Millions of people dream about being self employed with a business they create and own for themselves.

The desire to be your own boss and to have the blissful freedom to set your own hours is a powerful force for just about anyone.

But what most often bursts the bubble of those who dream of self-determined financial independence are the immediate road blocks that present themselves. The most common barriers are:

* The need to find a business that can support you as well or better as your current job.

* The need to find a business in a field that is not already crowded with competition.

* The need to find a business that can be done anywhere in the country, namely, where you live.

That's why we went searching for a kind of business that leapfrogs all of the above, and which just about anyone can start right away with little or no star-up cash, and do it no matter where they live or what their level of skill or education.

It was the brilliant scientist Albert Einstein who once said: "It takes a genius to see the obvious."

That axiom is true for the job of being a Finder. This is a concept for making big self-employment money which is incredibly simple and lucrative, but perhaps so simple that most have overlooked it because it is so obvious.

Ask any marketing expert about the best way to make money in America, and he or she will tell you to isolate a problem or need, and then find a way to solve that problem or fulfill that need.

A problem and need which millions of people have is that they need to find something. Millions of people need to find the perfect apartment. Millions are looking for the perfect spouse or mate. Millions of people are looking for a roommate. Millions of people are looking for more clients to build their businesses. Millions of people are looking for special items, like rare books, antiques, classic automobiles, baseball cards, famous signatures, the best trout streams in America, the best restaurants in New York - the list is absolutely without limit.

The bottom line is this: You can help people find what they need, and they will pay you for it. You can start your own business as a professional finder, and never be without clients, cash flow or financial security ever again.

Whether you decide to be a finder of husbands for lonely women, or rare beer cans for collectors, the fundamentals of being a finder are generally the same. First, let's look at two examples of successful finding businesses, and then go on to a more general discussion of how to set up a finding business.

Thousands of people are in love with automobiles, especially classic models. You can tap into this trade instantly with a few small classified ads in auto magazines, and also in general upscale magazines with a wealthy subscribers list.

You ad could simply say: "We find rare and classic automobiles. For fast, experienced service call: 555-5555."

When you ad breaks, you'll start getting calls. To each person who inquires, send a single sheet of paper which outlines your fees, and perhaps a business card. You need nothing more elaborate than that. Ask for a minimum of $100 to $500 per search. You can get from $2,500 to $5,000 if you score a find on a rare model.

As a rule, you can claim from 5 to 10 percent commission on the car you find. For example, a stainless steel Delorian prices at $20,000 will net you $2,000 if you match up an owner with a buyer.

To be successful, you'll spend time developing something few other people have - the inside track on where all the rare, classic and high demand automobiles are. If you are a car nut, this task will be a shear pleasure for you. It means a lot of time poring over specialty car journals, attending trade shows, and getting to know dealers and even manufacturers.

Sometimes you can double your money on each transaction by collecting from both buyer and seller. Why not? You'll be doing each of them a service, and most will be happy to pay a middleman to get what they want.

It's a fact of life that rental increases continue to out-pace wage increases, especially in large cities like New York and Los Angeles. Add to that the fact that many apartment complexes are being converted into expensive condominiums and you have a problem for millions of people who just need an affordable place to live.

While it may difficult to find cheap housing for people in this housing climate, you can save people thousands of dollars by finding them a roommate to share the rent.

Start out with ads in your local newspaper. They should be short, direct and simple: Save thousands on rent! We'll find you the perfect roommate! Call: 555-5555. When calls start coming in, ask for a $25 registration fee to get your cash-flow started right away.

Take a polaroid snapshot of each client. Have each person fill out a form indicating the kind of roommate they can live with, that is, smoker/nonsmoker, male/female, drinker/nondrinker, age category, and so on.

Before long you will amass a large file of people looking for a roommate. Your job, then is to match up your clients with the kind of people they have indicated they can live with. When you make a match, charge an additional fee of 10 to 15 percent of their first month's rent.

If you sign up just 200 people a month, you are already earning $5,000 a month. With the fee you get from each successful roommate match made, your income will easily double. Can you earn $100,000 a year with a roommate finding service? Absolutely! Furthermore, anyone can do it, it takes no special education or skill, just a sense of organization, good people skills and persistent advertising.

