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2011-07-30-Home Based Self-Employment

Seminars@Hadley

Home Based Self-Employment

Presented by Urban Miyares

Moderated byBilly Brookshire

August 30, 2011

Billy BrookshireGood morning, my friends. Welcome to Seminars@Hadley. We’re going to get started so we can make the most out of our time together today. Welcome to this presentation on Home Based Self-Employment. So that we can get right down to it, I want to introduce you to your presenter today. His name is Urban Miyares.

Urban was just on the Today Show for those of you who were fortunate enough to see him. Urban is the president of the Disabled Businesspersons Association. Just an excellent presenter and knows lots and lots about this subject of self-employment. We are eager to hear what you’ve got to say, Urban. So that’s why right now I’m going to hand the microphone over to you.

©2011 The Hadley School for the Blind of 48


Urban MiyaresWell thank you, Billy. Hello everybody. Welcome. We’re going to cover home based businesses and in the next hour we’re going to cover two days worth of workshops. So please bear with me if I go through some things a little quickly. However, we’re going to focus mainly on the start up: Should you or shouldn’t you start a business from the home? And what does it really take to get into a home based business?

But before I get into that, I want to give you some bad news. If you’re been reading the news, you know that we’re in a recession. As a matter of fact, they’re calling it a worldwide recession and things don’t look good. For those in the United States, they’re even talking about the Social Security Administration running out of money by the year 2017. That’s only six years from now. We’ve heard these stories before. How true they are – we don’t know.

But if it does happen where you no longer receive benefits that you expect from your government or others, what are you going to do about it? For a number of people I’ve worked with, starting a home based business is a way now to prepare to offset any financial shortchange you might have or shortcomings. You know, others, of course, go into the home based arena just to get in the business world, be active again, maybe supplement, maybe



they have a child, a grandchild that’s going to college. They want to get a new car. They’re just not cutting it with today’s economy and putting the food in the refrigerator they would like or going out as often as they want. That extra $50 or $100 a week in profit would make a big difference in their lives.

Then we have a number of people who do it for their social aspect, to get out of the house and meet new people. So these are things that you could look at when considering a home based business. I want to start right now with some good news. I gave you the bad news about it. One of the things I want to tell you about: self -employment is sweeping the country as well as the world.

Self-employment, especially from the home, has always been popular – especially in rural communities. But as far as it goes in the media, it seems like it’s a brand new thing that’s come up that people have really started to look at. They’re starting businesses from the home, maybe due to unemployment or another reason. And it’s always been around, it’s just that they don’t record all the home based businesses. I know in the United States, they estimate that over 30 million people have a business from the home. And you say, “Well, I don’t know if I want to get a home based business.” Well, if you’ve ever had a garage sale or gone to a swap



meet or a flea market and sold something, you’ve had a home based business already and you just didn’t know it.

And probably – in the United States – you didn’t file that profit on your tax returns. I believe that’s Line 13 under “Other Income”. Like it or not, you probably have been in a home based business even if it was only for a few hours of one day or have been associated with somebody that’s in a home based business. Just remember that if you’re going to wait until tomorrow to do something, you’ve already lost today, then. And there’s no way of recapturing that day gone. So a home based business is a great way to experiment or explore the possibilities of getting into business. So we’re going to cover the different types of home based businesses and show you how to do it.

But first of all, before you get into any business – and especially a home based business – you have to do a self evaluation. And somebody’s self evaluation should not be done by you personally but done by others to help you identify things. I’m talking mainly about those soft skills and hard skills. Soft skills are primarily – and I call them the ABCs of soft skills – things that you possess. Hard skills are those technical aspects you have. Maybe you’re well versed in computers or you can sing or you’re a good writer –



or something of that nature that you have a technical skill that if you were going to look for employment or you are employed, people are hiring you for that hard skill.

Your soft skills are personal things – I said the ABCs. Let’s start out with A. A basically is your appearance: What do you look like? Well, you might say, “It doesn’t matter what I look like. I work from the home.” But you’re going to find out that means a lot. It’s what other people think of you that’s important. How do you look? Your hair? Your nails? Your face? We deal in a business world that’s a sighted world. And we have to compete on their level and you’re going to discover that when you have a home based business, you’re going to have to leave the house. The people you run into and meet just may become your customers. So your appearance is critical.

The other thing is your attitude. You might think you have the great attitude and perfect attitude but it’s what other people think that’s important. Are you a pessimist? Well, you might be a pessimist but don’t let other people know about it. Are you always looking for the dark side of things? Are you always negative about things or finding out what doesn’t work? Well that’s okay to have on a personal basis and share it those in your household if you want. But when you’re out in the public, and especially if you’re in business,



you’re going to have to change that. So I am going to take a break now just with the A of the soft skills – and that is your appearance and your attitude and see if there are any questions so far.

Billy BrookshireAny questions so far, folks?

CallerHow do you acquire the information that you need in the soft skill area? Do you have people fill out a form or sit down and talk with them? What’s the process?

Urban MiyaresGreat question: How do you acquire that? Well first of all you should do a self assessment and you might see it’s good or not. And then go to your friends, first of all, and say, “You know, I’m looking to improve myself. I’m thinking about starting a business and you can help me out. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.” And if you’re the personality that they would hurt your feelings try not to show it. That’s part of your attitude. So you’ve got to mask things. Don’t forget: when you’re in business you’re an actor.

So once you pick up the phone for business and all, you’re acting. I’m acting right now. I’m going for that Academy Award. And if you’re not going for it at all times in the business world, you’re going to lose out.



