starting a Home based business! I was working in Social Housing management in UK, which entailed a traditional 35 hours work week, with lots of outdoor field work! A monthly pay check, paid vacations, etc. And then I literally stayed at home for a good 9 months,before we had another family disaster…Our home flooded & we spent 2011 battling Insurance on one income! I was seriously job hunting, and getting nowhere, I started thinking I had made a huge mistake walking away from a £30k+/yr paying job. We moved into a building site 2012 and I was seriously getting concerned…Then I was presented with a home based/internet marketing idea! You can imagine I launched “my business” with gusto and the lessons begun! I was excited and equally anxious to embark on this totally unfamiliar path. And by the way, I was truly at a cross roads in many areas of my life, but professionally in my mind, it was swim or drown.

After a few weeks of juggling, reaching out to various people, family, neighbours, and friends of course…I started to doubt myself hugely. WHY? Because I listened to every single one of their negative why are you doing those scam internet trash! Excuse my lingo. Its absolutely important to know who you are listening to…I created a full podcast on this to help you out.

So let me share what the mistakes were so you may learn from & avoid the hard lessons!

Before I go any further if you haven’t read our earlier post on lessons from 2015 on Blogging strategies, read it now coz this will make sense better as well!  

Mistakes Starting a Home based business #1 Contact Your WARM MARKET: So our numero Uno mistake and one that’s taught by every coach as the first step to building a home based business …What is she talking about! I hear you ask?  

Let me tell you something I learnt the hard way and I agree with what Grant Cardone says… Everyone is your cold market! EVERYONE…OMG Light bulb and bear with me!

Even your mom, dad, brother, sister, Cousin Joe is not warm to your idea unless it aligns perfectly with their personal goals. At that very moment you call them, they are busy with their lives. Whatever you are sharing with them isn’t on their budget or part of their vision, until you make it their business.

Yes they know you…Question is: do they trust you as an entrepreneur?

Cold Market prospecting is alive and kicking in that way…don’t let nobody tell you otherwise! You have to warm everyone you contact whether you know them or not. In fact it’s been proven over and over again that:

“…your family and friends won’t believe in you until total strangers celebrate you” ~Unknown

[bctt tweet=”…your family and friends won’t believe in you until total strangers celebrate you”]

Here is the deal, most of us once convinced of our need for “the miracle product” we think everyone else needs it. At least I did when I decided to dive all in and immersed myself in the entrepreneur lifestyle. And I thought I had it all figured out…I made mistake number 2

Mistakes Starting a Home based business  #2 Not doing my Due diligence: I could have slapped myself every which way 9 months later when the whole thing came tumbling down…I failed to take my own medicine. What I drum down my Business Admin coaching clients’ throats is to do a Risk assessment which must include research on the investment vehicle, its leadership, their vision, and past performance!

I got Paul to see my vision for our new venture, and worked like a woman possessed. I set up shop at home; phone, PC, Skype, projector, camera, etc. I started accumulating, consuming & creating training products, webinars the works…I was all over this thing like a rash…!

If you haven’t read our about page you wish to learn about our journey! In my excitement and rose tinted glass view of the business (by the way buying into an online business is BUSINESS not an INVESTMENT, totally different and A story for another day.) Anyway, I contacted everyone I know and shared my journey and vision, surprise, they didn’t share it…My Mistake number 3!

Mistakes Starting a Home based business #3 Not everyone is part of your Vision or Journey! Boy did I get ridiculed. Hmmm from a Customer services manager, formerly a high flying lawyer working with the now Vice President to a scammer…I head the Chinese whispers!

This lesson was especially hard…Remember these are supposedly “my warm market” as I was taught. People, who know and are supposed to love, believe, trust, protect and listen to me! That’s what we are taught to do right!  Well go back to lesson one and learn! We managed to accumulate just under $25k in income on that first platform despite the setbacks and lack of experience. It was all down to what they say, “What you lack in experience beat with numbers” or something close lol! Although we earned, we spent a fortune in training, setting up shop, utility bills, keeping myself warm through winters all day. Biggest of which was the heating & phone bills…I was making international calls daily…what! Yes I was told to buy leads online and call them so I did!

[bctt tweet=”What you lack in experience beat with numbers – #salestips”]

Mistakes Starting a Home based business #4 Listen Less to Every “Guru!” 

Let’s talk about this some my dear!  And for someone who advocates “Self-development,” “Always be learning,” “Invest Learn Teach! This may come as a surprise but bear with…

Just because someone is on podcasts, websites, magazines, etc. don’t mean jack. You may think they must be doing well and that you could learn a ton from them…Maybe you might!  