Now, you may know nothing about cars, and perhaps you do lot live in a major urban area where rent is high and roommates are in high demand. In that case, the above two examples do you little good.

But the job of finding is not limited to cars and roommates. You can become a finder for just about anything, Consider:

* Finding new clients for professionals, especially dentists, doctors and lawyers. Professionals compete heavily for clients in each specific region. If you can help your local doctor increase his patient load, you can collect a fee for each patient found.

* Finding antiques and collectibles for collectors. Need we say more about this. Some people will pay top dollar for a rare beer can, an oil lamp or rare comic books. Pick a collectible category and start finding!

* Finding rare coins and currency. The fact is, one of the hottest businesses in America is coin and currency collecting. It's called numismatics. Today, there are thousands of full-time numismatics professionals whose sole purpose is to buy, sell and trade coins every day. If you can help these folks find the items of currency they want, you'll cash in every time.

* Finding items of historical interest for large corporations. A Michigan man recently spotted a car company ad in a rare old magazine dated 1890. He sent a copy to the auto giant's headquarters, and soon received an offer of several hundred dollars for the original magazine. This is not limited to magazine ads. Anything you can find - from an old plow to cigar boxes - may be worth a lot of money to the corporations who produced the products years ago. Such items are valuable for public relations and advertising purposes, as well as office and lobby decorations.

* Finding used and rare books. Many people make a lucrative full-time living by finding books that are either out-of-print or hard to find. Take out classified ads in literary and writer's magazines, and you'll soon get requests for books that people want you to find.

* Finding second or third mortgages for people who need money. Many people take out second, third even fourth mortgages on their homes. You can start a service in which you act as an agent between lending institutions and the people who need loans. Take out a classified ad that says: "Need a second mortgage? We can help! Call 555-5555." You'll soon get calls and you'll soon be in business. You can collect 5 to 10 percent on each mortgage you secure for a client.

The list is endless. You can find anything from food stuffs, to rare metals. All you need is an entity willing to pay a fee for what they need found.

You can also set up shop as a sort of "general" finding service. Run an ad that says: "We find anything for you! Call 555-5555." One kind of finding often leads to another.

Becoming a finder is something anyone can do with next to no start-up capital needed, and where your competition is likely to be nonexistent.

If you are looking for a top-notch self-employment opportunity, we urge you to consider your own finding service. You may soon find yourself self employed, financially secure and free of the bonds of you boring day job.

How many times have you heard that phrase, pitch, advertisement, or whatever? Lots, I'm sure. It is used so much because marketers know that staying home and making money is the fondest dream of millions of people.

And why not? Did you know that the majority of fatal heart attacks happen at 9 a.m. Monday morning? It's true. It seems a lot of people would rather die than get back to the old grind after a weekend of freedom.

So when someone offers an opportunity or plan for you to take your job and shove it, yet still make enough money to live and pay all your bills, it sounds blissfully irresistible.

Of course, bliss and reality are always two different things. Is it really possible to run a business from your own home that is more than a hobby or source of part-time income? Can you get rich working out of your own home? Can you really trade your cubical and necktie for blue jeans and the comfort of your own den?

Well, for your information, home-based businesses are one of the fastest growing kinds of enterprises in America today. As this is being written, some 40 million Americans are doing at least some form of work out of their homes, and the numbers are rising rapidly. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, as many as 70 million people will be working out of their homes by the year 2005. Government studies have indicated that as much as 75% of all work done in this country could eventually be moved home.

The overwhelming majority of home workers, however, are not exactly getting rich. The average work-at-home American earns less than $15,000 per year. That may not be bad as a supplement to a spouse's full-time income, but let's face it, fifteen grand in and of itself is not much better than poverty.

As master marketer and author Dr. Jeffrey Lant said: "Frankly, I never saw any benefit to staying home and being poor."

Lant, without so much as a business card, became a work-at-home millionaire, and is a perfect example of what truly can be achieved if you are serious about chucking your day job, staying home, and not settling for peanuts in exchange for your freedom. You can have it all -- you can stay home and make as much -- and more -- money than your current job provides you.

