The number of Americans working from home is on the rise

Steve Cichon left a radio job to start his own company and work from home. He’s at his computer by 5:15 a.m

At 7:30 on a sunny weekday morning, as commuters begin to fill the Thruway on their way to the office, Steve Cichon pours himself a cup of coffee and takes a seat at his dining room table. The longtime Buffalo media man recently walked away from the grind of the office and joined a growing number of people opting to work from home.
Indeed, a report by Global Workplace Analytics found that more than 3.1 million Americans work from home.
Cichon is taking it a step further He left his post as news director of radio station WBEN-930 to start his own company, Buffalo Stories LLC. He said he now faces the challenges and opportunities that confront every former office dweller.
“For me, I feel like I’m still new to this and still getting settled in (to working from home). But right now, the challenge is getting into a routine and a flow,” he said.
Don’t be fooled by the image of him sipping coffee and playing with his dog Willow — who he jokes is his office manager and has her own LinkedIn page. Cichon is up and at his computer most mornngs by 5:15 and said he often works into the night.
One of the knocks against working from home is the potential for a drop in productivity. But he and others say it’s not true. The freedom and flexibility that come from working outside a traditional office are driving forces that lead to greater productivity, they say.
“At 5 o’clock, you shut down your computer, lock your office and go home for the day,” he said. “For me, I have that flexibility working at home, but that also means there are nights that it is 10 o’clock and I’m still working.”
For Cichon, being a business owner provides plenty of motivation — after all, he needs to generate business if he wants to continue eating and paying his mortgage. But what about employees whose boss works in a brick-and-mortar office while they telecommute from home?
John Cimperman is a principal at Cenergy, an East Aurora marketing business in which five of his 32 employees work remotely. So how difficult is it to motivate an employee living 1,500 miles away in Denver?
“With our employees, motivation is never an issue, but connectivity is,” he said. “We are in the business of generating ideas, and ideas are generated in brainstorming sessions around a white board, around the water cooler, at a happy hour. So for remote employees, we need to work harder to make sure they remain connected.”
Remote employees of Cenergy have home-based offices, he said, and in his field it makes sense, given that most are out on the road and meeting with clients every day. The company currently has remote employees in Boston, Atlanta, Denver and Chicago, he said.
“There are two reasons why we have folks work remotely,” he said. “Most importantly, we put account managers in the places where our clients are located. The other reason is, in the case of our event manager, he is probably on the road 200 days a year, so where he lives isn’t as relevant.”
Recruitment has a major impact on the decision to have remote employees.
“If we can’t find someone in this market that has the experience and talent that we need, then we will go find those people with national experience, wherever they may live,” Cimperman said. “And the fact is, there is more of the specific type of talent we need in those larger markets.”
Once seen as a non-traditional perk for employees, working from home has evolved into a strategy that many employers utilize to control office-related costs and other expenses.
But even with happy employees and a stronger bottom line, are there potential legal pitfalls to having employees working from home?
Yes, according to Michael Schiavone, an employment attorney and partner in Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria. He said the risks must be carefully weighed before an employer decides to let someone work remotely.
“The first concern that comes to mind (for the employer) is, how do you deal with the nuances of employment law in an ever-changing climate where technology may be outpacing the laws dealing with this issue,” he said.
He advises employers to have a strong policy set in advance.
“It is obviously easy today for many employees to work from home,” Schiavone said. “But employers need to be concerned about the criteria they set for eligibility.”
He has seen numerous cases in which an employee request is granted without the employer stopping to consider the pitfalls involved in setting a precedent.
“Do you wind up having different standards based on who it is that does what for the company? And once you permit people to work from home, how do you regulate what is going on in comparison to what you could do if the employee were physically present in the office?” he said.
Schiavone said another example where an employer could run afoul of the law is in dealing with the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs employee hours and wages.
“Assuming that a workweek is 40 hours, how do you know that an employee isn’t working more than 40 hours from home?” he said. “What if the employee then makes a claim down the road that he has been working more than 40 hours and hasn’t been properly compensated?”
He said he doesn’t discourage clients from offering telecommuting as an employee option, but he does suggest that businesses of all sizes do their homework.
Example: If an employee slips and falls in the office and is injured, it is a clear-cut workers’ compensation claim. But what happens when an employee working from home slips on the kitchen floor on the way from the bathroom to his home office during so-called work hours?
“Well, (employers) need to talk with their insurance people who provide their workers’ comp policy to see where people are covered,” the attorney said. “Whether or not a workers’ comp policy would extend to the worker’s home is probably an endorsement that would need to be applied for by the individual employer.”
According to Schiavone, larger companies are typically well-versed in such rules and nuances, but there’s concern when it comes to smaller organizations in which the decision to allow telecommuting is more informal. “Small companies that may view this as a way to save on office space or other related expenses and elect to have people start working from home, (they) need to start thinking about the ramifications of those decisions,” he said. “And they need to consider whether they have the proper policies in place to protect the company.”