So you just need others to help you with that. In some cases people could tune in right away. They know that they’re a negative person or their attitude needs changing. So if it’s so difficult for you to do it, just try to do it some of the time – that time being when you’re in business.

So I hope that answers the question and I hope I’m speaking loud enough for everybody to hear me clearly. Well we got the attitude and all. Next is your behavior for B. ABC. And your behavior is: How do you act? How do you hold yourself? How is your mobility? Things that relate to you as a person with people looking at you before you even talk with them at all.

Are you always making a comment when someone says something? Do you say the final word after the last word is said? Do you always have to put your 2 cents in? You’ve got to change your personality in that area so that your behavior is different. Especially if the behavior is that of a negative – or could be counter to what the public wants. This really is How to Win Friends and Influence People-type of traits.

Soft skills are critical. By the way, soft skills are more important than hard skills even when you’re looking for employment. Have any of you ever gone out there and have gone for a job interview and you meet the



qualifications and then you didn’t get the job but someone else did who was sighted? And right way, he says, “My blindness – that’s why they didn’t hire me.” Well if your soft skills were better – and we can always improve our soft skills no matter how well you think they are or others think they are. Possibly and probably the reason why you didn’t get hired was due to your weakness in soft skills. And soft skills – to me – training is everything.

The businesses that make it and don’t make it, often you’ll find the business owner whose soft skills are exceptional – as a matter of fact, almost in every case. I know a lot of very successful business people who really are idiots. They know nothing about their business at all but they are Mr. Public Relations or Mrs. Public Relations or Publicity.

Everybody’s their friend. You know, business is not who you know, it’s who knows you and likes you. And you’ll find that out when you’re in business. Your center of influence and contacts is more important than all the money you’ll spend in advertising. When I get people that are blind who are in business, they want to know how to market their product or service. Often there’s a soft skill weakness that they have and they need to work on that.



So the next one is your behavior: What’s your behavior for things? Now you can practice those in your own life and talking with others. If you’re always the center of a conversation, sit back and listen more and always jump in. If someone says to you, “I just went bowling and I got 150 score in my bowling game”, don’t jump in and say, “I bowl 150 or I bowl 160” to outdo them, do one-upsmanship. Your voice has no meaning in that conversation. They’re proud of what they did and congratulate them. Of course, if they ask you a question, it’s different.

So this is a part of it and we’ll cover that under C, and that is your communications. Your communication is so critical – not only your spoken word but your written word. I think some of you will agree with me. I could be in a group of people who are blind and just by the communications tell you who was born blind and who lost their sight later in life but had sight at one time.

There’s a different trend of communications and I’ll be a lot of you aren’t aware of that, especially those who have been blind all or most of your life. Communication is critical. When we go out in the public, do people forget we’re blind or do they cater to us because we stereotype ourselves so much when we’re blind? Going back to your appearance, your



behavior, your characteristics and your communications.

And the characteristics is the other part of C: What are your traits and characteristics such as in public speaking and talking to others with sight loss? Do you look at people as if you could see them or does your head turn, does your head drop? Do you have certain blindisms that can be distracting to others with sight? So these are things that we have to do.

It’s rough. I know it’s rough. I’ve been through it and I constantly do it and people say, “Urban, you’re starting to touch your eyes a little bit too much when you’re publicly speaking.” I remember that. I instinctively want to do that. I forget to open my eyes when I do public speaking, especially when I’m tired. I have one eye that rolls: my left eye when I get tired. It just goes haywire. It looks like I’m looking in two different directions.

So do you have any traits like that? Are there any facial features? Do your eyes roll? Do your eyes go up, constantly up? Let others know. You might not be aware of it. You know, we can’t see ourselves in a mirror and do a self evaluation. Our hair – is it okay? Is it neat? Is our smile off? Don’t we smile? For those that maybe have been blind all or most of their life: What about your facial gestures?



This is part of our characteristics. We have to animate ourselves – not only with our mouth and our smile but with our hands. Often we stand there like a stone figure when we’re talking to others without any facial expressions, without any body movement, without turning our head. So these are some of the soft skills that you have to go – and I do a half day workshop on this in training and all so I just want to make you all become aware of soft skills. We’re not going to go into hard skills in this. But, really, you’ll discover that in business – to be successful – you really don’t need to know that much about your product or service, especially if you have soft skills.

I’ll take a break here and see if there’s any questions.

Billy BrookshireAny questions, folks? I guess you’re back up, Urban. If you have questions, folks, by all means put them out there. Robert put a question into the chat room that I’ll bring up. He says, “When you mentioned mannerisms, what if it’s something…” Oops, it didn’t get the rest of it, Robert. It’s got, “When you mentioned mannerisms, what if it’s something…” I’m guessing, “you can’t control?” Gotcha. Thanks, Robert. He says he can’t control his eye movements.



Urban MiyaresI understand, Robert. Many people have that also. In your case, maybe sunglasses might be appropriate. Not the real dark black ones – hopefully you’re not light sensitive – but something that just masks or colors your eyes so that they can’t get a clear view of it. How you go about that, by the way, if you have a facial scarring or something – as when I talk with people who have burns on their face and all – their appearance or their dress is critical.

Wear bright ties – something that will distract the eyes of a person looking at you from your face onto your wardrobe or something about you. In your case, Robert, hand gestures are even more important because you have to distract the person looking at you from staring at your eyes or getting distracted by your eyes. Hand gestures are a way to do that. The best way to do it is to work with someone – it could be a family member and all – to make sure you’re not exaggerating your hand gestures too much.

