When, back in February this year, I started this series of 5 Tips for Starting a Home Based Business, I really expected to complete it within the month. Not only did that not happen, I just realized I had not completed the series even in March.

There was one post left to do, the last one and by no means less important for that. Indeed, the tip Love the Business You Are In, could well be the most important of all five, certainly for a combination of the business’s long term success and your long term well being.

In February, in the introductory post for the series, I wrote this about the tip, Love the Business You Are In:

You might, channeling Tina Turner, ask ‘What’s love got to do with it?”. My answer: A Lot! You might have started your business because you got retrenched  or just couldn’t stand where you were working. But now you’ve started it, you’d better make sure you love it, or learn to love it. Or start a different business. Or look for a job again.

Believe me, if you don’t love it, if it doesn’t get you out of bed in the morning eager to get into it, being thrilled to help your clients, you will stand a fair chance of getting bored, disillusioned and cranky enough that it will show and people will not want to do business with you. You wouldn’t want that, would you?

The challenge of freedom

We all know that one of the benefits of creating your own business is that you are free to make it the kind of business you want it to be. And if you want to change it, by changing the focus, changing the product or service, you are free to do that too.

But not everyone chooses to create a business that will give them, in the long term, a sense of fulfillment and achievement, as well as paying the bills.

In fact, what a lot of us have done and what a lot are no doubt doing or planning to do as you read this, is to create in our own home a mini version of what we were doing before, working for some corporation or other big organization. The obvious manifestation is going from being an employee working in a specific area to being an independent consultant working on the same area.

That can make practical sense in the short term, and maybe also in the long term, but it may prove to be not the business we are going to be most happy in building and maintaining.

We do have the freedom to create a business we don’t love, or to get stuck with one that “works” but which we don’t actually love.

One we love being in is more likely to carry us forward, joyfully, productively.

So the big question to ask is: Is this a business I will love to be in, now and into the future?

For anyone who wants some insight into what “loving the business” might mean, from someone who walks his talk and has created a hugely successful business, I recommend reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It!. Or, to give the book its full title, Why Now is the Time to CRUSH IT! Cash in On Your Passion.

Where I talk here about loving your business, he talks about passion:

Live your passion. What does that mean, anyway? It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you most in the world.

Tall order?

Or just what you are doing now?

I’d love for you to share your experience of loving the business you are in and how that has worked for you.

The series: 5 Tips for Starting a Home Based Business

Tip 1: Know Your Market Worth : Starting a Home Based Business Series

Tip 2: Build an Order Book: Starting a Home Based Business Series

Tip 3: Build New Networks: 5 Tips for Starting a Home Based Business

Tip 4: Ask for Help: 5 Tips for Starting a Home Based Business

Tip 5: Love the Business You Are In: 5 Tips for Starting a Home Based Business