UPDATE: We’re sorry, but this opportunity is on hold while we find more contacts in the organization. Our existing contacts are all busy! You can still fill out the form though, and we will put you on the waiting list. Thanks, CHBT

Here is something that makes us really excited. It is an introduction to a group of people who already run Christian Home Based Businesses, and help others get started. I have met some of them, and it is really a good group of people. See what you think. - Chris

P.S. You can jump to the bottom and sign-up to get more information by clicking here.

 
 

Newspaper headline: “Corporate Layoffs affect Thousands”


Christian Escapee from Corporate Slavery Ponders:

“I have My Own
Christian Home Based Business
Layoffs are HISTORY for me,
and I am Making more Money…
…than My Former Boss!“

Wouldn’t that be a wonderful Christian thing for them to do?

…something that some day you might like to help others with too?
(Or course they would never require it of you - it isn’t for everyone.)

The key here, is that those people are REAL. They are working with others RIGHT NOW, and Their Talents May be available to you.

Do you have what it takes? Will you contact them in time?

Date: Friday, October 24, 2008 - 5:00pm
To: Christians who want to be free of the morally questionable actions of their employers.

If you are spent on the rat race, tired of constantly being…tired, and never having enough free time and money - then this may be the most exciting letter you ever read.

Good people like you are helping others in the way that we all wish happened everywhere around us. The only difference… these people are actually doing it. Not only that, they are repeatedly helping others who come to them, achieve for themselves, the same results they have achieved: Personal fulfilment, Financial independence, and Time to relax or spend with loved ones.

This isn’t a charity. This is a Christian Based Business. A money making venture - but with morals.

Christian Based Business - THE Difference.

Years ago when I started my business, I didn’t have a team of people around me to teach me what was next. What to do. And importantly - what not to do. Starting a business was simply not anything like getting a job. If something went wrong, there was no boss or coworker to go to for help. There was only me. Alone. Fear of failure was my taskmaster. I would have liked to quit my job, but I was not sure about how stable my business would be if I were to try it full time. (When I started, I was “moonlighting” - like many who start their own businesses.)

Oh how nice it would have been to have a group of people help me start out.

People who could tell me what business was the best to get into - and why that one was the best. (Think: Ultra-LOW Startup cost, Economic Recession resistance, and so many other factors. )

People who could provide a TRIED and TRUE Plan for Success.

People who cared about my success.

People who wouldn’t ask me to do underhanded things that I have seen so many other businesses doing.

But years ago I had not found that group of people. Through the years however, I have met many people in business for themselves. Some succeed, some fail… and some get mired in the process of running a business that can barely stay afloat - becoming a veritable slave to their own business.

Perhaps I chose wisely. Perhaps I was blessed. But one way or another my business succeeded. However it was only after learning many lessons by myself - lessons that could have been easily given to me by others who knew how it all worked.

Those simple things could have saved me many months of effort.

They could have made my business grow and prosper much more quickly.

They could have gotten me out of the corporate rat race years earlier - and without the terrible risk of failure - and WITHOUT my life savings needing to be invested in the process.

Having someone to help along the way is the difference between SMASHING SUCCESS, and the long hard road of starting an independent business ALONE.

You see, there are certain things that work in business and certain things that don’t. Why is it that certain huge corporations manage to expand their businesses time and again even when their competitors are hitting hard times? Of course there is a complex answer to that.

But the simple one is just this:

Those companies find something that works. They then do it over and over - but will never tell you what exactly that is.

Keep that idea in mind - “Do what works, and then do it again.”

Of course what works for a large corporation is not what works for someone just starting out in their own business. Large corporations are often driven by their greed more than anything else. That makes them very different, and assures that they will never reveal their hidden secrets.

When it comes to small business owners, there is no reason to keep all the secrets to yourself. God has provided abundance enough for everyone to make substantial sums of money. Money enough to share with our families, and our churches. Money to go on vacation. In fact sharing the gifts we are given is an important part of life that is not lost on the people of which I speak.

This group of people are doing what works. And they want to help you do it again.

Of course there are a limited number of these people currently. And they can’t always get their message of helping others, independence, faith, and financial security to as many as they would like. So you need to act now, before all the available spots are filled.