Just like going to acting school. I know an issue I have, I have a problem thinking, “You know, this looks too outrageous when I throw my hands out saying ‘Oh my gosh!’” And I really throw my arms out. But they said that it’s fine, it looks great. It really compliments what I’m saying that you’re excited about it. Just be careful with the hand gestures that nobody’s near



you. You’ll knock them out or hit them in the face or something like that – which I’ve done a few times in my workings. Hope that answers your question, Robert.

Billy BrookshireUrban we had another question come up in the chat room here that says, “If you have weak eye muscles, how do you concentrate on keeping them open when you’re talking?”

Urban MiyaresThat’s a problem I have, especially when I’m tired. My eyelids close and I can’t blink my eyelids, flutter my eyes. It’s a thing. I just practice on it. I raise my eyebrow and all. You’ll have to figure that out yourself as best you can. If your eyes are constantly closed, see if there’s a way – if it’s not a medical reason they’re closed. It’s just weakened muscles because you’re not using your eyelids and I just force myself to do it so it’s going to be on a personal basis.

See what you could do about it. Let Billy and me know and if there’s anybody else who could help you. Mention it to your doctor the next time you go to an eye doctor. Maybe they have an exercise or something. But again, if there’s a medical reason why you can’t – you might not have eyelids, as an example – that’s something to work it out. Just like,



possibly, wearing light shade sunglasses if you don’t have light sensitivity or a definite need to wear sunglasses that are dark.

That’s another thing, too: if you’re totally blind or light doesn’t bother you, wearing dark sunglasses really is a distraction in business. They trust people by looking into eyes. A business person will trust another one. I get a lot of people – and I catch it right away when they’re talking with me – they don’t want to stare at me so they turn their head from left to right when they’re talking. And, of course, we could hear their voice going left and right. When someone does that to me I generally have distrust for them. Some people have difficulty in talking to somebody and looking at them straight.

If you happen to have one of the autism spectrums, this might be an issue with you – in addition to your sight loss – and I understand that that is something you’re going to have to work on in business and it’s quite difficult for you because of the other medical condition you have other than sight loss.

CallerOne thing that I’ve found as a problem is hair, makeup and dress style is different people’s likes and dislikes play into that. So it gets kind of hard to decide what really looks good on me or what is somebody



else’s opinion because I’ve gotten so many different opinions it’s just been wild.

Urban MiyaresI do workshops on dress. It’s called Public Relations: Your Public Relations is Showing. It’s a behavior / personality profile. I can’t remember if we’ve done that on a seminar with you, Billy, or not but we should look at doing it in the future. Generally, you dress towards the audience you’re going and what you’re doing.

As an example, if we were in an auditorium today speaking and I was doing a workshop to you, even though you couldn’t see I would dress up in Expresser Driver mode. In other words, the colors I would wear would be more in the Expresser than Driver. So you’d see a lot of bright colors. Probably a pink shirt – which is a likeable shirt, an amiable shirt. On that, I wouldn’t dress in an Analytical – if we were talking about how to start a home based business – I wouldn’t wear the dark black suit or the browns or anything. We cover this in our workshops and I’m sure we’ll be covering this at Hadley. This is a critical aspect on how to dress in business and for us with sight loss it’s even more important how we dress.

I’ve mentioned this a number of times – and I’m sure some of you have heard this – when I fly in airplanes (my seeing eye dog and myself will do at least



100,000 miles a year)… We just came back from a round of speaking engagements around the country. How I dress on an airplane – where others would maybe wear shorts or blue jeans and a pullover tee shirt or something casual – I dress in a sports jacket, generally, and dress pants and shined shoes. Because I look at it – I’m a business person and I am representing everybody who’s blind out there. I get more comments about that and I often get upgraded just because of my appearance rather than because there’s an empty seat in first class.

Probably 50-60% of the time that I fly – and you’re talking 100,000 miles on a lot of planes per year – more than half the time I get first class. So it’s quite – it helps quite a bit. I’ve actually done business on planes. I just came back from Portland, Oregon – and for those of you who are out there in Oregon, I don’t know – yesterday I was in Portland. I flew out in the morning and on the plane was a gentleman whose brother-in-law wound up owning the Centurion or something like that. It’s a state of Washington newspaper – they sent a reporter and photographer down from Vancouver to cover my appointment yesterday in Portland, Oregon.

And I believe I’ll be in the paper today or tomorrow. Plus they did a video for their online website about what I do. That all came about because of my



appearance and dress. So, again, colors are not based on what you like or what other people think you look good in. It’s based on who you’re speaking to and this completely violates that Dress for Success and all that.

And, again, it’s a workshop that we’ll be doing called Personality Profiles where you learn about the four main personality traits and how to dress for any meeting, presentation and all. As a matter of fact, when you go for a job interview, how should you dress? And what days do you wear? A little tip: women wear red on Fridays more than any other day of the week.

Billy BrookshireUrban, we’ve got another question up here and a comment from Jen that I wanted to bring up. She asks, “Should you just be up front and let people know – even if your eyes move a little – you’re still interested in what’s going on?” She also mentions a resource. She says the Braille Monitor has articles about men’s and women’s fashion called Looking Good Without Looking. So I just thought I’d bring that up. Probably might be a good resource for a lot of you folks out there. Urban, anything about being up front?



Urban MiyaresRegarding being up front – this is where the hand gestures and facial gestures come in. You have to override the movement of the eyes and if you could be animated more and all… Someone would have to describe how you look and your expression when you’re talking to me before I could do it or someone else could help you.

