There are so many things to consider and evaluate in choosing a home business. Some of us sort of “fell” into our home businesses, while others spent months or years evaluating and researching before we took the plunge. Regardless of how we got here, we do need to take a good hard look periodically at our home businesses to decide if our businesses are really meeting our needs or not.
The first step, of course, is to determine what your “needs” actually are. Do you need to make a certain amount of money? Is it important that you are able to stay home with children? Do you have a specific skill or talent that you want to use and develop? Do you need a flexible schedule or to work in a specific field? Your needs might also be specific to work environment or being able to work at certain times of the day, or meet and work with certain kinds of people. It takes some self-awareness, but figuring out what you want to get from your work, and specifically what needs you hope to have met through your home business, will help you to evaluate if you are on the right track.
Keep in mind that needs change—you might need more structure of flexibility at different times. You might want to work more hours and make more income once your children are all in school. You might also want something easy when you are distracted with young children, but need more intellectual challenges or stimulation once your children are older. There is no harm or shame in making changes to your home business in order to meet evolving personal needs. After all, isn’t this one of the main reasons we all take the plunge and the risk to start our own businesses from home?
See Also: Does Your Business Have a Clear Purpose? and Getting Psyched Up for Extra Challenges and Evaluating the Value of Your Time