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/buffalo-law-journal/2013/08/the-number-of-americans-working-from.html?page=4

Boomers with Home-Based Businesses Learn to Prioritize Tasks

Just ask any Baby Boomer running a home-based business – after a while, one of the most difficult aspects is to decide “What to do next?” Everyday presents new challenges. Hence, it is imperative to also maintain a prioritized list of tasks that will directly benefit your business. This is how home-based businesses survive and grow.
I like to keep a spreadsheet list for each of my businesses, one that can be easily sorted by priority. Since I’m at an age where if I don’t write down my ”brilliant” insights, they quickly vanish, I carry a notebook at all times. There, I jot down tasks, thoughts and actions that pop into my mind and then transpose them to my spreadsheet lists.
My priorities are totally subjective. Sure, there are normal business activities that must be accomplished, such as shipping products to customers or completing a consulting report to meet a deadline. These bring in money and pay the bills. And of course they typically have the highest priority.
Then there are the “fun” things. In this category, I include items that are creative or strategic in nature. For instance:

• Reviewing my website to enhance search engine optimization.
• Exploring adjacent markets for my products and services.
• Figuring out how to grow sales 20 percent this year.
• Thinking of ways to make my business run smoother.
• Determining who can I talk to get ideas for my business or to be a sounding board.

You get the idea.
Prioritized lists are key to organizing time and being productive during the hours devoted to a home-based business each day. They help Boomers accomplish more while freeing up time for “play” to enjoy golf, family and social time, trips, gardening or simply reading a good book.
Every morning, I review my lists and set an agenda for the day. Based on how much time I want to work today, I decide which items on my list to pursue. Now, they may not be items of highest priority. Some days, I just feel like doing lower-priority stuff that I enjoy, BUT at least I’m accomplishing something beneficial to my business.
I’m sure none of this is new to you. Boomers have been making lists for years. This is how we became successful during our employment years. Operating a home-based business, however, takes the art of prioritized lists to a new level.

http://www.boomerhomebizadvice.com/2013/11/boomers-with-home-base-businesses-learn-to-prioritize-tasks/

 

Does What You Wear Matter When You Work From Home

Switching from working at an office to working from home is a pretty big change. When I made the switch, I particularly missed my coworkers, the 10-6 structure, and the soda machine, but the biggest difference was definitely my wardrobe. Does it matter what you wear when you're working from home?
At first glance it seems like the answer should be a resounding, “no.” With no one to see me, whatever clothes I put on were just for me, and whatever neighbor could see me through my home-office window. As far as I could tell, there was no practical reason to put on my office drag when nobody would see me. I could stay in my pajamas all day if I wanted.
But while idea of perfect, 24-hour comfort is appealing, what a person wears can affect the way they feel, which in turn can affect job performance. Maybe I really was going to have to wear smart shoes and an uncomfortable bra to successfully monitor Twitter and conduct Skype calls. The only way to know for sure was to play Goldilocks and try all my options to see which ones worked best.

Office ClothesMy experiment began with the full Office Lady outfit, which was a complete non-starter. I made it about 10 minutes before realizing high heels do not work at a standing desk and kicked them off. (That’s also right about when I realized that standing on my yoga mat made my standing desk experience much more pleasant.) Pantyhose and a pencil skirt always seemed perfectly comfortable at the office, but in my apartment they suddenly felt distractingly uncomfortable. That outfit was supposed to get a week of testing, but I gave it up after a day and a half.

PajamasWorking in pajamas was much more fun, but it did make me wish I had more sets of cute, matching pajamas like Zooey Deschanel on The New Girl. As long as I was clean and tidy, I did not notice an appreciable decrease in productivity between wearing pajamas and wearing my office garb. Personally, I think I was more productive because I wasn't fussing with tights or wandering skirts all day.
I didn't like wearing the pajamas I had slept in, though; that was just a step too far into sloppiness for me. Getting up and putting on a new set of pajamas for work was much better. I highly recommend it.

Casual ClothesBetween those two is the middle option of wearing comfortable, casual clothes like jeans and a comfy sweater. That was pretty much as comfortable and productive as wearing pajamas, with the added benefit of not being embarrassing on the rare occasions someone dropped by.
Having committed myself to wearing either regular house clothes or clean pajamas during work, I asked some other work-from-home types about their preferred options. I expected the answers to run the gamut, but of the eight home-office workers who responded, all but two said they wore pajamas or pajama-type clothes to work unless they expected to have to meet people. Of the two holdouts, one wore jeans and a hoodie, and the other said he started the day in pajamas and changed to jeans and a T-shirt around lunchtime. Nobody wore shoes.
When you do your job from home, do you find that what you wear makes a difference in your work?

