Finding the right space for office supplies in a home office can often be a challenge. Using space wisely by being organized will allow you to get more work done on time. Unfortunately,  the reality of a home based office is that there seems to never be enough space. A recent article from Entrepreneur.com, written by Jonathan Blum, offers tips on how to organize and best utilize home office space.

1. The challenge: No dedicated office
Some work-from-home businesses (especially the sales-centric ones) require more time out of the office than in it. So they can often get by without a dedicated office. But it’s easy enough to transform an existing room into one.

“I find that dining rooms are often underutilized,” says Jennifer Coleman, principal at JKC Designs, a Rye, N.Y.-based design firm, with a practice in urban home office design.

Simple solution: Choose pieces that can do double duty.
Install an articulating keyboard under your dining table. A pedestal table is best, so the legs won’t be in your way.

Stash the laptop, files and supplies in a buffet or sideboard that closes up after hours.

Perfect solution: The custom-made “rolling office.”
Turn a rolling kitchen cart into a portable desk. A quality choice is the maple-topped “Cuce” Cucina Elegante from John Boos (johnboos.com), which has locking casters and is available with drop leaves.

2. The challenge: Gadgets galore
Technical professionals, such as those in IT or telecom, amass rooms full of computers, printers, external hard drives and cords–often to growing familial horror.

“These clients need a highly customized solution that optimizes all the space they have,” says Claire Tamburro, principal at Tamburro Interiors, an interior design firm in Arlington, Va. “That will most likely involve casework built specifically for the job.”

Simple solution: Reach hig

If you have floor and wall space, install simple floor-to-ceiling cabinets.

If wall space is at a premium, install cabinets horizontally along the ceiling.

Mount power strips inside desks or storage units to power and charge gadgets. Doug Mockett & Co. is the place for state-of-the-art desk organizing tools.

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Starting a home based business for many people seems to be ideal. You are in charge of how your day will go, the meetings you attend and what calls you will make on a daily basis. However, running a home based business is not an easy task. Below are some tips from Entrepreneur.com on how to keep your home based business running smoothly

• Structure your day. The problem a lot of homebased business owners have is that they no longer have a boss standing over them making sure they get their work done, or a tangible start and end of each workday. It’s easy to let time slip by as you head to the refrigerator, catch a few minutes of TV, or dive into a project first thing in the morning, neglecting the other tasks you need to perform to keep your business running smoothly.

• Stay connected. Carry an organizer wherever you go. If you’re still using a day planner or similar dinosaur, consider upgrading to a Blackberry or other high-tech gadget. You don’t need to go crazy and spend a lot of money, but invest wisely in something that will hold everything you need and allow you to instantly access it on the go. Another good idea is to not keep all of your information in one location, such as the hard drive of your home computer. Keep your data hosted on a virtual exchange server so you can access it anywhere that has an Internet connection. A big misconception about homebased business owners is that they stay at home all day, everyday. And as you know, that’s just not always true.

• Organize your family time. Once your professional life is organized, you may need to consider organizing your personal life. Maybe you noticed right away, or maybe it’s just becoming apparent, that you tend to work around the schedule of your family members. This is especially true if you have children. A lot of people, especially young moms, decide that they’re going to quit their jobs in corporate America and work from home in order to care for their children and save on daycare expenses. But in reality, if you’re serious about running a homebased business and earning a decent income, you’re going to have to make arrangements for childcare in or outside the home. Otherwise it becomes too distracting. Consider hiring a babysitter so you’re guaranteed five to six solid hours to get your work done.

• Motivate yourself. Sit down and set some goals for yourself. You no longer have quarterly reviews or progress reports, so it’s important to keep track of whether or not you’re making progress in your business. It’s one thing to set small goals like completing your to-do-list–you also have to set goals to motivate yourself to succeed. Hopefully by now you’re making as much, if not more, money at your homebased business than you were at your former job. If you aren’t, begin by setting a goal to bring in the same amount of income you were, and slowly raise the bar to increase your income by a couple of thousand a month. Once you’ve met a goal, make time to reward yourself by doing something fun, which brings us to the next tip.