But if you go one notch hire on your dress, wear more bright colors so that the person who’s looking at you, their eyes are taken away somewhat from your eyes’ movements and, of course, your gestures and all, pretty soon they’ll forget about it and go on. It is an issue. I’ve been able to correct mine. I close my eyes hard and squeeze them and then open them and it seems to give my eye muscles a little relaxation and I’m able to control that left eye a little bit that way. And sometimes it does and I don’t know about it but I’ve learned pretty much how to detect it.

Regarding the article, I’m sure it’d be wonderful. Again, what I tend to do and instruct others to do is dress for the audience not what you or others think you look good in. You might look good in something but it might not be appropriate for the environment or the purpose that you’re going to that next meeting, appointment, presentation or social event. Or the



impression you’re trying to make on people. Sometimes we have to downplay our dress.

I just went to a 50th Junior High School Reunion in New York City – what was that? – three weeks, four weeks ago and I downplayed who I was. Most of my classmates from fifty years ago didn’t even know I was blind and, of course, the following week I’m on the Today Show so I guess they found out then a little bit more about me. I just downplay it. Low in the weeds. I didn’t want to over impress. I just wanted to listen.

Donny, who lives in Houston, said, “Boy, Urban, you’re not talking much. You okay?” I said, “I’m fine. I’m having a great time.” I just listened to everybody else’s stories. And if you know a little bit about my background, I could have jumped in right way and I never said anything. Any resource you can is good but, again, you dress towards the purpose that you’re dressing.

CallerWhat about the issue of disclosure when you are talking to a prospect on the phone? Do you tell them that you’re blind or not? Do you wait – if you meet them and shock them that could have serious consequences. So to disclose or not to disclose? That is the question.



Urban MiyaresWear the emperor’s clothes. I don’t tell people I’m blind. When I received Inc Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year a number of years ago, they didn’t know I was a blind business owner until I went onstage to get my award. I tend not to do it. Your product and service would have something to do with it. If you’re doing assistive technology training for the disabled or the blind or selling prosthetics for the blind, letting a client who’s also visually impaired know that you, too, are blind gives credibility. That’s a marketing thing. So it’s more of a personal thing. I tend never to mention I’m blind.

As a matter of fact, a number of years ago Michigan referred a client from Voc Rehab. Michigan Voc Rehab referred someone to me and they went back to their counselor. This gentleman was low vision, losing his sight, macular degeneration, in his fifties, late fifties and he complained that I was insensitive to the blind by how I was treating him. He never knew I was blind. When he found out who I was he left Voc Rehab. Never heard from this gentleman again and dropped his claim against me.

This is something to look at but I don’t like using any disability I have. It just happens I’m blind. To me, it’s an advantage in business and we’ll cover that in another workshop about how to use your blindness as



a source of competitive advantage in business. I hope that answers your question.

Let’s go on to the other topic because we’re getting into more personality and profiles and characteristics that need to be – I don’t want to take up this whole time with the workshop just on this area. We’ll cover that later with Hadley – more on soft skills and the training on how to do that. So let’s move on quickly. The next thing I want to tell you about is the three basic types of businesses, home based businesses.

The three basic types are the business that is done exclusively from the home. In other words, you never leave the home for any reason. You could do everything from the home. The second type of business is where you work basically from the home, however, you leave the home to either do sales, go to trade shows, do marketing or something in that area. Then the third type of business is the business where the home is only a temporary location until you can prove that your product or service is going to make it and then you’re going to move that out of the home. In other words, the whole goal is to move out of the home and get a store front or an office building or something like that.

Of the three types of businesses the most profitable one is the third one, where the home is only a



temporary location. Businesses like Federal Express, Apple Computer, Microsoft. They all started as that, “One of these days when this product’s going to make it, we’re going to move out of the home.” The second type where the home is the base camp and you’re out of the home to do other things… That’s what a lot of people – whether they’re in the import / export business, consulting, even accounting.

The first type of business where everything’s done exclusively from the home, those businesses which tend to do well in this arena (and there are very few of them), are those who have professional services – the customer comes to your home, such as the tax preparer or accounting. And, yes, there are tax preparers who are totally blind around the country. There’s a lot of funny stories about but I won’t get into that area. Such as the lady that has the 11th Hour Accounting. She only handles clients who are in trouble with the IRS because once they find out she’s totally blind, they really get scared. But once the IRS is knocking on your door, you just want someone to take care of your problem – you don’t care who it is. So that’s when she developed her business: 11th Hour Accounting.

So those are the three basic types of businesses. Know the basic parameters so that if you now are in a home based business or plan to go into a home



based business see which one of those three types of businesses you really want. Because dependent on that, it’ll tell you which type of business would be best for you.

Now before you even get into business, an area that you really have to look at is your personal assets and resources. I see too many people come up with a business, a home based business or elsewhere, because it sounds like a good idea. It’s something they want to do and they get into it and then the next question is, “Where do I get the money to buy the computers because I want to go into web design?” I know we have one or two people out there who are in web design and that might not be the best business for you. And then it might be the best business for you, I don’t know.

But you first have to take a personal accounting of your assets and resources. Where do you live? Can you conduct business from where you live and what kind of businesses can you conduct from where you live? If a business is loud – you know, there’s communities where you’re not even allowed to conduct a business from that community. Or if you’re renting an apartment – what was that? – Section 8 housing or Section 7 housing, I don’t believe they allow home based businesses there.



