Key Idea #1: Know Yourself. Making a business work from home takes discipline, drive, brains and more than anything, a willingness to study yourself and find the thing to do that most resonates for you personally.

Topic for Discussion: What did Greg Steckler do to re-invent himself?

Answer: He said he fell in love with computers and when that happened, he "hung up the chain saw and traded it in for a monitor and a keyboard." Greg is typical of the men and women we know who have created plenty of cash from a home-based business. They know themselves well enough to know that they can't do work they can't be excited about. We hear the word, "love" all the time. Owners say: I love my work. I love my customers. I love what I do. If you can't imagine saying that, don't even think about working from your home.

It's hard to remember when we all didn't have a personal computer but in light of history, it was just a few seconds ago that we were all doing our work without a computer. Greg knew himself and was in touch with his real feelings at the time he got his first computer. He was confident that he could migrate his construction customers to his log home plan business.

Topic for Discussion: What can you do to learn more about yourself?

Answer: Go to a career counselor or take some tests like the Johnson O'Conner or The Flanagan Aptitude Classification Test. We do not believe in the theory that any person can set their mind to any task and succeed. We believe in finding your strengths and going with them. The web site of the Johnson O'Conner Research Foundation says, "Aptitudes are natural talents, special abilities for doing, or learning to do, certain kinds of things. Manual dexterity, musical ability, spatial visualization, and memory for numbers are examples of such aptitudes. In a comprehensive battery of tests available only through the Foundation, these and many other aptitudes are measured. These measured traits are highly stable over long-term periods."

We have personal experience with the Johnson O'Conner as it helped to save our niece. She was determined to become a hairdresser because she had been styling hair since she was a child. Her father would hear nothing of it and sent her off to college where she slept through most of her classes for two years. We suggested the testing and it showed her father that his daughter has natural aptitude at working with her hands. Today she makes plenty of money, works her own hours as a hairdresser and is a wife and terrific mother to her two daughters.

There are many web sites which offer some free guidance. I just went to the University of Missouri on the web and took a test. I found out that I am doing what I am good at. I am selling, editing, writing, and teaching. I also discovered that I would be good at being a probation officer and a Rabbi. In fact, I was shocked at the list of potential occupations the test produced for me.

What do you think? Do you know yourself well enough to be confident you are spending time on the best career path? Are you in an industry where you enjoy the people? Do you have the gifts to be the best in your chosen field?

Key Idea #2: Develop Yourself Running your own business means there is no corporate training and development department helping you to work on your career ladder and encouraging you to push yourself up it. Working for yourself means you are in charge of everything, including your personal growth and development.

Topic for Discussion: Why is Brett LaSorella able to bring in big bucks from home?

Answer: Think about movie stars. They don't live at the studio. They live all over the world. They have agents working the Hollywood script world to find them parts and pitch them to producers. But the stars themselves do not have to live down the street from where the deals are made. This is the model Brett was thinking about when he set out to be able to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it from where he wants to do it. Years ago he dreamed of working from anywhere in the world and he could see in these dreams that he would have to be sought after for his unique talent in order to pull this off. He knew he had to develop his skills so that he would stand out in the crowd of software developers.

As a home-based business owner you need to be involved in your industry trade associations, you need to be reading, stretching and growing. Our mantra here at Small Business School is: Learn Today, Earn Tomorrow and Return Forever.

What do you think? What can you do to develop yourself intellectually?

Key Idea #3: Find an Energizing Place The business owners, including Bruce and me, in the rest of this episode all live and work in a high-rise condominium building in downtown San Diego.

Topic for Discussion: What is an energizing place?

Answer: With the Internet things are so different. In 1995 an energizing place might be a college town or Silicon Valley where the environment is teeming with young people and research. Now we all have every university, every museum and virtually every thought leader in the world on our desktop. This means we don't have to seek the intellectual stimulus from a physical place.

Bruce and Ron spoke about San Diego as their choice because of the beauty and the weather. Bruce is from Boston and Ron is from Kansas. Both are happy to be in a place where they don't have to deal with harsh winters or hot, steamy summers. Bud is a native of California who spent over two decades living in the center of the world, New York City. Even though Bud's California roots are Berkeley, he essentially has come home and finds it nurturing. Everyone knows that beauty, fresh air and blue skies are energizing. San Diego has it all.

All of these successful business owners told us they love being in a building where the yard work is done for them. There is a swimming pool and they don't have to clean it. There is valet parking, workout facilities, party rooms and guests suites so that visitors can have their own space. There's no need to drive a car to get things accomplished. The Post Office, office supply store, CPAs, lawyers and notaries are all within a few blocks. Then when not working, all can walk to the grocery store, 30 movie screens, 100 restaurants and the harbor to enjoy watching tall ships and pleasure boats. By living in a high-rise, home owners share the expense of taking care of the public spaces. This frees the owners from most of the headaches of home ownership. This gives these business owners more time for their work which is what they love to do.