“Gurus” are people who’ve done well and keep doing so and share their lessons freely and sometimes at a price too! Real life influencers; like Ray Higdon, Les Brown, Gary Vaynerchuk, no self-glorification.

Then you find people who POSE as gurus. And boy did we find a ton online…All pushing their program and proclaiming doom for all who don’t do as they suggest! They teach you “strategies” that even when you follow to the letter, still don’t work out for you, they tell you it’s YOU. It’s your mind, you are negative, you are not coachable etc…Oh I have heard it all! And to be fair, it could be YOU. However, if several others say the same about their strategies, then it’s probably NOT YOU, it’s THEM.

So my advice to you is to limit yourself to just a couple of people to follow, learn, buy from, whether guru or someone just a few steps ahead of you, like we may be!

Dare I say that the latter is probably the one you’re going to learn the most from, since the gurus are rightfully busy high flying bless em, So they won’t give you the personal attention you need, unless you pay them a ton. Nor do they share their real resources and what really works for them or they wouldn’t stay adored on top. They need an adoring needy crowd.

Anyhow, like stated in #4 above, I was advised to buy leads online by a “guru”, from their own sources lol…and that lead to my next…Mistake number 5!  

Mistakes Starting a Home based business #5 Never ever buy Leads online! Not even from your uncle Ted! These poor people have been battered with all kinds of offers, real, trumped up or downright scams! Their emails and personal details are treated by the vendors like commodities to be sold to anyone, not even the highest bidder. The leads I got, well I learnt the hard way:

• Many of the phone numbers were disconnected or wrong numbers.
• Many of them had aol.com emails lolol!
• Or the people were downright rude and told me where to go.

My biggest mistake was I had no clue what to say whatsoever when I called them! I was nervous and lacked posture totally. So I read a script lol, and of course I pitched like heck! You can imagine how many hang up on me!  And that was my Mistake number 7… I even bought some triple clicks leads at listen to this $5 for 1000 leads….God almighty, serves me right!

See I did so blindly with no real idea how to build or manage a successful business.

Mistakes Starting a Home based business #6 Don’t Embrace failure; it’s not your portion – Admit you Need Help!

Before I elaborate on Mistake #7 this one has to be talked about – I generally hate to fail at anything! So why on earth do most Home based business trainers “the gurus,” glamorize failure? Crikey, why should someone fail 20 times before they learn the lesson? Would you encourage your child to go back to 6^th form until they learn every lesson over and over? Get the picture? I have been told to embrace failure and love it…I say No to failure…Yes I make mistakes on my journey to success, but failure is not my portion.

The good book tells me what I focus on expands and that I am fearfully and wonderfully made! This don’t sound like failure. So my advice to you is to learn from your failures and learn FAST n HARD. Grind the lesson into your brain AND ABOVE ALL THE SOLUTION…then focus on teaching that solution to others! How does that sound?

My take on things is, if you keep failing, there’s a reason, take stock! Then focus on creating more success. In the Home business space, I believe there are no annual awards for the biggest failure, or lesson learner, and if there were, would you honestly wish to be a nominee? 

Also part of this mistake starting a home business was thinking I could do everything! Well you need to check out our earlier post on why you should hire a virtual assistant. See I admit that I downright suck at somethings, and also I must LIVE my LIFE. Don’t you think you’re the same? Putting them off is a mistake in itself lol. I finally acknowledged that these darned things gotta get done or we won’t make a sou from our business! We finally agreed that we gotta hire someone to get those done, will be time and $$ well spent trust me. You too can narrow your focus on things you love doing, and are really good at.

Mistakes Starting a Home based business #7 Don’t Call a stranger and ask for their email or try to sell them something immediately! I relate this to lack of training on how to contact a “cold prospect” I truly don’t like to call people that! yet how do you feel when you receive an unsolicited call and they ask for your names, DOB, email etc? You would hang up right? well many did to me and I was following upline instructions! When I realised this didnt work, I went searching online for solutions…if otehrs were doing it I must be the problem right…

Let’s just say that when I stepped into internet marketing, I did so wish sheer ignorance, and no prior knowledge of how to build or manage a successful business. Consequently, I pissed away thousands of dollars on fake coaches and learnt some hard lessons on how not to spend one’s cash lol! Thats why I share these penultimate or hardest mistake I made starting a Home based business. And below is one of the biggest lessons I wish I knew before going all in, no half measures for me…!

Mistakes Starting a Home based business #8 Not Tracking or systematizing My business.

I didn’t know about creating funnels, generating one’s own leads and building my own list! All very important for long term online business growth and profitability! Today I have a Blog, I use a super CRM aka email management system called Aweber you can try it out from $1 now.

