Month: June 2019

Working from home can have it’s benefits — you can sleep in a bit, knowing that you won’t have to fight rush hour traffic. You can get coffee or a snack whenever you want, and you can even stay in your pajamas all day. These are good things and some of the many benefits of working remotely, but after awhile, these are some of the same things that can contribute to a lack of motivation for those who work remotely. Some of the “benefits” of working from home can eventually lead to a sense of apathy and general laziness toward job-related tasks.

In order to successfully work from home, a person will have to work hard to keep his or her motivation high. This requires a decent amount of self-discipline and willingness to stay focused — even when there is laundry to be folded in the next room and a TV with Netflix. Working from home is not all sunshine and rainbows, and it’s helpful for people who work remotely to build certain habits that can help them stay focused and keep succeeding at their jobs.

One way a remote employee can fight complacency is to set an alarm and get up at a certain time every morning. It also helps to get dressed in “real” clothes, just as if he or she was planning to head out of the house at some point in the day. Remote employees often have flexible schedules, but trying to maintain a relatively regular work schedule can also help a person get work done. Setting a timer or number of tasks to accomplish in one day can help tremendously as well.

Those who work remotely enjoy many benefits, but they also have to be vigilant about their motivation levels and stay aware of ways they may be slipping. With hard work, diligence and enough determination, a person can successful build an impressive career from the comfort of a kitchen table or home office.

By Meagan Kerlin for Vertu Marketing LLC

Many of the most successful businesses started from a simple hobby. Perhaps you have something that you’ve been doing on the side, and you wonder if this is something that you could ever do for a living. It’s not always easy turning a hobby into a paying job, and you may want to prepare yourself for what is ahead if this is something that you hope to do. Your side hustle won’t magically transform into a money-making machine overnight, but it may be possible that you could find great success with something that started out as a side job.

It’s helpful to remember that starting a business is not easy. There will be times that you will feel frustrated, overwhelmed and discouraged. You may also have to walk through a time where you are putting in a lot of work without seeing a lot of return. This is just one of the many realities of operating a business — are you willing to put in the work, even if you do not turn a profit right away? Do you love your hobby or side hustle enough to put in a lot of hours in the beginning?

One thing that can be helpful as you start a business is to set reasonable goals. Don’t go in only focused on the end goal — to make money. Focus on small things you can do now, and keep moving forward. It’s not going to be an overnight success story, and you may even feel like you are just spinning your wheels sometimes. Just keep checking little goals off your list, and you’ll look up one day and be surprised by how far you’ve come.

As you work to turn your hobby into a meaningful source of income, it’s helpful to have reasonable expectations for what that process will look like. This will probably not be an easy journey, but it can be well worth it to turn something you love doing into your job.

By Meagan Kerlin for Vertu Marketing LLC

Do you hope that you will be successful in your career or entrepreneurial pursuits? Do you have specific goals you want to achieve? If you do, you understand it is not enough to simply hope that your plans work out. You will want to have a success plan in place — a blueprint for how you will meet your goals and the steps you need to take to get there. If fact, when you plan for success, your chances are much more likely that you will actually succeed. Your success plan is a detailed proposal for what you want your business or career to look like in the future.

You don’t want to make a success plan just for the purpose of having a plan. If you’re approaching your plan as something you need to do to mark it off your list, there is no point to it. It’s a plan that includes things you will need to put into practice. It takes commitment, dedication and persistence to make your plan pay off. But you will find that when you work the plan, it will work for you — you just have to trust the process.

Your success plan should be unique to your situation. It can be an outline of bigger goals with smaller goals in between or a detailed plan for what you need to do each day to accomplish your goals. Your success plan is not something that has to be solely dedicated to your business, either — you can include your personal goals as well as your business goals. Your personal life and business life intertwine in so many ways that having one overarching outline may make sense. What is important is that it will work for you and what you hope to accomplish both now and years down the road.

Success doesn’t just happen randomly. You have to plan for it, work for it and commit to it. If you do not have a success plan, you may want to consider the many benefits of having a blueprint that you can follow as you chase your dreams, no matter what they are.

By Meagan Kerlin for Vertu Marketing LLC