Topic for Discussion: Other than amenities, what else can be energizing about a place?

Answer: The people! When you understand what the people around you are doing or have done, it is inspiring.

What do you think? What would an energizing place look like for you? Do you already have it? What changes could you make to your present environment to make it more stimulating? Should you look for a better place from which to work?

Key Idea #4: Develop Relationships to Disintermediate Location Greg, Brett, Bud and Ron all indicated that they have paid their dues to build important and strong relationships.

Topic for Discussion: What do we mean by the word, disintermediate.

Answer: It means to make irrelevant. There was a time when the top three concerns for any business was location, location, location. Today that is not true. While location helps a retailer, location is not enough. You must have the right products and the right people to deliver great service.

Bud has spent 40 years in the field of compensation and 24 of those years in New York City. He has built relationships which make the location of his office irrelevant. He is the best at what he does so the media call him for his insight. He is the global expert on the topic. There is no need for him to be in an office in the Wall Street area of New York City even though all of his writing is about the compensation of executives who lead publicly traded companies.

Ron said he has a manager running his properties and that relationship disintermediates the need for Ron to be in Kansas. Like Bud, Ron has worked in his field for decades. For those who are able and willing to work on relationships, the rewards are freeing. While others have to show up at a particular office building a certain number of hours per week to achieve a result, these business owners have put into place strong relationships making the need to show up in person anywhere irrelevant.

What do you think? If you would like to run a business from home, what relationships do you need to put in place? If your home-based business isn't making enough money, what relationships do you need to increase sales?

Key Idea #5: Commit to Powerful Technology Another way to say this is, you're as big as your technology is.

Topic for Discussion: What do Bruce, Bud and Ron use to get their work done?

Answer: Technology. Bruce has three workstations in his home. One is his, one is Hattie's and one is for the editor of the television show. When the editor flies into San Diego from Dallas, he sits down to the same type of equipment he has back in Dallas. Out of Bruce's home, highly sophisticated computing is done to manufacture broadcast quality television which is fed to PBS member stations! This situation would have been unthinkable even five years ago. The cost of computing has dropped so much that a two-person company like Bruce's can now afford to own what was once only owned by post production companies.

While the cost per episode for making the television show has gone down over the years, the quality has gone up. And, the dollars are going directly to the talent, in this case the editor, not to overhead for another business. In addition, Bruce has had the television show streaming video since 1999. This was visionary and this is part of the reason the program wins sponsorship dollars. Bruce talked about edge servers for the video streaming and a big server for the web site which supports the television show. In addition, a new business is being launched, cpe4cpas.com, which offers continuing education for CPAs online. This has been an enormous technology task and required huge investment and it is all being done from a home office.

Bud is connected to Bloomberg and has four computer screens on his desk. As an expert, he sells the distillation of information. With today's connectivity, Bud knows as much or more about his subject than the people who have physical offices on Wall Street.

Ron has email, a telephone and a fax machine and this is all he needs to run the real estate empire he has built over the past 30 years. This is different from Bruce and Bud. While these two spend most of their day connected to information and customers, Ron spends his time communicating with his management team. They are his eyes and ears in the physical world he built and about which he knows so much.

What do you think? What should be your next technology investment? What could you be doing if you knew more about technology? Where can you learn what you need to know?

Key Idea #6: Do It Different and Do It Better All of the owners in this episode do it different and do it better than others in their field. This is the only way to build a strong, small company.

Topic for Discussion: Why do you have to be different and better? Why not one or the other?

Answer: Doing it different will get you a customer and doing it better will keep the customer coming back. Ron started in the construction business on his own by using some unique techniques. However, when he decided to stop building and start managing his own properties, it took him four years to finish the work he had promised customers he would do. Ron believes that the word-of-mouth and goodwill he accumulated was due to his ability to listen to customers and to his desire to achieve perfection.

What do you think? How do you attract customers now? What could you do that would help you stand out in the crowd of competitors? How can you improve your product or service? If you're not a perfectionist, can you hire one to help you tweak your product or service?

Key Idea #7: Establish An Upward Spiral of Achievement This is another way of saying that you need to set growth goals that will make you stretch.

Topic for Discussion: Why is this so obvious but still hard to do?

Answer: We become content. We get in a rut that is very comfortable even though we don't fully enjoy all the parts of our lives. It seems easier to put up with the parts that aren't perfect than it would be to change. This is not the attitude held by Bruce, Bud and Ron. These men see life as a continuous series of problems to solve and they would be disappointed if they didn't have the challenge before them.