So you have to be very careful on making sure that you’re going to be compliant with all your codes and all. Generally you can’t do any food products from the home and sell them retail – whether they’re food for animals or humans – such as doing a catering business cooking at home and then selling it. You need to cook from a kitchen. In many communities you can’t even do a gift basket from the home if there are food products in there you brought off the store shelf – even if they’re jarred and contained because you need a special health code permit and you can’t get one for a home based business.

Now you might live in a community where no one comes around and checks or no one says anything. That’s fine. But you’ll be that type 1 or type 2 type of business earlier I mentioned where you’re just going to sell from the home and maybe to a couple local businesses. Because if there is a legal action against that business for selling your product or, for you, legal action might even be worse if you’re in violation of a health code or a zoning ordinance in your area. I know those up in Canada and other parts of the world, they don’t have to worry about this but in the United States, I think we have more attorneys per population than any other country. So it’s something that we have to always be concerned about.



But what are your other resources? Do you have acreage there? Don’t forget ranchers and farmers. They work from the home, too. Where’s their house? On the ranch or on the farm. The largest business in the world is a home based business. It’s called the White House. The president works from his home and runs this country. Yes, he goes outside. He’s the type 2 type of business that his base camp is his home but he does most of his business outside of the home – whether it’s in Congress or somewhere on The Hill.

So, you’ve got to be very careful and make sure you collect all your resources. Do you have any extra space? Are you a collector of things? Maybe your resource is swap meets and eBay and Craigslist and selling stuff online or opening up a thrift store of some sort in that area. Do garage sales. Be careful in your community, also, about doing garage sales.

Where I live in San Diego, you’re not allowed to do more than four garage sales a year from your residence. Does anybody check on it? No. But if they wanted to you could get into trouble. If you’re making products from the home such as dog biscuits, remember that’s a health food for an animal. So be careful about that.

What about your heritage, your background? Does that have any possibilities to use that for a business



or a marketing advantage? Do you know people in other countries and who do they know? Are any of them in manufacturing or working for a manufacturer or supplier of raw materials or products? You’d become an importer/exporter and over 90% of all the people in the import/export business in the United States work out of their home.

There are so many resources that you have. What about who you live with – your spouse, family members? Who do they know and what resources do they have that’s available to you to have? What do people do for a living? What have they done for a living – your friends, your neighbors? You’ve got to do that.

Hadley has a course right now, if you’ve taken the entrepreneur course and in that there’s a section… The course says How to Start With a Minimal Investment – your business. It goes over your assets and your resources on that. Again, who you know is so critical. They may have access to resources.

Your spouse might have the better business idea than you do. The more personal assets and resources you can apply to your home based business, the greater the success it should because it’ll take you less money and you’ll be able to start much quicker. I’ll take a quick break from there because we covered



two items: your assets and resources and I forgot the other item, it was so long ago.

CallerUrban, I was wondering, I’m looking into taking medical transcription. It’s through a community college but the course is based on a U.S. course called Career Stop and they’re telling me that I can do the medical transcription from home and I should do fine at that being completely blind. So I’m just wondering have you heard of this and is that maybe a possibility? I wouldn’t be leaving the home at any point because everything would be done over the computer. I’m just wondering if this is something that you’ve heard of. Apparently, it’s quite big in the U.S. I don’t know about up here but I know in the U.S. it is.

Urban MiyaresMedical transcribing is big business in the United States and this is the business that’s really close to a number two type of business where you leave the home occasionally. There are some people who do medical transcribing strictly from the home, never leaving their home, as an extra source of income.

The average number of doctors, depending on the profession that you have, there’s seven to 10 doctors that could support one person with a good income earning level. Once you get above seven doctors you



really start needing to look for other people to help you with it. With many doctors now tape recording their clients’ records, it’s a very valuable business doing very well. The rates change around the country where you are but, again, have the base.

We have a number of people – some who are blind – who do this business and they add a newsletter on their service so that they sell their doctors a generic newsletter once a month that they then mail to their clients or give it at their office. Sort of a physician’s newsletter and they get their stories from searching the internet and blogs and things like that. So it’s something to do. Certain professions are higher paying or have more need for medical transcribing than others but you need to take a general inventory. I like the medical transcribing business – if your resources and assets and your hard skills accommodate it.

One of the things about home based businesses is you need that certain personality to be in a home based business. The workshop I’m doing, I believe it’s in Chicago, in October I called that Mind Your Ps and Qs. Ps and Qs is the first letter of a number of words and personality is one of the Ps. You need that personality to handle it. It’s deadlines you’ll be under.



You may get inundated with paperwork or things, reports you have to do – don’t get yourself sick over something. If you enjoy doing things like that, fine. You’ve got to decide if you’re doing it for an income, if you’re doing it for a career or if you’re doing it because you’ve got a passion for it.

And if it’s just to make an income, I would say, “Yes, start with the medical transcribing but look at that point that you’re going to hire others to do the work and you’ll just do the marketing by use of phone and email and do it.” One of the things we have being blind is those soft skills and the ability to manage others. We really don’t have to do all the physical work unless we really want to do it and it’s a passion for us.

Just be very careful with it on that thing. The other thing is passion is very important in running a business. You have to be well organized in the home – especially in the home. It’s okay when you’re not doing much business but when you get swamped with business… My secretary is on vacation now. My desk at home is a nightmare here. Good thing I’m blind and can’t see it. Otherwise it would upset me. I’m not organized at all. We’re going to have to shut down for a week or two just to get everything organized and filed again.



