Keep in mind I am not a lawyer, a CPA, a certified business planner, nor am I in any way, legally qualified to give you advice...

Here's a short list of other dead weight business items that coaches and consultants routinely advise business start-up clients to get done before they open their business:

• A business plan. Bull... Without a customer, a business plan is a waste of time you could better spend finding someone with money who are willing to pay money for something, right?
   

• Professional services of attorneys, accountants, etc. Why? And how are you to pay for the services when there's no cash coming in?  
  
  You don't need an attorney to tell you to get it in writing, do you? Nor do you need an accountant to explain to you how to balance a checkbook.
  
  So why waste your time and money when you're starting out with nothing?   
  
  Instead, find someone ready to spend money to solve a problem, or to fulfill a hankering!
   

• A business license. Good grief! You're going to pay money to have some public official breathing down your neck, before you've even made a buck?    
  
  So the locals find out you're running a business out of your home. Big deal. If there is a fine, it's usually small, and with any luck, you'll have customers by then.    
  
  You can register your business after you're bringing in profits.

You see where we're going with this, right? Don't fall into the common trap of thinking you not already smart enough to run a business.

You're not fooling me. I know you've been around. You've seen things and you've done things, right?

You already know how business works...

After all, you deal with businesses all day long, don't you? You know how they work. They sell you the 'stuff' you want and they make a profit when you buy stuff from them.

I'm suggesting you use the experiences from your everyday life and your natural commonsense when you're about to make business decisions.

Furthermore, I'm sure that if you can run a home, balance a checkbook, pay on a thirty year mortgage, make car payments, you can use those same basic skills to run a business.

On the other hand, if you want to take advantage of the tax breaks of owning a home business, you need to get in the habit of keeping a record of every penny spent and every dime coming it. Again, I'm not a CPA, or anything, but I'm no dummy, either.

Plus, you don't want to waste your time or your money setting up 'business' things you don't yet need. As you get customers, the proceeds from your customers can pay for the natural expansion of your business.

Speaking of your customers...

If you always concentrate on customer service, which is the 1st law of business, you will make more money by selling them additional products and services on the backend.

Here's a quick personal example of this principle in action:

Do you recall my story of how I first starting making decent money online with commissions for web hosting services, even though I knew nothing about web hosting?

I simply referred people to a hosting company I became an affiliate of: Web Hosting

A funny thing started happening...

Some of the people who got web hosting through my recommendation, me asked me about getting a good follow-up, autoresponder service. At the time I didn't know squat about autoresponders nor did I have an autoresponder service to sell.

But I thought...

I did know I was talking to someone with money who wanted an autoresponder service. In other words, I was talking to every business owner's favorite daydream... "A repeat customer!"

Soo...

I did some research and found an excellent autoresponder provider. First, I became their customer and then I joined their affiliate program at: Autoresponder Service

Naturally I told my web hosting customers about the company I was now using for my follow-up services. And some of them bought autoresponder services through my affiliate link.

Whoopee! I now had two sources of repeat income...

And repeat customers!

What I'm telling you is this: I'm no genius, and I didn't 'plan' out any of the above. I just went out and found the things people wanted, and sold them. If I can do this, perhaps you can as well.