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/does-what-you-wear-matter-when-you-work-from-home-197194

How to Productively Work From Home

With the internet allowing modern age business owners to run their operations from just about anywhere in the world, many are choosing to run their business entirely out of their house. Those who choose to forego the office and instead work from the comforts of home need to learn to manage their daily schedules in a manner that will keep productivity at a maximum.
Organize an At-Home Office
Aside from the tax benefits that some at-home business owners are entitled to, creating a space in your home that is specifically for work has advantages for your mental health as well. Creating a space in your home that can function as your office will allow your brain to transition into work mode and allow you to focus without the distractions of the television and other domestic chores that may call your name when spending time at home. While it may seem tempting, simply waking up and pulling your lap top into bed with you is not the recipe for a productive work day.
Set Your Daily Work Hours
It’s important to make a distinction between the time you spend working at home and your personal time at home. Making sure that you stop dealing with work and start spending time with your friends and family during the evenings is beneficial for your own mental health. By setting specific daily work hours, your associates will know which times they can contact you via phone or email. Putting down your laptop at 5pm and leaving it until the next morning will ultimately make you more productive during your set work hours.
Take Advantage of LinkedIn
Being active on LinkedIn is a great way to make sure that your face is recognizable to your business associates as they will not be seeing you around the office.  LinkedIn is the preferred social network for business networking as it is a strictly professional network where experts share articles with others in their industry. Unless you’ve built a personal relationship with a business associate, connecting on LinkedIn is the most appropriate social network to use that can still keep your personal and professional life separate.
By Brendon Pack.