You have to have great time management. You have to make sure that those around you – not only in your home but neighbors – realize that you’re going to conduct business. You have to be very disciplined. Be able to set aside, “From 9:00 am until 5:00 pm Monday through Friday, I’m working my business – no exceptions.” So that when your neighbor comes over to borrow that cup of sugar or someone asks if you could watch their pet or their child because they have to run to the store, you have to let these friends and all know that under no uncertain terms as soon as they ask you to do something, they’re taking money out of your pocket. You have to be that hard and that’s part of your personality and your soft skills.

If you’re just an easy person, want to be everybody’s friend, very amiable and all and you hate to tell your friends that, you’re going to have to change if you want a successful business. Otherwise, you’re going to be the babysitter for everybody in the neighborhood before you know it – especially if you live in an apartment or in a community where there’s track homes (one home right next to the other). So outside influence will distract you.

One of the secrets of being successful in any business (whether home based business or not): do what you hate to do first. Make that list of things you hate to do. I hate to do accounting. I hate to do legal



things. Certain people I don’t want to call back. But if I have to do that, I try to get that done as the first thing I do that day.

Otherwise it just builds and builds. Successful people do the things that before they hated to do. You’re going to find that out when you’re in business. If you’re only going to do what you like to do, you’re in the exact position you’ll always be in. So with that I’ll take another break for calls.

CallerWho do you find out from – because I was thinking about the dog biscuit business – so that I don’t get into trouble?

Urban MiyaresLet me tell you a little bit about the dog food business – especially if you’re making the dog food. You need Food and Drug Administration approval (FDA). You’re dealing with a product that deals with the health, welfare, care, appearance of an animal and that’s Food and Drug Administration and your product might only be a Class 1 – which just requires filing. But under a Class 1, where the product is put together has to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

And often on a food product it requires someone who has a health permit or can cook items. We have a lot of people using peanut, as an example, and adding



ingredients to peanut butter to make dog biscuits because that tends to be a good flavor that dogs like, as one example. You’ve got to be very careful. So the first place you would need is to get in touch with the FDA, and that would be online: www.FDA.gov – Food and Drug Administration and there it will have a place about registering your product and information about it.

Next you have to find a place where you could make the product and maybe you have a church or something that has a kitchen and you could use that as the place to have the product made or you borrow their kitchen. Find someone that has a permit in your community. Again, in many rural areas you may not find that or even anyone that goes around and checks those permits.

But if your plans are to sell the product to stores, they’re going to want product liability insurance and it’s going to come right back to you: the product liability wants to know where the product’s made – the insurance underwriter. So there’s the whole chain of events that has to come up. Even with the simplest of the food products.

Billy BrookshireUrban, we’ve got a lot of questions that are coming in in the chat room. This one from Yvonne who is a Life



Coach and wants to start a consulting business and have been told she needs a tax number and needs to register a name before she starts. She wants to know if this is true and how to go about it.

Urban MiyaresOkay. Hey, Billy, I hope you’re ready. This isn’t going to end until 5:00 pm tonight. I hope you’re ready. First of all there’s two things: (1) you have to file and get what’s called a Fictitious Name and if you use your surname and your business name you do not have to file for a fictitious business name. You still have to file for your local business license on that.

Then what they’ll do is come out and you’ll probably – if you have a property tax business they’ll assess your business on your assets and tax you yearly. Not all states in the United States have a business property tax. To get the Federal ID, it’s an SS4: Sam, Sam or Social Security 4. SS4 Form and just go to: www.IRS.gov and on the upper left hand corner, it’ll say Forms. Just type in SS4 (no spaces) and you’ll get a sample form and you’ll file it.

What it is is an Employer Identification Number – also known as an EIN. There’s no fee on that. You send it in, come back, put down zero employees – just letting you know to start out with because you’re just starting out – and they’ll send you a number. And that just



basically gives the IRS notice that you are in business and you can see why a lot of people don’t register their businesses.

They don’t even know about this. And you’ll get a tax form every year and based on your sales and all – if it’s over $600 – you’ll have to submit a tax return to the IRS or include it on your personal tax return a Schedule C on that if you’re not going to put it under Other Income like I said earlier with the garage sales on your 1040, which I believe is Line 13 on that one. So that’s basically it. You need your permits and all, and that’s critical: that you make sure you’re allowed to do what you’re going to do.

By the way, coaching and consulting is a big business and just to quickly let you know what the difference is between a coach and a consultant: a coach works with the person, a consultant works with the business. So if you’re a coach, you would ask a person in business – an example, “What do you want to do? How is it best for you to do this direction in business?” As a consultant, instead you would come in and say, “This is what your business needs to do.” So I just try to draw a line between a coach and a consultant so you don’t get them confused. Seldom can you be both a coach and a consultant.



Billy BrookshireUrban, we had a little note come in here from Greg. He says to get an FEIN. Call 1 (800) 829-4933 and they’ll take your SS4 by phone – which is a nice service. Again, that’s 1 (800) 829-4933. Urban since we’ve been taking questions I’m just going to forego the question and answer session today and let people keep asking as they want to.

A couple of things have come up – one in the chat room. It says, “What if you’ve got no other assets but Social Security Disability Insurance?” And also, if you wouldn’t mind addressing – I know people get a lot of these scams that come across their computers and by phone and other ways for people to start up businesses. How do you recognize scams? And the other one, “What if you have no money but SSDI? How do you get started?”

Urban MiyaresOkay. We’ve got three questions here, Billy. Let me start with the first one: and that’s if you have no assets and resources. You might have many more assets than resources. If you had no assets or resources that means that everybody around you has died and you never went to school and you never said hello to anybody. You live on an island with nobody else and even if that was the case, you’d still have



assets: the island. Where do you live? Where have you gone to school?

