sparkplugging :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

It’s been good to participate in Blog Action Day this year and the focus on Poverty has produced some amazing posts and some very moving testimonials around the blogosphere.

Understandably, a lot of what has been written is about poverty in underdeveloped and developing countries.

Sparkplugging CEO Wendy Piersall reminds us that even in our richer, developed countries there are people living in and struggling with poverty, something that she has experienced personally.

People ask me about why I am so dang passionate about helping people start a business or become self-employed. While I find it fascinating, rewarding, challenging, and intellectually stimulating, the biggest reason is because of my past: I have eaten at the Salvation Army, lived out of my truck for 6 months, and when I started my first business, I was a single mom living in my parent’s basement.

That reminded me that, as well as looking at what we can to support efforts to tackle poverty in other countries, we need also to have a thought and take some action for people in our own countries, our own neighbourhoods. If you are a formerly successful, happily married businessperson who thought life was looking good and are now sleeping in your car, I would imagine you would not be immediately consoled by hearing that people in developing countries were doing it tougher.

Wendy lists thirty six sites, including this one, where people can get high-quality advice and ideas, free, for small and home business, together with a list of Government agency and other sites with resources.

If you are one of the many people around the world who are wondering, in the light of the current economic meltdown, how you are going to ensure you and your family are spared the evils of poverty, Wendy’s list would be a very good place to start.

What’s more, the comments feature on most blogs and the willingness of most bloggers to engage in conversation with their readers, via the comments system, mean that you have more than just texts to read. You have a community you can choose to belong to. A community in which there are many people who, like Wendy, have worked hard themselves to provide for their own and their families’ economic stability and prosperity. Real experts, not theorists in ivory towers.

To Easton Ellsworth who has labored mightily to bring us Blog Action Day 2008 and poke and prod us to participate, and to all my blogging colleagues who have posted about poverty and about what can be and is being done about it, my admiration and my thanks.

At BlogWorld & New Media Expo last week in Las Vegas, I was interviewed by Brandie Kajino – The Home Office Organizer. You can see the 7 min 38 sec interview on Sparkplugging.

One idea I shared, for which I am indebted to a mentor coach of mine, Richard Reardon, is about setting aside, on a regular basis, a “lab day” .

experiment by clix, via stock xchange

As I explain in the interview with Brandie, your lab day is a day when you put aside your usual work schedule and chores, so that you can give yourself time and space for some reading, creative thinking and experimentation, maybe some new product or service development.

And to give yourself a chance of making the day worthwhile. In other words, no email, no phone calls, no Twitter.

It’s your research and development (R&D) day. Value it. For anyone who is demanding your attention and might not get the “lab day” concept, of if you just don’t want to mention it, simply tell people you are working on a project and can’t be disturbed. Because you are working on a project – the project of the long term success of your business.

Do it regularly and feel good about it

Whether your lab day is once a week or once a month or perhaps at even longer intervals is not the point. It is doing it regularly and feeling good about it that count.

Feeling good about it? Yes, because it is usually not going to be immediately productive. Usually not going to generate income straight away.

It’s an investment in the long term viability of your business.

It’s about earning and being profitable in a year’s time, in five years’ time, ten years.

Big corporations spend money on R&D. They don’t do this out of any affection for innovation for its own sake.

They do it to keep ahead of the game. It’s a hard-headed business decision.

Try it. Say one day a month to start. That’s twelve days a year.

Probably twelve days more than most of your competitors are going to spend on focused, documented fresh thinking, testing and new product development.

Guess who’s more likely to be around for the long haul?

Oh, and you don’t have to wear a white coat. Although if it makes you feel better about setting the time aside, go for it.