By Peter Engelbrecht

One of the biggest obstacles to starting a home-based business is in trying to decide what type of business to start. Sometimes the answer to our questions stare us straight in the face. When choosing a business there is a simple common sense approach to solving this question, just fill the gaps.

What is filling the gaps and how can it help me start a business? Fill the gaps is a concept whereby you observe how well other businesses in your area are operating and whether or not they are satisfying the customer. When you see a gap in the business, you take that opportunity to exploit it by doing it better.

Perhaps a business is already doing something, but not very well. Find a way to fill that gap and perform that function more efficiently. Offer a point of distinction and capitalize on it. Find a way to be superior, whether through responsiveness, price, customer service, or a better product offering. Once you have found something that you can offer that defines your business, run with it by advertising and promoting that difference to your target market.

Let us look at some service offerings that you can use to distinguish yourself and start your business. For instance, I find that hanging Christmas lights, shoveling snow, cleaning house gutters, and washing a pet are all time consuming and laborious tasks. An untapped market probably exists that feels the same way as I do, and would be willing to pay someone else to do them. This is the gap and you can fill it by starting a business that others are not fully engaged in, or are not doing very well.

If you are not sure whether a gap actually exists, try some market research. Market research is simple and very effective. Think about five common businesses in the area that you feel are not operating as well as they could. Write down their product and service offerings. Under each product or service set a rating scale of 1 to 5 with five being exceptional and one being unhappy. Visit a local grocery store, ask the manager whether you may speak to the customers as they leave the store and after he gives you permission ask at least 25-30 people if they would rate the product or services of the five businesses in your study. If you find someone who is unhappy, ask him or her why they are unhappy and whether they had a solution that could have helped the company get an exceptional. These customers will be your greatest source of information.

I have always heard that a companies unhappiest customers provide the best information for improving. Here is your opportunity to ask those customers to start your business by letting you know where the gaps are and how you can fill them.
I hope that this article will help you start a new home business for yourself and your family and that it will be successful and provide you with financial freedom for many years to come.

About The Author

Diagonal Street Business Services offers work at home articles and business ideas to stay at home moms. If you are thinking of starting a business, visit www.BestBusinesses4u.com.

By Jerry Hilbert

If you want to succeed, you should dare to do what you want to do. If you really want to succeed in life, then you should dare to do what you want to do. I often hear it said that there are two classes of men, those who talk, and those who do. I also hear it said that the talkers fail and that the doers succeed. For many years, I thought this was a wise old saying well worth repeating, until I realized that the men who repeat it most often are the talkers who spend much of their time telling others not to talk. Both talkers and doers have failed in life. And talkers, as well as doers, have succeeded.

It is not talking or doing, but an “impelling consciousness”, which determines success. By that term I mean consciousness so moved by desire to do what you want to do, that you dare to do it. Such a state of consciousness is mothered by courage and sired by daring. Courage is its mother, for it stabilizes and holds itself ready to defend its own. Daring is its father, for it is the spiritual masculinity which dares to do what you want to do.

Thus, we return to the first personal determinant of success, individual freedom. The courage to proclaim and defend what one believes. Dare to do what you want to do. These are the bases of greatness.

The old saying that the doers succeed, and that the talkers fail, is not wholly true. Whether they are talkers or doers, those who fear to defend their convictions and fear to do what you want to do, always fail. Those who have the courage to proclaim and defend their ideals and do what you want to do are the great successes.

The man, who has the courage to believe that he can accomplish miracles when others say it is impossible, that man who has the daring to do that which is necessary to turn his dreams into realities, such a man always succeeds and succeeds greatly.

Men who have been successes in business, in governmental affairs and managers of great organizations have failed. In the case of every failure, fear is the cause of the failure. In every case of success, the daring to do what you want to do is the cause of success. If each soul daring to do what you want to do, dared to do the work you most desires to, there would be no poverty and no failure. If you are failing in anything, dare to be yourself, dare to do what you want to do. Dare to succeed.

About The Author

Jerry Hilbert is CEO of Internet-Peso.Com, operating out of Roseville, California. Our Web Site offers Home Business solutions for those looking for Ideas and Opportunities. Jerry also operates an AdSense Directory at Posted in Online Marketing August 6th, 2006 by Sellportal | No comments