These are all valuable assets that may be used in the business. Usually you do this – and I work with people on this area, when they say, “What kind of home based business should I go into?” We go in depth into their assets and resources. So the assets and resources you have may not be yours personally but someone else you have.

Example, we had a lady in Texas, in the Panhandle of Texas and she didn’t know what she wanted to do but she had an acre of land in her back. The Department of Agriculture came in and assessed her land and told her what type of crops she could grow. She wound up doing the herb farm.

She also wants to do flowers. I didn’t recommend she do flowers. She set up a greenhouse so she could do it year-round. That was more of a hobby side of the business – well, that side of the business was losing money but the herb farm is doing great. She sells basil and thyme and – I forgot what other product she does – sells them to local restaurants and all. And that was just a little something and she probably makes the average…



By the way, the average herb and miniature vegetable garden will – every ten foot by ten foot plot, only 100 square feet, should generate $5,000 a year in gross sales. So just imagine ten feet by ten feet if you had a little farm. We have a lady in New York with mental illness who, on her apartment balcony, earns about $12,000 a year. She grow herbs on there year-round and sells it local restaurants in New York City. So your resources really are there.

Next thing is scam: be careful for scams. I like to use the $150 – anybody who wants $150 up front then you walk away, $150 or more. Make sure you check on these businesses that are coming and see if there’s anything by your Better Business Bureau. Even your Attorney General. You could get a toll free number where you live of your Attorney General if there’s an office out there to check on any company.

And if they have no record of it, be careful. Don’t listen to the sales talk about them. Everything from inventors – “We’ll get your product patented” – and all that to home based businesses licking stamps. If some of you have ever tried it, you know what I’m talking about. In most cases you’re lucky if you even get your money back on these types of investments. They’ll always come up with a success story and you’ve got to play the numbers – not one success in



10,000 but maybe one out of 2, one out of 3 success stories before you go.

But if there’s minimal investment, money back guarantee – and be careful on money back guarantees. Remember, a money back guarantee is only as good as the company. I love to tell the story about my wife. She joined this health club. They had a special on a Lifetime Program: Membership Only Once.

Well, the company went out of business. They didn’t say whose life it was on. So we lost out on that – it was this Health Club Life Membership Program. They seemed nice. They were wonderful people but they didn’t last long in business so that guarantee or warranty they promised was not there.

If you have no money. That’s what’s great about a home based business because you could start out as a hobby. And there’s three types of home based businesses you could do: you could do a hobby and then when you make money that’s when you convert it into a business. And, by the way, if you have a hobby we’re now in the month of, we’re going into September.

Oh my goodness, September’s here already. If you started it as a hobby right now and by October or



November or December – that’s why I said if you… Items for the Christmas holidays, as an example, and you start making money, you could back date that hobby to the day you did your first sale. So as long as you’re in that calendar year, you’d be fine as a sole proprietor.

The next type of business – other than the hobby – is if you open up a business. Whether it be a sole proprietor, a partnership, a corporation, an LLC, a LLP (for Limited Liability professional type of business). Each one of these has different benefits and disadvantages. You need to analyze it and that’s based on your business.

And then the third type of organizational structure is starting a non profit. You can start a public charity within your home. No one says you can’t. And you file with your state first, then federal and that might be a wonderful way. Almost 10% of all the people employed in America work for a non profit. We’ve had many people start non profits from their home – people with disabilities. Eventually they get into a store front and now they’re employed by their own non profit that they started maybe five, 10 or 20 years ago. So those are the three types of areas.

So starting a business with no money – start out slow. Make sure you’ve got the right business and we do



business evaluations. We cover that in the Hadley School, the program with the Risk Management Associates book and how to do a quick business evaluation on any business. And you need to know about NAICS numbers and all that. We can get you the financials, the tax returns of almost any business in the United States last year.

It’s that easy and it’s a resource that’s too expensive for you to go out and purchase right away, however, you just let us know at Hadley and we’ll get you the numbers. I just had a lady who took the first segment of the course, finishing her business plan in product sales, direct sales. She might be listening here. I didn’t check the names. If she’s online please jump in and let everybody know about the numbers I sent you.

Billy BrookshireUrban, we’re almost out of time here but there are a couple of questions in the chat room that have been asked multiple times. So I’d like to address those before we sign off. The first one is from Cheryl. Cheryl is a mom from home, has kids with medical issues. She’s trying to figure out what kind of job would be good for her and wonders if you have any suggestions.



And the other one is from Robert and he was thinking about the three types of businesses you talked about – either operated exclusively from the home or home is based or it’s operated temporarily from the home. He’s wondering how do you decide which one is the best. So, two questions: one is what’s good for a mom? and the second one is how do you determine which of the three business types is best for you?

Urban MiyaresGreat questions. Hey mom, you got a resource: those are your kids. You know Barney? It started out in Texas – at Fort Worth, Texas. That was two moms who had kids in school and came up with Barney the purple dinosaur, I believe – or something like that. That’s a resource for you.

What do you like to do with the kids? If you like to play with them a lot maybe you could come up with a game, a form of educational tool, become a writer or something of that nature. By the way, writing is a profession – if you have a talent for writing, there’s a big market for that right now. Especially with all the blogs and all that, and you can do that online – marketing your blogs in that area.

