Wendy Piersall has provided an ideal checklist for any home based business owner who is thinking about how to make 2008 a bumper year for their business. Top Ten Key Success Ingredients for a Home Based Business is both profound and practical, evidence of Wendy’s own experience in building businesses.

In the preamble, she touches on the crucial importance of a high level of positive self-esteem. Without that there is the risk of self-sabotage.

Wendy writes also of the need for us to each define what success means for us. Not what it means for our spouse or significant other, not what it means for our children or our parents. Building and running a home based business is challenge enough without us doing it to meet other people’s idea of what our success should look like. It’s crucial that we get this clear from the outset.

To help get clarity about how we define success for ourselves, there is an exercise I learnt in my coach training with Coachville and which anyone can do, either alone or with someone we trust to tell us whether we are being authentic or not. The exercise is simple in design but challenging when you are really honest with yourself. But believe me, it’s worth it.

It goes like this. Put your landline phone on automatic answer, switch off your cellphone, sit quietly, think about what you want to achieve with your business and complete the sentence, aloud, “I know I am being successful when…”. The answer will be different for everyone. One person might finish the statement with “I know I am being successful when I am being interviewed by Oprah about my book which she has just chosen. ” Another might be “…I can work only three days of the week and earn enough to meet all my needs.” Or someone could have a “financial prosperity + balance” statement, such as “…I have a million dollar turnover and my children still speak to me”.

Whatever your answer, you write it down, look at it quietly and ask yourself if that is what you truly believe and something that speaks positively to your emotions, not just your head. If you sense some uncertainty, repeat the exercise. And again, until you can say, Yes, that is how I know I am being successful. Some people say with an exercise like this you should trust your “body wisdom”. Or, putting that another way, when you make your statement, do you feel good, or is your “gut feeling” saying no?

Maybe you will get the right resonance first time. If so, congratulations, you are tracking well. If you are like me and a lot of people I know, you will probably have a few shots at it before you can say “that’s it!”. If you get a bit frustrated that it doesn’t come clear straight away, there is no need to fret. A lot of people find this exercise a challenge.

Once you have your statement, you can start to work out how to get from where you are now to being in that state when your new reality expresses your statement about success.

To be practical, that will involve setting some benchmarks.

As Wendy writes

If success is simply grocery money and a lot of time with your kids, or if you are building the next fortune 500 empire, you need to have benchmarks in place in order to know if you are on the right track. Otherwise, you may continue to work every day, never feeling like you are getting anywhere, because you don’t have any references in place for what success is.

If you have a friend or loved one helping you with the “defining success” exercise, make sure they understand that their role is simply and strictly to feed back to you whether what you say and how you say it shows conviction on your part. It is not their role to tell you what they think you should be doing or even what they think you would be good at. Have those conversations by all means, but at another time. For this exercise, if they can’t commit to playing by the rules, get someone else or do it yourself.

Feel free to leave a comment, sharing your own tips for achieving success in home based business.

Or any business.