Between my own experience, and reading various books about business over the years, it is clear that there are some important things to know about business. (Remember, plenty of self directed research and reading was an important part of the learning process for ME. However I didn’t have a group of people to give me a leg up.) These things are already understood and are taught by those of which I speak. Here are a few of them:

- You must start a business that has an investment you can afford. (I had to start with my life savings - more than $100,000.00 - and used most of it while starting my business. By getting a leg up - YOU WON’T HAVE TO. You can start with literally less money than it costs an average family to go to the movies four times. That is, you can do that IF you have the right help.)

- You must choose a business that you like. (This is important. Of course it can be hard to determine what sort of business to do, and researching each business can be time consuming. Wouldn’t it be nice to have several options for what to do? Options that all come with mentoring? Options that are all working already and can be started with minimal investment? Options that allow part or full time, flexible hours, even keeping your current job if you wish? As it turns out, that is exactly what this amazing opportunity provides.)

- You must want to run your own business, and REALLY WANT to achieve the results that it provides. (such as Financial Freedom, Time to yourself and with loved ones, helping others, shorter commute, a schedule that you control - and doing things on your terms. Seems so simple now, yes, I thought the same many years ago. But most people eventually find this is an issue - and when/if this problem finds you, it will be nice to have an experienced partner help.

- You must be willing to BE the BOSS, and take control, make decisions, and choose your own destiny. NO BOSS will be there looking over your shoulder (and complaining that you aren’t doing it their way. )

- You must be willing to take time for vacations, time with family, time to relax and time to grow personally and in your faith. ( Running your own business can be one of the most enjoyable parts of your day, at the same time it is an engrossing challenge that makes it hard to pull yourself away from.)

- You must be willing to set your own schedule. (Yes, again that seems a simple and straight forward thing. But it is deceptive - not so easy, as you will find out. But with a mentor to help you with this, and so many other things that come up… you can be ready and willing to take on this challenge.)

Lets take a look in more detail at what will happen after you decide you want to be your own boss, help others, and achieve financial success faster than a “work a day” job is likely to ever do:

- You will fill out the form below, and if you have gotten in before all the mentor’s are busied with others… you will begin your amazing journey:

- You will be matched with a mentor, and they will contact you. (This is an interview. Not everyone is cut out to be in business for themselves, make their own hours, and have a “commute” that is literally not even half way across your house.)

- After completing and succeeding at the interview, the person who contacted you, or someone on their team, will become your mentor.

- They will have information about various ways of getting started in your own business. Since they have a number of options, there is no need to be stuck with a cookie cutter business that is doing just one thing. And more importantly, as your business grows, even more options become available so that you can taylor your business to your needs.

- If you are ready to get started really quickly, they have options that can accelerate your business to even faster success, getting you on the road to your dreams as fast as you can manage.

So: The next step is yours.

Do you want to be your own boss? Do you want to work with a great group of poeple to get YOUR business started and running, to bring you your own financial and personal independence?

Do you want to get started before the available people are all busy with other worthy candidates?

The time is now:

Here’s wishing you all the best.

P.S. A family member of mine started her own Christian Home Based Business through this organization. I personally checked them out beforehand, and was quite pleased. The experience only got better from there. The mentoring quality was superb, covering a variety of topics necessary for success. I have literally never seen such a wonderful organization to work with before in my entire life. It makes me hopeful for the world when I see so many of these sorts of people in one place.

P.P.S. One of my greatest concerns when researching this organization, was that they were some sort of a scam. I have heard of all sorts of crazy things like “cash gifting”, “envelope stuffing”, etc, but after my research, it became clear that they are none of that sort of thing. Of course you don’t even need to take my word for it. It is totally free to have a mentor contact you, and then you can decide for yourself after talking with them. In case you are wondering, Yes, they do get paid for helping you - just as you would get paid if you pass the interview, and eventually (after experience and training) decide to begin helping others start their own businesses through the organization. Of course that is just one option of how you might decide to run your business once you have your business going.

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But again, why is it that people find more good restaurants than me? Of course it is because there are more of them than there are me. In fact, it is not only my friends, but their friends as well. Each time a friend of mine tells me they found a good restaurant, they quite likely got that information from a friend. So there could be dozens of people that are helping me find restaurants.

Now take that to marketing my christian home based business. If I have a group of friends that I keep in touch with, and I talk about “work” with them, then they just may know someone who needs what I sell. They may even tell that person to contact me without me even being aware of it. And that, my friends, is only the tip of the ice burg.