So as a mom with children and disabilities, your time is very limited. It’s often uncontrolled. Organization is based on the kids. So you need to get in something



that gives you the flexibility to get around, and also develop extra income for you or for your kids. And you can employ the kids as long as they can do something gainful in the work. I don’t know how old the kids are but if they can push a broom or empty the wastebasket in the office and all that, you can pay them what you would pay someone else to come in to do that.

And that’s another business tax advantage. That’s the great thing about home based businesses is the tax advantages, if you wanted to use them. Again, you’re not forced to use them. But if you see yourself paying taxes for anything, it’s very possible your home based business could offset both personal taxes or other taxes that might be imposed upon you.

The second question was related to – I’m trying to remember what the second question was. It was, oh, the three types of businesses. Generally you choose the type of business you’re going to go into on the three types.

The other way of doing it if you’re in business already, you need to decide right up front which one of the three types of businesses would it be. Would it be a business that you can do exclusively from the home? Chances are you’re not going to earn very much



money. You’d possibly earn enough for personal living expenses, if you’re lucky.

Or it’d be one that you want to earn more money, possibly even get off Social Security or other benefits that you’re on and earn a substantial living amount of income – to me, that would be at least $100,000 a year? Or is it a business you want to grow into a multi? When you go into business planning, again, another workshop will be done with Hadley, how do you plan your goal?

In marketing, it’s critical. That’s what it is. One of the things in marketing is to say, “Where do you want your business in three, 5 and 10 years from now?” The way you’re conducting business now will help you reach those goals and that’s one way to identify which one of the three is the best type of business to structure your business as. Hope that helps.

Billy BrookshireUrban, this has been wonderful and I hate to call a quit to it because it seems like we never have time enough to get to all the questions or to get to all the great wealth of information you have. Folks, you need to know that Urban is going to be a consultant to Hadley over the long haul here so he’ll be around to answer more of your questions and be helpful to the



new Forsythe Center for Entrepreneurship that’s coming around the bend.

I appreciate all you folks coming today and those of you who want continuing education credit, again, stay with me. I’ll have some more of that at the end. For all of you, I just want to remind you that this seminar – just like all seminars – is archived and you can find those on the Hadley web page. They’re under Access Pass Seminars. It’ll bring up the whole list and you can check out any of them you want to anytime – download them or listen to them real time.

Related Hadley courses. Folks, Hadley’s got several courses related to self-employment that you might want to check out amongst those archived seminars. One’s called Self-Employment and Working from the Home – a little bit different than the one we did today. Another one is called Successful Business Ownership and the third is the last one that Urban did. It’s called Self-Employment: Practice Before You Jump In. All excellent webinars. By all means, check them out.

For courses, what you might want to check out: there’s a brand new course, a wonderful course that was just added back in January called Self-Employment with Minimal Investment. Great course. Free for everybody right now so by all means, check it out.



The primary thing to remember is that just around the corner at the Forsythe Center for Entrepreneurship is going to be opening wide and there are going to be lots more courses like Self-Employment with Minimal Investment. Urban will be a consultant for some of those.

Our manager of the Forsythe Center is here with us today – Tom Babinski. In fact he’s going to present, September the 14th at 2:00 pm on the Forsythe Center so he can get some idea of what it is and how to use it. So please tune in for that one also, if you’d like to.

I’m going to go ahead, folks, and send my last polling question and then I’m going to talk to you a little bit about continuing ed credit. So for all of you who need continuing ed credit, let’s talk about these things and here we go.

If you want to earn continuing education hours, you’re going to need a separate registration payment process and that link’s going to be in the section called Earn Continuing Education Hours on the Seminar page. Instruction on how to log into the quiz will be provided by email once your registration’s been completed. When a seminar is passed you can access that information in a list of approved of seminars for continuing education hours by going to



the Past Seminars page or Access Pass Seminar that links off Hadley’s website.

Give it about 48 hours to archive the recordings to be available and then you’ll be in. It won’t affect your registration process for CE hours. The quiz is going to be open in about fifteen minutes for those of you who would like to go ahead and take it for continuing education credit.

You get two tries per registration and you have to achieve a passing grad of 70% or more. If you don’t achieve that or if you fail twice then you’ll have to re-register and pay again. So, by all means, get them right, folks. You have seven days from the first failed attempt to try again. Once you pass it, your certificate’s going to be issued electronically right after you do a survey and evaluation. The system will provide access to you within seven days of successful completion so you can view, save or reprint the certificate.

Okay, folks, I want to turn the microphone back just briefly to Urban. Urban, do you have any closing remarks for the folks today?

Urban MiyaresWell, thank you, Bill and thank you everybody. And Billy I just wanted to tell you, you have a tremendous



resource in that voice. Have you ever thought about starting a home based business as a radio announcer from your home?

Billy BrookshireYou’re good. You’re good. I know you just want to do more seminars. I get it. Thanks, Urban. No. But, as always, you were absolutely just wonderful today. I know I enjoyed it greatly just as the rest of the folks here. Getting lots of appreciative comments here in the chat room.

Folks, one last thing and then I will say, “Thanks and goodbye.” If you have any issues that you need to reconcile either with technology or whatever, Hadley has a Help Desk. All you have to do if you have a tech problem is to write: [email protected] and they’ll help you out with that the best they can. If you need general information, if you want to provide some general information, you get it at [email protected] .

I think that’s it for us, folks. We’ve enjoyed being with you today. Please come back anytime. Give us comments on this webinar, if you have them, at [email protected]. If you have further suggestions for others, we’d love to hear those too.

Thanks again, folks. Take care of yourselves. Have a great day. We’re glad you joined us. Bye-bye.


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