• Take time out for good behavior. It’s not uncommon to find yourself working 60- to 70-hour weeks. But the good thing is, if you want to sneak out and see a movie at two in the afternoon, nobody’s going to tell you not to do it. You have that freedom and flexibility as a home business owner. It can be tempting to work all the time when you start seeing how successful your business has become, but know when to relax. You’ve already established a smooth-running business. Take a break every now and then so you don’t get burned out.

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In order to be a successful entrepreneur it takes a lot of hard work and dedication.  Successful entrepreneurs do not evolve overnight, and believe it or not, entrepreneurs have multiple characteristics that drive their commitment, honor and goals, which drives their achievement.

Below is an article from Entrepreneur.com regarding the 25 most common characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.

1. Do what you enjoy.
What you get out of your business in the form of personal satisfaction, financial gain, stability and enjoyment will be the sum of what you put into your business. So if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, in all likelihood it’s safe to assume that will be reflected in the success of your business–or subsequent lack of success. In fact, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, chances are you won’t succeed.

2. Take what you do seriously.
You cannot expect to be effective and successful in business unless you truly believe in your business and in the goods and services that you sell. Far too many home business owners fail to take their own businesses seriously enough, getting easily sidetracked and not staying motivated and keeping their noses to the grindstone. They also fall prey to naysayers who don’t take them seriously because they don’t work from an office building, office park, storefront, or factory. Little do these skeptics, who rain on the home business owner’s parade, know is that the number of people working from home, and making very good annual incomes, has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years.

3. Plan everything.
Planning every aspect of your home business is not only a must, but also builds habits that every home business owner should develop, implement, and maintain. The act of business planning is so important because it requires you to analyze each business situation, research and compile data, and make conclusions based mainly on the facts as revealed through the research. Business planning also serves a second function, which is having your goals and how you will achieve them, on paper. You can use the plan that you create both as map to take you from point A to Z and as a yardstick to measure the success of each individual plan or segment within the plan.

4. Manage money wisely.
The lifeblood of any business enterprise is cash flow. You need it to buy inventory, pay for services, promote and market your business, repair and replace tools and equipment, and pay yourself so that you can continue to work. Therefore, all home business owners must become wise money managers to ensure that the cash keeps flowing and the bills get paid. There are two aspects to wise money management.

1. The money you receive from clients in exchange for your goods and services you provide (income)
2. The money you spend on inventory, supplies, wages and other items required to keep your business operating. (expenses)

5. Ask for the sale.
A home business entrepreneur must always remember that marketing, advertising, or promotional activities are completely worthless, regardless of how clever, expensive, or perfectly targeted they are, unless one simple thing is accomplished–ask for the sale. This is not to say that being a great salesperson, advertising copywriting whiz or a public relations specialist isn’t a tremendous asset to your business. However, all of these skills will be for naught if you do not actively ask people to buy what you are selling.

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Determining your own salary as a business owner can be a difficult choice. Many business owners face the age old question: how much should I pay myself? Here are a few tips written by Entrepreneur.com for new business owners who want to understand what they should make.  This might vary industry to industry, but this is a great way to evaluate compensation.

1. Pay yourself enough to get by.
At least during startup until you are operating in the black. The argument here is to minimize your overhead in order to decrease the amount of capital required to make your business a success. Also, by reducing your overhead, your net loss will decrease or your net profit will increase, providing the business with lean operating requirements until it is well established.

2. Pay yourself what you are worth.
Build that into your business plan so you have an accurate portrayal of how much capital you will need in order to finance your business. By paying yourself what you are worth, you aren’t painting an artificial portrait of the business that will change once you reach the black–operating costs will remain the same.

Once you have established the startup money for your business, the next step is making your salary work and protecting it as well. Here is information on how to do just that.

Projecting Your Salary
As we mentioned, there are two methods you can use to determine your pay during startup. The first is paying yourself enough to meet basic living requirements. Depending on your situation, that means enough income to cover your bills, food and other miscellaneous living expenses. Strike all other discretionary items from your life for a while and get used to just the bare necessities. If you are used to dining at fine restaurants seven days a week, get used to going down to the local McDonald’s maybe once or twice a week.