What about when those same friends help me to get some insight about my home business or product that I can not get on my own? We often end up “too close” to things to get an effective feel for their context in the world. How often have we seen other companies really screwing up something from a customer viewpoint and doing nothing to change it, even when it is causing them to bleed customers? The same can happen to us, and our friends are there to save us from ourselves. Of course we should be listening to our customers the most intently here. And in a very powerful sense, our customers are some of the most important people to network with.

Network with customers? Yep. Definitely. Customers are often more likely to know other customers than we are. (Depending on the business type.) They can provide insight, referrals, references, and of course maintaining a relationship with a customers maintains their loyalty too. All from a little networking.

What about other people to network with. Of course there is that old saying about how you go where your friends are going. So why not get to know some people who are like minded? Especially if they are further down the road that you are traveling in a business sense. This is easier than ever with the advent of the internet. You can find people on discussion boards/forums quite easily, and on almost any subject imaginable. These people will vary in their perspective, their experience level, and locale. This can give you some of the broadest information of any networking opportunity.

And of course you don’t even have to network for peers. You can network for customers in just the same way. Your specific business obviously decides where your customers are, and how you can network with them, but you might find great opportunities on the internet, local clubs and organizations, and other places. Just think about what your customers to, and where they would congregate - then decide how you can best reach them.

All of these avenues take advantage of the basic human desire to find something that works. Each time someone finds that, whether that is as a customer or a peer, they remember it, and will be happy to relate it to you the next time that they see you. However often that is.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Home Business Marketing 101 series - Avoiding Networking Overload.

Technorati Tags: Christian Based Business, christian business, Christian Home Based Business, Home Based Business, home business, marketing, networking

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have people to work with who were of like mind? This is the real difference when it comes to Christian Based Business / Christian Business. It’s the people. Now some will try to tell me on occasion that Christians are not any easier to work with than any random person off the street. Of course there are all types, but to go so far as to say that Christians are not easier to work with, more reliably stable, honest, etc… makes me think that these people got their impressions of Christianity from watching TV rather than experiencing it themselves. Working with Christians is like stacking the deck in your favor - but in an honest way.

Now I said that the difference is the people, and that the business is really unchanged - that is true to an extent. There are businesses out there that really only operate when things are a little shady. This is another place where Christian business shines. Rather than taking a huge gamble every time you accept a job, working for a Christian business is much more likely to result in you business being a place where you can be an honest person and not be totally outside the norms of the other employees.

But with that said, we are really talking about starting a business, rather than joining one here. Starting a business comes in many flavors. We can start one from scratch, we can buy one, we can buy a ready to start business (such as a dealership or franchise), or any of a series of options related to those. Just as with secular businesses, all these options are available with a Christian business, and with the added benefit of a smaller likelihood of having to deal with fly by night operations.

Of course working at home is essential to many people’s goals, and so taking that Christian Business and bringing it home makes everything all that much better. Of course, here again, Christian businesses perform better, and with fewer (if any) scams to deal with.

Now there are all sorts of ways to describe Christian businesses, and this article aims to make some distinctions between them. Here is a list of some common descriptions of Christian businesses, and a short definition of each. Of course definitions vary, but this is how they are used here at ChristianHomeBusinessToday.com.

Christian Business: This is the most generic description. It would non-specifically describe any Christian business, whether that be a small one or a large corporation. (Yes! There are large corporations that are Christian Businesses!)

Christian Based Business: While nearly synonymous with Christian Business, this description seems to try to focus on the idea that the business is based on Christianity rather than selling Christian things (e.g. religious goods.) Including “Based” in this description is optional. Christian Based Business is also sometimes a mistype when the person was intending to say “Christian HOME Based Business”.

Christian Home Based Business: Here we are talking about a business that is BASED out of a person’s home. While businesses often are said to be “home businesses” they also tend to involve the people who work from the home traveling away from the home to meet clients, make sales, etc. This is the most typical case of a “home business”.

Christian Home Business: This definition now focuses on staying home, though is typically used almost synonymously with “Christian Home Based Business” for the reasons stated above. Whenever possible we will refer to a business with this description when it can be operated nearly exclusively from the home with little or no need to leave the house. Such a business may be perfect of mothers with children, those who have trouble getting around, don’t have a car, etc.