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=182405#.UnvIgttFDIU

The other side of working from home

"You are so lucky," grumbled an acquaintance at a party. "No commute, no boss, no office politics. I would love to lounge around in pyjamas and work when I want and how I want." "It is not that easy," I protested but he was carried away by his own misery and refused to believe me. I work from home. The key word is WORK but what seems to stand out is home. It seems enviable to many, especially the men who are denizens of the corporate world. Working from home conjures up images of leisure, freedom and flexibility. You don't have to get up to an alarm and rush around getting ready, gobble up a hurried breakfast and brace yourself for the traffic. Instead, you can take your morning breath to the computer which will not complain about your hygiene or dress sense. Shower in the afternoon, if you feel like a shower at all. And when you need a break, just shout out to the spouse/servant who brings a hot cup of tea made just the way you like, along with some fresh pakodas. What's not to like? When I decided to quit a full time job and become a consultant and a writer, I believed that working from home would be a blessing- the ideal solution that would let me work at my time, be with my daughter and keep a gentle eye on the goings on in the household. I saw myself deftly juggling a rolling pin and rolodex, seamlessly switching from the key board to the blackboard. Ours is a small household of 4 including my full time help who is the cook and housekeeper. I could easily manage. I don't cook or clean. I do have some flexibility and freedom. Yet working from home requires truckloads of discipline, oodles of self motivation and nerves of steel. I can recall a day last week when I thought I would have a productive day at work. A typical day when I am not in a workshop or client site begins at 6.30 in the morning when I get up to send my daughter off to school. The husband and I have a brief chat on the plan for the day and he leaves for office. I do my yoga and/or walk, breakfast, shower and move to the study which doubles up as my place of work. I have plans for this day. I need to complete a proposal to a client, attend a conference call , send a couple of emails and write at least 500 words for an article. So far, so good. At 10.30 a.m,I switch on my laptop and start with the proposal." Didi, Colin nahin hai." my cleaning maid pokes her head in. I make a note in my list of Things to Do. I remember that she had not dusted the sideboard. I notice a stray cobweb. Instructions are given.Back to proposal. The intercom rings. I rush to the phone and pick it up only to have it disconnected. Where is the maid and why is she not picking up the phone. Just as I settle down again, it rings again. I ignore it.My housekeeper announces that someone is coming with a parcel. Turns out to be a courier with my husband's credit card. I am asked to produce identification to receive the credit card. I manage to get type up something on the design of a workshop that I am proposing. My mobile pings. It is already the time for my call."Didi, gas khatam hua," says the help. 5 minutes to the call. I tell her to change the cylinder. It is stuck she says. We push and pull and fix the thing togetherI get on the conference call. In the middle of the call, the maid enters and gesticulates wildly. She holds her nose and makes some gagging sounds. Something is not right. I can't focus on the call. Finally, I am done.I rush out to discover that there is a leakage of some sort from the gas cylinder. The kitchen smells of LPG. There is a defect in the new cylinder. She is in the middle of cooking and we are out of fuel. I call some neighbours and someone kindly offers me her spare cylinder. I call the Gas agency but no one picks up. I make a note in my Things to do.The cleaning maid comes in to tell me that she is leaving. She wants a day off. No, I almost shout. You take too many holidays. It is my son's school meeting she says. They have called the parents. Her husband is quite useless in this matter. I negotiate for a late arrival. She will try, she says , making no promises. I relent, one working mom to another. Back to proposal. Is it already lunch time?I get into my wannabe Multitasking avatar. I am halfway through lunch and The Lowland. The Lindt chocolate in my fridge beckons. I ignore it until it becomes an insistent shrill summon. The book is interesting. I continue with a few chapters after lunch. Surely, I deserve a break of half an hour. I promise to myself that I will finish my proposal today. I still have time.2.30 p.m. I go to the bus stop to pick up my daughter. We discuss what happened in school. We have Bio test tomorrow she says. And there is some Hindi project. Something needs to be researched and written about Chanakya. I think school is a great institution but I have my reservations about homework. Especially the kind that makes the parent work at home.Start reading Bio. I will finish my work and we will revise. I check my mails and see that there are two new ones that need to be answered.My daughter comes in to negotiate. I will study Bio and you can research my project, she starts. No way. I have too much work to do. We discuss what she can write about Chanakya. One thing at a time, I insist. Finish Bio and then we will do Hindi. I need to finish the proposal. I notice an email reminder for my credit card payment .I add it to my Things to do.I get an unexpected call from a client. She wants to discuss the dates for a workshop that had been planned for the month. They may need to change it. As we discuss options, my daughter mouths something to me. I shoo her away and try to shut the door. She glares at me and marches off. The maid shouts from the kitchen- something about jeera or Kheera . I ignore her. Finally I finish my call and step out- Can't I even talk for a few minutes in peace, I say but no one cares to respond.My daughter looks at me accusingly. You forgot. I told you the light in my room wasn't working. Now I can't study. Damn. Didn't I put it in my Things to Do. I call the electrician.I reconfirm dinner menu and give the maid money to buy cucumber for the salad from the shop in our condominium complex. I check on the state of bread and eggs and find we need to replenish that too. Why does she tell me these things at the last moment?Is it evening already? I have to make the last page of the proposal. I have to check the research on Chanakya. Why do 12 year olds need to write about Chanakya in Hindi? Why do they also need a printout of a picture which can be seen anytime on Google Images? I open up the Google Hindi website on Chanakya and toggle between that and my proposal. In the meantime, I am also giving my daughter some questions to answer in Bio. My husband calls and asks if I have paid the electricity bill due three days back. Pay it yourself, I want to shout. I make a mental note to make an actual note in my Things to Do.Is it dinner time already? My husband is home. Horrible day, Terrible traffic he says. You are so lucky you don't have to go out to work everyday! I glare at him. We do dinner. I am almost done with the proposal. I tuck my daughter into bed. It is only 10.15 p.m and I feel terribly sleepy. I drag myself back to the computer and send off the proposal. I still have the article to write but my brain has gone into deep freeze. I can't get a word out. I read a few pending emails.I shut down the machine and decide to go to bed. My husband is checking Facebook. Other people seem to have interesting things to do and say. What did you do today? He asks. I rack my brain. I finally sent off that proposal to ABC, I say. That's it? That's all you did the whole day, his look says but he wisely restricts it to a 'Uh uh.'Another day of work has gone by. My Things to Do list has grown exponentially. I shouldn't complain. I know I have to be more disciplined, more assertive, more focused, more tenacious. Some day, I will get there. Someday I will also get myself a little office-away from home.

 http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/nirupamasubramanian/3585/64908/the-other-side-of-working-from-home.html

If you are wondering why you are struggling to succeed with your online business, this article by David DiSalvo gives some insight into how your brain might be working against you ...

"Luke: I can’t believe it.

Yoda: That is why you fail."

My research into the traits of influencers and achievers continues, and as I turn more pieces of this puzzle around to fit the whole, more ideas appear to me as a fit for this space.  In this edition, reflections on falling short — more precisely, why we fail despite ourselves.

