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Over the last several years, in the course of helping thousands of people start up home based businesses, I have seen the same thing over and over again.

Once a person makes the decision to start a home based business it's usually a time of high enthusiasm along with high, and frequently unrealistic, expectations. As time marches on, the enthusiasm begins to wane if they are not making as much money as they had hoped as quickly as they wished. Often it's only after a few weeks or months that I see people start to become discouraged and, with that, their energy level declines and they start slacking off on the work that is actually required to develop a successful home based business.

It is a known fact that a majority of the people that undertake a work at home business do not achieve real success. There are several reasons for this, but I am firmly convinced that one of the primary reasons is that these people get frustrated and do not allow themselves sufficient time to become successful.

In the early going, one of the most difficult things about developing a new home based business is dealing with the emotional roller coaster that can result from the highs (successes) and lows (temporary setbacks) you are almost certain to experience. Once you have done the research and decided on a particular home based business opportunity, you really need to focus on persistence and realize that any real business will not just automatically become successful in a matter of days or weeks. You should be prepared to give it your best sustained effort for a minimum of 6 to 12 months in order to begin to build a solid business base and start to realize some good income.

Highs and lows were something that I began to notice when I first started a home based business. I have many years of top level management experience in "traditional" corporations and have experienced lots of business cycles (corporate "ups and downs"), but the natural "ups and downs" that occur in a home business (particularly in the early stages) can be brutal from an emotional standpoint if you don't prepare yourself in advance for the fact that it is a basic law of nature...it will be a rocky road until you have spent enough time and effort to build your business to a level that sort of smoothes out the peaks and valleys.

The impact of the highs and lows you will probably experience in developing your home based business is amplified by the fact that you are now in business on your own. You are the boss and get to make all the decisions, but you are also on your own in dealing with the frustrations that will occur along the way while you are developing your business.

When working at home a person can, at times, experience a feeling of isolation which is probably brought on by the lack of interaction of a work force environment.

There can also be periods of doubt in the early going...gee, did I pick a viable business opportunity?...am I doing the right things to develop my business?...when will I start making a profit?, and so on.

You are most likely going to experience the "two steps forward and one step backward" syndrome and the ever-looming temptation to become discouraged. However, keep in mind that as long as you have more steps going forward than backward, you will eventually get ahead! Simple, but often overlooked.

Relatively minor setbacks can seem huge in the early stages of developing a work at home business and can really contribute to some noticeable "mood swings". For example, if you are just starting out and you have four customers/clients and you happen to lose one...that's a 25% drop! However, if you fast-forward in time to the point where you have hundreds of customers/clients and you lose one...that's just a mere fraction of 1%! Exactly the same event, just at a different point in time.

Hang in there and just keep on keepin' on. If you have chosen a viable home business opportunity (one that has been around for awhile and in which some other people are having success) you will achieve success, but it takes time and there will be ups and downs along the way. Remember the old saying..."it takes a long time to become an overnight success".

About the author:

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.