In this report, we are going to outline and discuss five key rules on how to work at home and make big bucks, no matter where you live. After these five rules, we'll talk about the most important aspect of any business, whether it be home-based or a giant factory -- cash flow. Starting your own business out of your home is all about attitude and inspiration, but all the attitude in the world won't help you without money!

Is it any secret in America that most people detest their jobs? Study after study proves that most people simply dread going to work Monday morning, and they live for the freedom of the weekend. But even that freedom is not pure because we know that it is only temporary. It's hard to enjoy a Sunday evening when the Monday morning alarm clock is just a few hours away.

It makes sense that people hate their jobs. Everyday, there is a lot of butt kissing that needs to be done. There are endless meetings which usually accomplish nothing. There are pointless interruptions, a lot of drifting this way and that, and lot of idiot supervisors who do nothing but waste your time and then dog you for not accomplishing your share of work. There are co-workers you hate, and who would stab you in the back in a minute if it meant a raise for them instead of you.

When you work for someone else, you live a regimented life. Your body may not want to get up at 7 a.m., but you have to be at work by 8 a.m. so you lurch out of bed with a head full of sleep.

People who choose to work at home are doing more than just escaping the yoke of their master; they have made a deep, firm, life-altering decision which says that health, happiness and prosperity depend vitally on the freedom to work for ourselves, and in doing so in the comfort of the home.

We want to really emphasize that fact that to be successful in a work-at-home situation, you have to be nothing less than a fanatic; a zealot, who is utterly committed to making work-at-home not only a successful venture, but a profound commitment for life. You must be convinced that a return to an outside office job would be the equivalent of a spiritual death sentence.

Many people hate their office jobs, but they have made an inner compromise with themselves. They have convinced themselves that their job is "not so bad," pays the bills, and that they can stick out because they have to.

If you want to be truly successful at quitting your day job, there cannot be any room for such compromises in your soul. You have to take the attitude that to work any longer at your hateful job is akin to fouling your inner being with a spiritual cancer the will sicken and kill you.

To move our work home, however, does not mean we eliminate every single thing about the traditional American office. Rather, we should select what is useful and what is not.

It's a mistake to quit your job and go home with a "home-office" mentality. By this we mean thinking small, and believing that you will automatically sacrifice a decent income in exchange for your freedom. Please! Do not think small!

To quote Jeffrey Lant again: "Too many home-based practitioners fail to understand the benefits that accrue because of the professional style they have selected. They focus on the "home" part of the business rather than the "business" portion, and as a result are doomed to small incomes." Working at home provides many benefits. We can save a lot of time because we don't need to commute and we have more control over our schedule. We can save a lot of costs because we don't have the overhead requirements of larger businesses. We can cut our stress -- and so have more energy -- because we avoid many of the characteristic problems of life in the late 20th-Century office. We must work these advantages to our profit.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant said that if you sit at home alone at your empty kitchen table, eventually, the "whole world will come to you."

Well, today you don't need the great mind of a philosopher to make the entire world come into your living room. What you need is a phone jack.

We live in a unique time in history. Satellites, fiber optics, the integrated circuit and other communications miracles means that you can be just about anywhere in the developed world and establish communication with anyone.

The telephone, the fax machine, the computer, the modem -- all of these are not only affordable by any middle-class citizen; they are the key to eliminating your need to drive a hectic freeway everyday to get to a place of business outside your home.

With these devices at our disposal, we should allow ourselves to "think globally." Too often, home-based businesses focus on the narrowest market, the neighborhood, the county, the city or state. This is fine if you are providing a local service and are content with a certain moderate level of income. But if you want the big bucks, you should not think small. Also, you should not believe that, just because you are home-based, you cannot compete with the big guys.

The purpose of any business is to seek assess and seek out every possible market for its products and services, to ascertain whether these markets have the ability to buy these products/services, to determine whether there is sufficient profit in these markets to warrant approaching them, and, once positive assessment has been made, to launch a sustained marketing campaign that gets a significant percentage of this market to purchase the product or service in question.

Your home telecommunications machines will not only enable you to do this, but they can also help you overwhelm larger, more cumbersome traditional businesses that are your competition.