1. Like Yoda said, you just don’t believe it. 

The crucial part of Yoda’s dialogue with Luke is “believe.”  The human brain is a powerful problem-solving and prediction making machine, and it operates via a multitude of feedback loops. What matters most in the feedback loop dynamic is input — what goes into the loop that begins the analysis-evaluation-action process, which ultimately results in an outcome. Here’s the kicker: if your input shuttle for achieving a goal lacks the critical, emotionally relevant component of belief, then the feedback loop is drained of octane from the start.  Another way to say that is — why would you expect a convincingly successful outcome when you haven’t convinced yourself that it’s possible?

2.  Other people have convinced you of your “station.”

I’ve always thought the “know your station in life” idea to be among the most pernicious we humans have ever come up with.  The only version of it I like is Tennessee Williams’:   “A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”  Love that Tennessee Williams.  What’s more pernicious than the idea itself is that it’s often heaved upon us by other people, and they convince us that we are what we are and we’d better just live with it because, well, that’s what we’ll always be.  Really? Says who? Show me the chapter on predetermined stations in the cosmic rule book, please. This also gets back to the feedback loop dynamic, because if this external “station” scripting is part of your input, you can expect sub-par outcomes all the time.

3. You don’t want to be a distrupter.

The word “disrupter” has taken on such a heavy, mixed bag of meanings in the last few years.  Reading both popular psychology and business books, I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing to be.   One thing seems certain — the notion of disrupting anything–of being the water that breaks the rock–is scary to most of us.  Reason being, disruption is perceived as a threat to our threat-sensitive brains. Disruption means that consistency, stability and certainty might get jettisoned for a time, and that puts our hard-wired internal defense system on high alert. Sometimes, though, you have to override the alarms and move ahead anyway.  If you never do, you’ll never know what could happen.

4. You think, “what if I die tomorrow?”

We all think this from time to time.  And you know what, sure, any of us might die tomorrow — all the more reason not to waste time thinking about it and hamstringing yourself from going after what you want to achieve.  Would you rather die as a monument to mediocrity or as someone who never quit striving?  Which leads to the next one…

5.  You wonder how you will be remembered.

The rub here is simply that, if you “die tomorrow,” will people remember you as someone who clung to stability like an existential life preserver — and is that what you really want?  I know for a fact that many people do want exactly that, because it’s a comfortable niche to occupy on the obituary page.  ”She/he was a good person, good friend, good….”  Good is fine, but it ain’t great. You can’t strive for great achievements by dropping anchor in Goodville.  My take on this is: it’s OK to wonder how you’ll be remembered, but don’t let thoughts of “good and nice and stable” effect that all important feedback loop, because if you do your brain will be happy to oblige with lots of good and little else.

6. You think there must be a pre-established role for your life, and you might be screwing with  it.

This one also touches on the “station” idea discussed above, but it goes deeper than that. We humans are prone to believing in something psychologists call “agency.”  We want to believe there’s a reason for everything, and that everything has a prime mover — an agent, whether human or otherwise. So, we think, what if there’s a reason we are what we are — what if celestial agency has determined it so?  Should we be messing with that?  The error in thinking here is clear — agency is a figment our brains rely on to manage difficulty with as little trauma as possible. The first thing to do is recognize that, and then recognize that the role for your life has only one true agent — You.

7. Your career appears to be well-established and that’s good…right?

Well, maybe that’s good, sure.  The question becomes, is “established” what you really want?  Maybe it is, and that’s cool. But if “established” means you can’t reach beyond certain imposed parameters to achieve anything else that you truly want, then maybe it isn’t so useful after all.  Like most things, this is a personal choice and it doesn’t have a right or wrong answer.  But it’s worth acknowledging that you may very well be “establishing” yourself out of greater achievements.

8.  You are afraid of losing what you have built.

A totally legitimate fear, and one we should kick out of our perspectives as quickly as possible.  Here’s one example why:  Remember this little thing we’ve been suffering through for sometime now called a recession?  Remember how many people lost all or nearly all they’d “built” during these last few years of economic erosion? The reality is, you can lose everything in a heartbeat through no fault of your own, so why allow that fear to stop you from reaching out for what you really want?  This goes in the same basket as “I could die tomorrow.”  Yes, true, we can lose, we can die. So what? Push forward.

9. You think, “maybe I’ve hit my ceiling.” 

The proverbial “ceiling” — so long have ye been with us, and yet so little have ye given us.  I side with the late great Peter Drucker who said (paraphrasing from this classic article on Managing Oneself) if you reach a point in your career where you think you won’t progress any further, then start focusing on the next part of your life.  Actually, he added, you should start thinking about the next part of your life well before you begin it.  The point is, forget about ceilings and focus on achievement. When you start using the cultural shibboleth of the ceiling as an excuse, you are achieving nothing and will continue to do just that.

 1o. Confusion about where to go.