Ron said he looks carefully at his financials and sets goals every year to increase his net worth. He also said that his friends tell him he is not happy unless he has his sleeves rolled up and his mind wrapped around a project. Rest assured, you don't have to make millions running your business from home. But if you want to, follow Ron's advice.

What do you think? Where are your weak spots? What needs to be strengthened?

Key Idea #8The Lightbulb: Sell From the Inside Out The men and women you meet in this episode are knowledge workers on steroids. Or you might say, extreme intellects.

Topic for discussion: What are these people really selling?

Answer: Insight. Experience. Wisdom. We said the information revolution has become the knowledge revolution and that it is time to move on to an insight revolution and that only happens by going within. Bud said, "I do a lot of thinking." Right. Most people at work don't think too much. There's an automatic pilot mode and that is necessary in many companies. We need employees who offer services that require a pattern to be followed. We need employees who make products and in doing so follow an established set of procedures. These important jobs create order out of chaos and produce profits for businesses.

What is the life-style of most American workers today, though? Sociologists agree, Americans are frazzled. We work hard, we play hard, we spend more than we earn to build big houses. Every single person who is old enough to drive seems to have their own wheels. And, garages are so full of accumulated stuff, the cars have to be parked on the streets. This is all fine for the average person but this kind of life won't get you to the place we discover Bud, Bruce and Ron to be in. And Joel Green doesn't give a flip about going anywhere. He told us he likes nothing better than going three or four days without starting up his car.

The external stimulus so many seem to thrive on may not be the best drug for success. We suggest here that by going inside you'll discover your well of insight and this will increase your value to your employees, your customers and your family .

What do you think? What changes can you make to free yourself to spend more time thinking? Who in your organization needs more think time?

Key Idea #9: Be Obsessed With Doing Good; Doing More. The business owners we know don't need to work anymore. They have done good things, they have created value for their employees, their customers and themselves but they continue to get up and go to work everyday because they are obsessed with doing good and doing more. Bud even told us that his favorite day of the week is Monday and that he dreads Saturday and Sunday. This is because his customers, the media, don't usually work on the weekend so he doesn't have the fun of sparring with them on those days.

Topic for Discussion: Why aren't more people obsessed with doing good and doing more?

Answer: Cynicism is probably the biggest reason. Many people, and maybe even most people, might look at the world and assume that they can't make it better. Nothing they do will matter deeply to many people so why try so hard. Why not just do what has to be done to get by, then go to the golf course?

Also, most people just haven't found the work that they love so deeply they can be obsessed with it. We also think that the word, "work" has been given a bum wrap. Bruce, Bud and Ron are workaholics because there is nothing they would rather do. This is true. Bud said he has never considered retiring and, "To me it's the worst thing in the world to have a job that you really don't like, because it takes so much of your time. You ruin your whole life. But if you have a job you like, I don't think you ever want to get rid of it. What else is there to do?"

Work is such a good thing and so healthy that many people's health starts to fail when they retire. You may argue that this is natural because people are older when they retire and health does deteriorate with age. There is plenty of science on this topic but we want to simply say that working is good for your health and people who love their work are actually afraid to give it up. They don't even want to think about live without goals and deadlines and pressure and customers needing them.

Bonnie Brown, a family business consultant taught us that the hardest thing for the founder of a business to do when it is time to pass the business to the next generation, is to find something to fill the time gap created by not going to the office. If you are a business owner and you're reading this, and it sounds like you, you are normal!

What do you think? Are you obsessed with doing good and doing more? If not, why not?

Key Idea #10: Spend Pennies Not Dollars to Win Customers Barbara Granneman is such a soft-spoken gentle soul it is surprising to learn that the business she started went from zero to 45 employees in just two years. She had the right idea at the right time and in the right place.

Topic for Discussion: How was Barbara able to start a business with just a few dollars?

Answer: First, she decided to go to her customers rather than have them come to her. This means she has to do the driving but she didn't even have to purchase a piano to get started! She didn't have to go through the hassle of dealing with neighbors who might complain if her students parked in front of their houses and she didn't have to rent a commercial space either.

Second, she knew the type of parent who would pay for their children to take music lessons and she identified the neighborhoods in which those parents lived. By developing her own mailing list, she was able to target specific houses rather than mail to every home or run an ad in a local newspaper.

The first mailing list was built in a a few weekends. Her husband drove their car and Barbara rode along speaking the addresses of the houses she wanted to include on her list into tape recorder. Perfect market intelligence!

What do you think? Can you target your marketing even more than you do today? What would it take for you to increase your list of prospects and at the same time insure they have the right profile to buy from you?