As a home-based entrepreneur, you will not have all of the disadvantages of your more traditional competitors: no office rent, equipment or expense; no employees to pay salaries and fringe benefits for; no time wasted on meetings, employee problems, paid sick leave, etc.

All the money your competitors spend on heating the office and buying furniture could better be spent on the actual marketing itself.

As a home-based business, you will be already positioned where the traditional business is currently struggling to move: toward the lowest possible overhead and the greatest possible concentration of dollars on products/service development and product/service marketing.

So, a home-based business takes full advantage of three major goals of modern business success:

To not have the basic telecommunications toys -- computer, modem, fax, and telephones is impossibly stupid. Still, even in this day and age, many of people strongly resist the one element that is undoubtedly the heart and brain of any successful home business -- the computer. The computer is so important in fact, we have made it a category all itself.

And remember, learning to use a modern computer is easier than learning to drive a car, so you have no excuse not to plunge forward.

You should pay close attention to what computers can do for you in your plans to escape your job and make your work-at-home dreams come true.

People who want to run a home business usually have a very small staff -- in fact, a staff of one -- yourself! The rest of your needs are handled by independent contractors, depending on the kind of business you are in and the services you need.

To run a serious, truly global home business, a computer is as necessary as oxygen is to life on earth. Those who try to fool themselves into thinking they will ever make a serious go of their home-based business without a computer are sadly mistaken.

(1) They enable you to store large amounts of data and to sort by data field so that you can easily get the information you need.

(2) They enable you to develop a pattern document for every situation you'll ever be in in your business. To run a home-based business successfully, you must anticipate just what situation will emerge and prepare accordingly.

A business is based on a characteristic series of situations and a characteristic set of things that happen -- or that do not happen. You must be prepared with the proper document for each situation. Once you have established all the protocols, and have experienced all the situations associated with your kind of business, the time will come when running your business is, in large part, a repetition of certain key tasks. Computers are all about handling repetition swiftly and efficiently.

But the computer is much more. Today, by connecting a computer to the phone line with a modem, your machine becomes more than a data storage system and repetitive task handler. It becomes a multi-task, multi-level communications processing center that connects you to the globe.

Such things as e-mail, on-line services, the Internet, the Web and more can't help but revolutionize the way business is done. If you do not become a part of it today, you certainly are going to suffer for it greatly in the near future.

If there is an effective way to market products on the Internet or any other on-line venue, no one has truly discovered it yet. The only people making money on Internet marketing are the people who are selling the concept of doing it. If you have a product or a service and expect to reach millions of buyers through computer screens, you are sadly mistaken.

The Internet is definitely where a lot of innovative things are happening. It's a great place to exchange ideas, find out what hot, what's not, and stay on the cutting edge whatever your particular business is.

5. Your Business Hours

If you've been paying attention to the first four points, you're well on your way to becoming a successful home-based business owner. Now we don't want you to blow it by thinking you can keep banker's hours.

The global market is a 24-hour per day market, and a 365-day per year market. Let the others sleep late on Saturdays and take Sundays off. Those times could be your day to move and corner loads of customers that the others miss.

You should get up earlier and quit work later. You should be open for business on holidays and be available 24-hours a day either personally or through your answering service.

"But wait a minute!" you might be thinking at this point! "I thought that working at home was all about freedom and an end to drudgery. This sounds like nothing but endless work!"

Well, here's the thing. For most of you who quit your regular jobs to go to work for yourself, you'll discover something magical. You'll discover that when you are working for yourself, when you are building your own business, a lot of what you does not seem like work at all.

Running your own business is all about being inspired 24-hours-a-day. When you stop selling your body and soul to some company or corporation and start giving your energy to yourself, work has a way of turning into inspiration and play.

The perfect work for you is that which you don't think of as work, yet doing it makes money and provides you with the bread and shelter of life. You'll see what it's like if you make a true commitment to being self employed, put all your energy into it, and stick with it for the long run.

Home | Search IntoBiz | Biz Opps | Biz Info 
Advertising | How-To's | Marketing | e-Books

Did you find this site useful? Please let us know.
Email Webmaster: intobiz@att.net

Copyright © David Pierson. 2001