Of all of these 10 ideas, this one is to me the most difficult because it plagues me almost constantly. Gearing up the cerebral feedback loop for achievement is one thing, but without a sense of focus and direction, all of that energy isn’t going to yield very much in the end.  My experience has been that sometimes you have to let the energy flow for a while without too firm a sense of direction and see if focus emerges organically. Once it does, you can then nurture it into a more structured method for getting where you want to go.

 

http://startinganonlinebusinessfast.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-10-reasons-why-we-fail.html

HANDY TOWNSHIP, MICH. — Matt Blauer and Mandy Tefft are making the world a hotter place one bottle at a time.
The husband-and-wife team have been making and selling Papa Turts hot sauce since early 2011.
The seeds of the business were planted with their love of spicy foods and an abundance of peppers in the garden at their rural home near Fowlerville in Handy Township.
“We had all this land, so we planted a big garden and put in a bunch of chili peppers,” Blauer told the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus. “We got a lot more than we bargained for.”
The solution was for Blauer to turn the peppers into hot sauce.
“I messed around with it for a while. Everybody liked it and said I should try and market it,” Blauer said. “It took a long period of trial and error to get the recipe where I wanted it.”
Papa Turts — the name is a play off Blauer’s high school nickname, Turtle, and his becoming a father — makes two varieties of sauce: So Hot It Hurts and Smoked Peppa. The sauce is available in nearly 30 stores and restaurants, and it can be ordered online.
Tefft says the hot sauce is popular at Olden Days Cafe in Fowlerville, where diners often drizzle it over breakfast items such as eggs and potatoes.
“We put it on everything,” she said. “The So Hot It Hurts is hot, but not so hot that you can’t taste anything else. It adds to your food instead of overpowering your food. We put it on pizza. We use it in deviled eggs and Bloody Marys.
“I like the (Smoked Peppa) on lasagna and spaghetti,” she added.
Tefft says her husband is an “awesome cook,” and he often posts recipes that incorporate the sauce on Papa Turts’ Facebook page.
“We recently did a spicy tuna melt recipe online that is amazing,” Tefft said.
Creating a commercial kitchen to make the sauce in the basement of their home required a financial investment of a couple of thousand dollars and approval from the Michigan Department of Agriculture.
“We had to tear up the carpet, put in a triple sink and a hand-washing sink, and put up a curtain and epoxy the floor. We put a vent in, too,” Tefft said.
While the idea for the sauce originally grew from their own garden, the couple rely on other sources for their produce. They get most of their habanero peppers from Wilczewski Greenhouses in Oceola Township.
“It’s two local businesses helping each other,” Tefft said.
Blauer said each batch of So Hot It Hurts sauce — about 120 5-ounce bottles — requires 16 pounds of habanero peppers and nearly 2 pounds of dried arbol chiles, as well as some roasted carrots. The peppers need to cook down for about 90 minutes. Blauer later uses a wooden stick to skim off the skins and seeds.
“It’s a real hands-on process,” he said.
For the Smoked Peppa sauce, Blauer uses chipotle peppers as well as tomato paste.
After the sauce is made, it’s bottled, sealed and labeled by hand.
“We learned pretty quick that places don’t want to sell it if it doesn’t have a bar code on it,” Tefft said. “So we went to Buyabarcode.com and purchased bar codes. Some stuff we’ve just had to wing it and learn as we go along.”
Fans of the sauce can even have custom labels made for the bottles. Hometown Bicycles in Brighton created its own label and sells the hot sauce in its store. Papa Turts has also had personalized labels designed and printed for special events such as weddings and bachelor parties.
Blauer, 40, and Tefft, 37, have two children, ages 11 and 4. Tefft, a 1994 Fowlerville High School graduate, keeps busy as a stay-at-home mom while working to grow the sauce business. Blauer, who grew up in the Detroit suburb of Huntington Woods, is a FedEx driver who owns his own route.
While attending college in Kalamazoo, they met at Bell’s Brewery. The brewery recently began selling Papa Turts sauces, which Tefft called “very exciting.”
Blauer works 10- to 12-hour days, leaving only the weekends for making his namesake sauce.
“When I first started, I’d make a batch every couple of months. Now, I’m working at it one full day every weekend,” he said.
The couple think about the day when Papa Turts can become their full-time occupations and Blauer can sell his FedEx route.
“We’re not quite ready to do that just yet,” Blauer said. “Slowly, over time, I may do less FedEx and more hot sauce until one day I’ll be doing hot sauce full time.”
Tefft said they “broke a little more than even” on the sauce business in 2012, and she’s sure they will do even better this year. When her youngest child starts preschool in the fall, she hopes to have more time to dedicate to Papa Turts. She also plans to revamp the Papa Turts website, where sales currently require a PayPal account.
“We don’t take credit cards, and I think some people just don’t like PayPal,” Tefft said. “When our website gets better and we show up in more searches, we can get the credit card thing going.”
Still, they count people from as far away as California and Texas among their loyal customers.
“It’s been fun; it’s a really cool thing for Matt and I to do together,” Tefft said. “It’s something that we really like that we believe is a quality product.”

http://www.freep.com/article/20130902/NEWS06/309020080/hot-sauce-business-peppers-handy-township

Are You Really Ready to Build a New Website or Blog?