To begin planning your pay, you need to put together your own personalfinancial statement that lists all your living expenses and any credit cards with outstanding balances as well as short-term and long-term loans. This may be one of the most difficult things you’ve ever had to do because you don’t want to leave anything out. You want to make sure that your income from the business will be enough to cover your expenses.

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KANSAS CITY, MO — (Marketwire) — 11/12/10 — Andy Willoughby, entrepreneur and founder of the 3 Step Plan Home Business System, reviews business strategy tips for entrepreneurs who want to launch a business in 2011 (www.3stepplan.com). Small firms employ half of all working Americans and create two out of every three net new jobs in the U.S. economy (http://tinyurl.com/38xrgvx), according to a White House blog.

Andy Willoughby, who is the founder of the 3 Step Plan, said that goal setting is the first vital step in launching a business. “Goals are the foundation of a business. The process of goal setting allows an entrepreneur time to reflect on the business model and the direction of the business. After the goals are set, they act as guidelines for business endeavors,” said Willoughby.

Willoughby offered additional tips about starting a business (www.andywilloughby.com)

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Here are a few business networking strategies that Dian Helbig reviewed on smallbiztrends.com.

1. Identify where you should go. All venues are not right for all people. You owe it to yourself to do your research and find the venues that make sense for your business.

2. Make a decision about which organizations you should join and which you don’t have to join in order to gain value from their events. For example, does it make sense to join a local chamber of commerce, or just go to the events that sound interesting and will most likely include people you should meet?

3. Register for the event and schedule it like a business meeting. Many people either don’t sign up for events or sign up for them and then forget to go.

4. Determine how often you should be networking in a given week, month or quarter. This will help you narrow down where you should be going.

5. Develop open-ended questions you can use to ignite a conversation. Try to find unique questions; don’t ask the same old “So, what do you do?” if you can help it.

6. Attend events with a plan to learn something new. This will keep you from talking too much about yourself and your business.

7.Prepare yourself physically and mentally for the event.

• Dress appropriately.
• Bring business cards.
• Turn your phone off or set it to vibrate.

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I would like to share an article published by Jennifer Wang of Entrepreneur Magazine which reflects on creative new age techniques that one entrepreneur has used to get his business noticed. Alex Calderwood has created a new style of urban hotel which is pitched not as a place to stay while on vacation or business trips, but as a lifestyle.

Calderwood’s visionary ideas, to name a few, incorporate the option for guests to purchase a hotel room that comes with a Brita water filter and a pair of special edition Converse sneakers.  ”Ace Hotels reflect Calderwood’s individualistic spirit. Seattle’s Ace–the chain’s first–is like nowhere you’ve stayed before. Located in a bustling downtown bar district, the hotel has unobtrusive double glass doors that open onto a flight of stairs leading up to the front desk and narrow hallways that resemble a modern art installation.

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The road to becoming successful has always been hard, but here are four steps to ensure entrepreneur success by Entrepreneur.com author Kim Kiyosaki titled “The Four Keys to Raising Capitol”.  ”The key to raising money, whether it’s to start or expand your business or to purchase and operate a rental property, comes down to four factors:”

The Project

The Partners

The Financing

The Management

“If you can show a prospective lender or investor that you have command over these four pieces of the puzzle, then selling will not be an issue, and you will attract more money than you thought possible.”

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A credit score is very important. Having a poor credit score can reflect and even restrain you from purchasing things you both want and need to survive. A credit score scale is what measures your actual credit score and explains the impact.

There are several factors involved with a credit score. The FICO score is a number that ranges from 0 to 780. A good credit score is one that is above 620. Not making payments on time and collection accounts reflect poorly on credit scores.

Below is a helpful video about how to rebuild your credit score.

For those of you who are unaware of what a 401k is. It is a savings plan that allows employees to contribute a fixed amount of income to a retirement account and defer taxes until withdrawal. 401k is incredibly important to maintain throughout the years. So when you retire you have a way to survive after employment.

Below is a informational video about how you can take advantage of your 401K.