I now work from home and have been self-employed for around ten years. I have always wanted to be my own boss, set my own hours and be able to take holidays when ever I wanted to. Working from home seemed the perfect answer for me.

I run two small businesses, one selling cheap holidays and another offering a cost reduction strategy. For the businesses to succeed, I need to work very hard and I need to keep coming up with new ideas to keep myself motivated and to keep the business alive.

I have been given some top advice from a good friend who works for a DVD duplication company and here are some of the things that I have learned from him:

The first tip that I have is that you need to have self-discipline to make your home based business work. Each week set yourself business goals of what you want to achieve. Treat working from home like you are working in an office, do not be tempted by watching the television or by any other distraction.

Part two of the advice concentrates on our eating habits. I fell into a trap of eating a lot of snack type foods, and did not ever feel that I had the time to cook myself a meal for lunch. I soon started to put on weight and this caused me to lose some of my self-confidence.

Thirdly you are likely to experience good months and bad months, financially. It is important therefore that you start saving so that when you are having a bad period, you have the cashflow to keep the business going. It is of course of utmost importance to also have a fund to pay our annual tax bill. One of the main things that I liked about being self-employed was the fact that I only had to pay my income tax on a yearly basis. When I received my yearly tax bill it was quite a shock however and I have since started to put an amount aside each month to cover it.

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