If I had a $1,000 for every time I heard one of the below statements, I’d be retired and sitting on a warm beach right now!

I had a website built by some guy. It’s never worked.
We have a website, we just need you to help us get more sales.
My current website is fine. However, it doesn’t show up on Google and nobody knows we exist.
Our website is fine, it really is. I just need more customers.
We don’t have budget to invest in market research, business planning, strategy development, internal training or planning right now. We just need a website and Facebook page with lots of likes.
Can we meet to talk about a strategy to generate revenue for my business? I don’t have any money because I already spent it on the last agency that built my website, Facebook pages, printed collateral and new business cards.
Will you consider revenue share? We know our website is going to kick butt but we just don’t have any money right now. You can be a millionaire with us if you just help us for free right now!
This post is not for the social faint at heart. I am going to tell you what others want to tell you but don’t have the guts. It may not be what you want to hear. Yet it is likely what many of you NEED to hear.
The others in your social business and digital marketing ecosystem may have not told you what I am about to tell you because they wanted to sell you the website, coaching, training, Facebook pages, logo, video, Google Adwords setup or who knows what. Or maybe they haven’t told you because they don’t know how to fix it.
Your current social media efforts are not working because you started at the wrong place.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Change your thinking. Think digital social fabric, not website or Facebook page.

You need to quit thinking you “need a website.” The truth is you don’t. If you don’t know your audience, and don’t have a plan, the last thing you need to do right now is build a website that will be nothing more than a band-aid to a much bigger problem you may not know you have.
You can download our POST Audience Analysis Worksheet here. It will get you off to a good start in prioritizing and analyzing your audience.
Don’t even think about building a website if you can’t answer the majority of these questions:

• Who are you?
• What are you to your target audience?
• Who is your target audience?
• What are their demographics? Psychographics?
• What are their goals? What keeps them up at night?
• Why do you need a website?
• What do you want to achieve with it?
• What are your goals, objectives? What does success look like in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year?
• What will you do to inspire, connect and engage your audience when they land on your website? What will you do to inspire them to stick around for longer than 30 seconds?
• What do you offer that the other 100 websites or businesses just like yours don’t already offer?
• Why should anyone care that your business exists? Why should they care your website exists?
• How will you nurture relationships?
• How will you communicate with them? What tone do they speak in?
• What social platforms are they hanging out on?
• Who do they hang out with?
• Why do they hang out on those platforms?
• When do they hang out on what social platform?
• How will you earn their trust, build credibility?

I could list 100 questions here but won’t. I think you get the point. We help our clients from entrepreneurs to Fortune 50, answer these questions every day with our social media and social business audits, social business and social media strategy development, consulting and execution services. I’m speaking from experience, not theory.
We often work more on the inside of organizations than we do on the digital outside because that is where most businesses need help. It’s important you start from the inside out. As Sandy Carter of IBM states, “culture eats strategy for lunch.” I agree with her statement 100% even though I am a lover and strong believer of strategy.

You are the Thread of the Social Fabric

What is the social web today? It is not a singular website, Facebook page, Twitter profile or Google + account.
It is not one singular blog post, tweet, status update, or pin. It is not one single experience but a series of experiences.
A series of conversations that weave a beautiful, relevant, vibrant, dynamic, breathing fabric that connects consumers, influencers, business leaders, moms, dads, entrepreneurs, teens, teachers, plumbers, gamers, programmers, geeks, fashion models, comedians, sailors, photographers, entrepreneurs and even grandma.
It connects them via threads of conversations, posts, pictures, pins, quotes, content, education, inspiration, laughs, prayers and even tears.
If you are not a positive contributing part of this intricately weaved social fabric the chances of you seeing any real return on your investment in your website or other digital assets are few and far between.

You need an integrated social business platform.