Christian … Opportunity: Any of the above descriptions can have “Opportunity” added to them. When this is the case, we are talking about some sort of joint venture, franchise, dealership, etc, that is available for people to start. These opportunities will typically have a company to work with that has a business process to use for running the business, training, a product or products, marketing plans, and many other things to help you get started. Some will even have mentoring programs. While the new (possibly home based) business is independent, there is almost always some sort of ongoing relationship with the company that helped with the startup. These Christian Home Based Business Opportunities are what we are currently looking for here at ChristianHomeBusinessToday.com, so that we can help people get started in a business. Of course we think it is great if you start one from scratch, and our articles are intended for you too! But for most poeple, starting a business is a daunting challenge, and some help from an “opportunity” is both worth while, and well advised.

It is our hope to eventually have Opportunities for Home Businesses, and Home Based Businesses. We will be posting them as we find them. You can help! Have you had experience with a Christian Business? If so, go to our contact us page, and drop us a note. Tell us your experience, and how to look up and contact the business that you work with, or worked with. If you liked it, and we like it as an effective means of getting people away from their day jobs and home with their family, then we may feature it on the main page!

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Well the answer is simple: Be in a growing market. That is the single most important thing about those companies. If you are in a company or market that is contracting, or has been in trouble for years, then a little economic uncertainty (whether real or made for TV), will impact you substantially. More below on the real state of the economy.

On the other hand, if your market is growing, and poeple want your product, then you can avoid most of those problems.What is growing? Well you can just look around you and see what everyone is talking about, and where they are STILL spending their money… and they ARE spending arent they?

If I look around, the answer is yes. Perhaps they put off a major purchase like a car, but when it comes to other things, there is spending going on all over. Health - and I mean alternative health - is growing. Organic produce and other related items are growing 20% a year. People are spending more carefully, but those carefully chosen purchases are - you guessed it: Growing! That might be a Blueray player - to spend more time at home, and less at the movie theater, or a new blender to cook more at home and spend less at restaurants. Whatever it is, the more efficient it is, the more it is growing. Even MP3s/players are efficient in that sense - they are often less costly than CDs.

When starting your business, you can factor in these things, and choose something that will be growing gangbusters even now when the TV is spewing doom.

Oh, and back to the economy. We can see that there are economic problems, and watching the TV it certainly sounds worrisome. But let’s turn off the TV for a moment. Now relax and clear your buzzing head for a moment and look outside. Are there any people on your block who lost their job? Ok, are there any people who just got hired? How does that compare with the normal course of things - when we aren’t in a “bad” economy.

If I ask these questions to myself, there is one person I know who is working reduced hours. But nobody has been fired. And one person has been hired who wanted a job and got one after having been a stay at home parent. Yes, that means entering the work force after years away - a supposed difficult position to be in. Doesn’t sound as bad as the TV would have us believe. In fact my home price has fallen, but does that keep me from spending? Certainly not.

The moral of the story is this: I am expanding my personal business. I don’t have any shortage of customers. Am I expanding my business into selling cassette tapes? Of course not. I am expanding (really starting a whole new line of business), in a place where there are plenty of customers in our current climate. You can too.

If you did just loose your job, then you are at the right place. Am I sorry for you? Why would I be! It is a great thing to start your own business - and a grand adventure. Doing it at this time just means you need to enter the market correctly. We will be posting more and more effective business opportunities as we find them. There is already a great christian home based business listed here, and we hope to have more.

I hope you have a great day, and God Bless. God will provide for all his followers - as always.

Technorati Tags: Christian Based Business, Christian Home Based Business, Christian Home Business, economy, latest

A while back, I read the back cover of the weekly bulletin at our Church - the very back where the ads are for local businesses that support the Church. There among the ads, was some blatant self promotion for advertising in the bulletin. It was a small section, where an ad could have gone, but for being on the back of a bulletin, it had some remarkable business insight.

It read something like this: Advertising is not important. Why would it be? After all, this morning you got up off of the bed you found in a sale flyer, brushed your teeth with a toothbrush you saw advertised on TV, then you had your morning run wearing the shoes that you have seen advertised so many times too. The bulletin went on a bit further, but you get the picture. The most successful products are the most heavily marketed.

Now when we run our businesses, we have the same problem. Our potential customers don’t know that we are there, waiting to provide them excellent results. We have to tell them. Of course, the mass market approaches that were used for our toothbrush and our sneakers probably aren’t right for us. Small businesses tend to be more niche market players.