We have an efficient funnel and generate no less than 5-10 leads per day! And I am not saying this to boast rather to inspire you that despite the mistakes we made starting a home based business, we have come through the other side!

Note that I didn’t say you have to have your own website! BUT YOU DO NEED  FUNNEL! When I became a full-time entrepreneur, I was clueless to the importance of systematizing & tracking. Creating systems allows businesses to scale. The platforms we promote have resources in place to check receipts, outgoings, ensure customers receives the same quality service or so we hope they do! Also they have tools in place to efficiently mass produce products and get affiliates to promote said products or services. When you are starting a Home based business as a solo-preneur, you don’t have any of the above in place. You are simply one of the myriad of “affiliates!”

When I first started, I failed to build systems. We used company provided lead pages and every single one of our leads and we did generate thousands on Facebook, went straight into the company funnel! I never got to make personal contact unless they bought! My business model relied on me doing all the heavy lifting. And it went something like:

• Post link on Facebook with a long story on how we are all gonna get rich and live on a beach somewhere!
• Consult anyone who dared to like or comment as potential clients, sign ups, downlines call them what you like!
• Create webinars, proposals, and execute all the work.
• No standard pricing structure for the quality training I was giving! I just posted webinars to attract customers and plugged my product away. We got lots of attendees sometimes over 100! We don’t get that many today somehow people prefer hyped up fast money messages still…(don’t shoot the messenger) lol! Go figure huh!

As a result, I was over worked, and not getting paid for the extra work I was putting in. My business wasn’t growing once it hit a plateau and bummer. It was closed… the owner whom I won’t be naming, claimed internet hackers had got into the system and stolen millions of cash so he didn’t have money to pay us…I refer you back to mistake #2. We soon learnt that this man was no visionary as he had led many to believe over the years. He has always been in it for the money and sod everyone else, so sad.  Paul & I don’t blame him for our mistakes, we don’t blame anyone. It’s a LESSON Not a failure and we have moved on and grown from it too!

So back to the mistakes starting a Home based business I made. Our business & personal expenses began to exceed our receipts, coz we weren’t tracking…No system remember! A year into the journey, we didn’t have much to show for it. We arrived at the stark realization that I as the active partner wasn’t running a business, our business was running me. 14 months down the road, I knew we needed coaching; mentoring, guidance and God delivered the teachers in the best online training platform today! It’s true that:

“When the student is ready the teacher appears”

Before the above resource, it was Ryan Deiss! We learnt a heck of a lot from the Digital Marketer blog! We also were hearing lots about Michelle Pescosolido, MLSP, Ray Higdon, Eric Worre etc. We learnt how to systematize the business. 

In a previous post, we outlined how we managed to earn over $10k in 3 weeks…We also added to our portfolio a product that we knew was a keeper, having been running successfully for 7 yrs.  Fast-forward to the present, we are swimming — our business is dynamic and our quality of life has tremendously improved.

If you’re a home based business owner, a network, affiliate or internet marketer, small business owner or sole-proprietor, ask yourself these two critical questions while starting a Home based business:

1) Can I duplicate my product or service without compromising quality or hyping it up? 

2) If I hired staff or outsourced, is my business able to grow without micromanaging? 

If the answer is no to any or both questions, read Grant Cardone’s 10 X Rule and

Russel Branson’s Dotcom Secrets for tips on how to focus, get 10x the results for 10x the actions and how to systematize your business.

Enjoyed thus far? Then TWEET THIS now, you are a gem! 

We sure hope someone will read this post before Starting a Home based business online or home based! The mistakes both Pauli & I made have been very costly yet very avoidable! You don’t have to make them nor pay the price we did! I am so blessed with Paul supporting me every step, not judging or complaining. You may not have that and I mean this in the kindest way. So please learn to swim before you dive in the deep end! I am sharing this so you can learn the easy way!

I hope you have learnt from the mistakes Starting a Home based business that I made and how to avoid them! And I would love to know your insights below. But before you do that, do like and share on Facebook…

And…If you wish to know what got us out from the vicious cycle of loss…

If You Do not have a System in place to Generate leads, Build your list and make sales, you are setting yourself to learn the hard way! Its time you fixed that problem while the year is still young for a bumper harvest. Do so Now!

You absolutely rock and deserve more

Live. Learn. Love

Julie Syl & Pauli

Skype: Julie.Kalungi1
Email: julie[at]Juleskalpauli[dot]com

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PS: IF YOUR UPLINE DOES NOT HAVE A STEP-BY-STEP BLUEPRINT FOR ONLINE MARKETING SUCCESS, CHECK THIS OUT (UNLESS YOU ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY LEADS) – CLICK HERE FOR INSTANT ACCESS