You need to develop an integrated business platform that will inspire, connect, entertain and attract your target customers to you. It must inspire, educate and engage them in a way that builds trust, nurtures relationships and makes them know you are relevant to their business and / or life.
I know it may not be what you want to hear from me when you fill out a web form on our website. We’ve had many business leaders asking for help making their current, broken platform work.
The truth is if your website is built on old technology, doesn’t have a user experience designed for your target audience it is often more cost efficient for us to start over than to clean up what you have. The reason is that your current digital platform is a mess. It was probably done by someone that didn’t understand or work under the constraints of what I describe in this post. They instead sold you on a random act of marketing, random act of social media or random act of website. It’s simply not how it works folks.

Avoid Random Acts of Marketing!

Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) will eat any morsel of a chance of ROI for lunch before you have time to open the fridge to see what your options are.
One of the biggest misconception is that you can just “do social media” and have overnight success. Many preach this and tout that you can just jump on Twitter or Facebook and you can be an overnight millionaire. While this may have happened for a few, it doesn’t happen for the majority. What these folks are really selling is quick fixes, band-aids and random acts of social media and marketing. I am not stating you shouldn’t hop on Twitter or Facebook. I am stating you should not expect overnight results.
If you do the double click on the folks preaching overnight success you will find many of them learned the hard way, though they may not tell you such. Many took years if not decades to finally make money online. Few of them have real business experience outside of their own internet marketing startup. Yes, they may be able to help you get where you need to go eventually based on tactics and a random set of deliverables. However, you need to know where you are going, first. This post is dedicated to those who of you who don’t know where you’re going and why you are going there in the first place.
If this post resonates with you, take a deep breath. It’s time you slow down to speed up. You may need to take a step back to take two steps forward. Quit listening to every self proclaimed “social media guru” selling you every Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + class and instead do what you know needs done.
It’s time you plan yer’ work and work yer’ plan as Granny would say! It’s time you get in the head of your target audience. It’s time to truly understand what it means to humanize your brand, story telling and your conversations.

The Language Is Changing

The social fabric is speaking a different language today than that of the days of corporate websites, collateral and traditional advertising. If you don’t learn the language you are going to be left behind in a big way. It IS the reason why your website is not working. So quit blaming it on the web developer you hired. He or she probably did what you told them to do. Stand up, take responsibility for your business and do what needs to be done, period!
If your current methods aren’t working, then fix them. We are happy to help you but we can’t help you unless you want to help yourself. Help me help you. Change your mindset and delete the notion of overnight success from your thinking.
Achieving real results is going to take commitment, research, analysis, late nights, and hard work. Quit cryin’ and do something about it. If you want help, call us. No, we can’t meet with you for free to help you plan your strategy and put a proposal the size of Texas together that you’ll try to go implement yourself. We can spot these “free lunch” seekers from a mile away ;)
For the brave and the strong we promise to work in the trenches with you. We will help you answer all of the above questions and more. We’ll help you develop and execute a strategy, plan, and integrated digital platform that will simply kick butt! If you don’t call us, call somebody. Your excuses are done. You can and will do this!

http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/are-you-really-ready-to-build-a-new-website-or-blog-0464177

10 Tips On Choosing A Good home business

 

1.            Are you convinced with the product that you will have to sell with the business opportunity? If not, there is no reason you should go ahead with it.

2.            Are you convinced of their business plan? Most importantly, have you understood it thoroughly and will you be able to explain it to others in the same way your business representative does it for you? If the business plan is complicated or if you think you will not be able to explain it to others, you can give this one a miss.

 

3.            Do they insist on some unreasonable membership fee? Most home businesses are low investment opportunities. If you have to spend more than $200 to be a part of the activity, drop it.

4.            You must get a complete kit when you join. It should contain a detailed instruction manual and a manual about the product you will be selling too. It should have several things that can help you promote the product such as stickers, buttons and pins, etc.

5.            How are your immediate upline members? Your leader, the one who explains the business to you when you join, must be friendly and even charismatic. He or she must be able to help you initially in convincing people to join.

6.            Does the business hold seminars to induct more people frequently? Remember that without such contact programs, it will become difficult to bring more members to the network. The physical approach is unbeatable. Also, leaders must be present at these seminars to speak to the people and convince them.

 7.            Does the business have an online presence? Without that, you can give all hopes of earning good money. The best way to bring in more people is through the Internet. The business should use these opportunities to the maximum extent.

8.            Do you have enough people to back you and support you, at least initially? Are you a social person? Such things help in getting the initial members. It is a good idea to speak to some people in your immediate circle to find out whether they will support you by joining the network themselves.

9.            Do you have time for the activity? Remember that a business venture is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You have to put in effort. If you cannot, no such activity will work for you.

10.          What is the reputation of the company? This is highly important. The products will be sold faster if the company has some reputation. It is difficult to join newbie companies that no one has heard of, unless they have some highly innovative products that people would love to interest themselves in.