Of course the niche where we operate also provides us opportunities for marketing. By focusing directly on the niche that we operate in, we can get the best results.

Now before we get down and dirty with various ideas for marketing, let’s consider something. What sorts of results are good results? Do we need to get the phone ringing off the hook for our business to be successful? Of course the answer to that varies, but in general, a business should be able to survive without the phone ringing off the hook.

Before you started you business, you should have calculated how much money each new customer brings in, and how many of those new customers you need each month for you business to stay afloat, and achieve your financial goals. Another thing that many businesses rely on heavily is repeat business - and this is just smarts: an existing customer is easier to sell to than a random person on the street. They know you, and will buy from you out of habit, because they trust you, or even because they don’t have anywhere else to get what you give them.

With that in mind, you can actually deal with even lower success in your marketing efforts, since each customer you get will be with you, and provide you income for years to come in most cases.

Of course we want the best success we can get - and we attempt to achieve that every time, but with our economy, competitors, and other factors, our marketing efforts can often seem like they are not getting any traction.

So what is a good response rate? The simple answer may not be what you expect. Any response that produces net revenue is good. That is the best way to put it. Over time, through testing of various methods, we can make our exact response and buy percentages better, but today and tomorrow that anwser will not change. We can successfully market using any method that makes a net profit (a.k.a. subtract the cost of the marketing from the income brought in by that marketing.)

If we use this approach over and over, our businesses are growing.

Now there are some good approaches to marketing, and I will go into more detail at another time, but for small businesses, there are few that typically top the list in effectiveness. Your results and the methods that work best for your business will depend on your skills, and type of business.

1. Networking. This seems tired, and old, but consider this: Earlier I noted that our efforts can often seem to fail to get traction. Networking feels like this from day 1, and continues to feel that way until the day it gets you a big account, or more importantly, keeps you plugged in. By knowing what is going on in your industry through simple human contact with your peers, you can get more business intelligence than you could likely get if you spent far too much of your precious time reading industry magazines and other news. Humans pare down the information much better than the news sources, and will often get you much broader reaching information. This information is then what you can use to understand where to market and how to market your business in other ways.

2. Cold calling. Whether in person, or on the phone, there is no substitute for good old fashioned salesmanship. How many times have you bought something from a salesman? Many times no doubt. That is because this is simply the best way to communicate to potential customers. No brocure or ad will ever deliver what a salesman can. This is almost a form of networking too. By directly talking to your potential customers, you understand what they care about. You can also focus on those prospects that are the most likely customers, saving you time and money.

3. Focused advertising. This can be anything from trade shows and community festivals, to specific websites and pay per click ads. If your customers are someplace, and there is good quantity and concentration, then it will probably pay to be there. Try to figure out where your customers are - and then see what ways you can reach them. For limited budgets, you can often get away with personally attending various events where your potential customers will be, and then starting up conversations and handing out business cards.

So lets get back to results percentage for a second. If you go and do those things listed above, many new business owners will be surprised and dismayed by the number of people they talk to who say no. Of course there is some technique involved many times, so you should be working on that - but even the number of NOs you get initially is probably not completely unacceptable.

Just go back and try to understand how many new customers you need each month, then compare that with the results you got during your marketing. If you got 50 “no” answers, and 1 “yes”, then just decide:  How many people did I talk to? To get the results that I need, how many people do I NEED to talk to, based on my results so far?

You may be surprised how many people you need to talk to, but probably won’t be unable to talk to that many. To take cold phone calling for an example: it is considered “normal” for as many as 200 calls to be made before getting a single bite. And 2000 calls to be made before getting a sale. Now that is for less focused, more broad market calling, made with a computer voice on the phone. If you call personally, the numbers should not be so large, and if you use good salesmanship, the numbers look better yet. If you call specific people, create a relationship, and follow up… then you are really being effective, and can see a very high percentage of sales.

Whatever method you use, just do the two basic things: 1) Calculate how effective your marketing effort is being, to determine if it is cost effective to expand that method to the level needed to get your target new customer levels. 2) If it is working, then improve it over time by experimenting around with it to make it even more effective.

In any case, make sure that you do your marketing. This is probably the single biggest reason that single person companies fail. They just don’t carry out effective marketing.

Almost anyone can flip a burger, but it takes a business person to get someone to buy the burger. By marketing your business, you can ensure success.

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