Start and Run a Profitable Home-Based Business: Your Step-by-Step, First-Year Guide

Ross Willmot is Executive Director of the Ontario Association for
Continuing Education.

Sheedy bases her useful “how-to” book on 19 years of practical
experience starting and operating successful home-based data processing
companies. Before she sold them, her businesses employed hundreds of
people.

Her own and others’ estimates say that by the year 2000, nearly 40
percent of the North American work force will work from their homes. Not
only is such a business more cost-effective, and—because of
technology—increasingly more efficient, but such “home
preneurship” can give more “quality time” to non-business
pursuits. Some 4000 readers of Home Computing Magazine said they were
happier working at home than in conventional work environments; while 81
percent wanted their businesses to grow, only 12 percent wanted to move
away from home.

Pros and cons and the characteristics required for being a successful
home entrepreneur are described. Then come detailed sections and tests
on defining your goals, checking out your idea, making your business
legal, forecasting, and raising support. Advice follows on organizing
your workingspace, marketing, managing your time, using business
technology, and understanding business taxation. Final admonitions cover
caring for cash and keeping the lid on credit. There are even hints
about what to do when home preneurship becomes so successful that it
becomes a problem.

To help the home preneur, Sheedy includes self-analytical worksheets,
nine sample forms, a listing of Canadian and U.S. government offices,
and a bibliography of other recent books on working at home.