HomeBizNotes.com
 “Help!  Help!  My server’s down.” 
(Or my computer crashed.  My e-mail has a zillion spam.)
When you’re depending solely on the Internet to operate your business, what do you do when you have problems, can’t access it, or can’t fill your customers’ requests?  Are there solutions?
*Use the phone…Make sure your regular customers have a phone number they can call you.  Try to get their phone numbers when they contact you or order so you can respond. 
*Use traditional postal mail…This is slower, but can be a back-up to the Internet.  Also, sending postcards or notes to customers is good for public relations.  When …read more

Home business owners have a vacation when they can – usually at their slowest time of year, or to fit in with scheduled family vacation times. Goodness knows, we all need a break.
A lot of the preparation for coming back actually starts before you even leave with planning ahead.
But what about when you come back?

Change out of office messages on your phone and email
Change redirected mailing address if required
Check emails and deal with the most important ones first
Check snail mail and prioritize
Let neigbors know you are back
Keep the vacation vibes going with photos or trinkets to personalize your …read more

HomeBizNotes.com
Tom Miller at Wired.com gives 8 excellent tips for home business and network marketing. “Stop waiting for someone to tell you what to do next” is first on the list.
I love this tip – so basic, yet so important. Being your own boss is great, but it also means you have to be motivated and organized to maintain business momentum. Especially in a sole proprietor home business, if you don’t make it happen, nothing happens, and you have no business.
Miller also talks about believing in yourself as a business owner, and that you are worthy of making a subtantial …read more

I awoke this morning to find a note from our daughter, who left for work at 5:15 AM.  “Mom and Dad, there’s water on the wall behind the freezer.” 
My husband Jim  discovered a tiny leak in an exposed cold water pipe in the basement above the freezer.  A very fine mist was spraying over the wall and dripping down.
“That’s the only line we didn’t replace when we did over the plumbing a few years ago,” he said, “because it runs up to the bathroom and is behind walls.”
So squeezed in between business matters has been plumbing repair which eventually will lead to a …read more

Where do you stand taxwise in your home business?  Have you been keeping up to date on taxes, insurances, and other planning? 
Now is a good time to take the “tax temperature” of your business and determine whether there is anything you can do in the remaining days of the year.  It’s also time to look where you are and see whether you need to make changes for 2008.
Kelly Phillips Erb has a great article at Taxgirl about this, Nothing Stays the Same: Your Year-End Checkup and relates how she handles some of these issues in her own business…how she make …read more