In fact it’s not just a question related to women.

You probably saw that President Obama is now focusing on loans for small business. His proposal is to take $30 billion of the repaid TARP money and give it to small and medium sized banks so they will increase their lending to small business.

“We’re going to start where most new jobs do — with small businesses,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in Nashua, N.H. This was a repeating of a statement he made in his State of the Union address last week.

The issue is that banks have been receiving bailouts and then not lending to small businesses. The knock on effect is that small business is not hiring people to work as they are very cautious about coming months. net result, the economy slows down even more. Did I just read that 1 in 6 people are now unemployed or working less?

Anyway, back to the question of small business loans women. Here are a few sources for you to start looking, if you are a Woman Owned Business (WOB):

Community or small banks that are local to you. Many people are switching away from the “too big to fail” banks to smaller community banks. You’ve probably driven by them in your town. Drop in on one of them and have a chat. You many be surprised!

The SBA (Small Business Administration) has a whole area devoted to women. Their Office of Women’s Business Ownership is a good place to start.

Federal Grants – Try going to Grants.gov and you can see a complete list of funding opportunities. This can be complex and drawn out, but if you need cash….

There’s no denying that getting small business loans women, or anyone, is tough at the moment. But use your ingenuity and don’t forget to be armed with a very well prepared business plan. There is also a good article at on this at Womenowned.com by Phyllis Rawley.

So here are some tips. We’re going to cover what it takes to be successful working at home? We’ll also show you the steps you should take to get started.

So what do you need to work at home?

1. Self starter – You’ll need to be a self starter as there’s nobody to chase you. One of the biggest risks faced by the person working at home is putting stuff off.
2. Stay focused – One of the dangers we see is people drifting along getting nothing done. the Internet is at your fingertips, the TV may be in the same room, there are 1001 distractions… The opposite here is that it’s very easy when you work at home, to never stop. You need to put time fences round your work and not burn out.
3. Task oriented – Start each week and each day with a list of things you’re going to accomplish. You’ll feel great when they are done. Angelique and I use an online service called Toodledo. We have iPhones and it even syncs with them.
4. Take breaks – I don’t mean browse the web. Get out of the house and do something. I jump on my mountain bike most days and go off into the hills for an hour. Angelique climbs. I also go running. Taking an exercise break in the daylight makes a huge difference to how you feel and how effective you are.
5. The rule – it’s not how long you work that counts, it’s what you get done!

Five steps to starting

1. Mark out your territory. If you can, have a separate space where you work. A place where the kids, family or whoever, won’t be messing about and messing up your thinking, papers or files. It’s important that even with home work jobs you feel like you’re at work.
2. Get your technology sorted.  Angelique and I use Macs because they seem to always work and AppleCare solves all our issues really quickly. I have a wireless network and everything is on all the time. PC’s are cheaper, but my experience is that you pay for that in the long term with down time. Either way, you don’t want to be down. It’s wasting time, money and you look like an amateur to your customers.
3. Agree the rules – if you have kids and a family you need a contract with them. No interruptions. You cannot be fixing the PlayStation, making snacks, running errands, etc. it just does not work and it leads to frustrations on both sides. My experience with others shows that this is one of the biggest downfalls.
4. Zoning – Most people live in residential spaces that are zoned. This is the city ensuring the development and use of space does not go crazy. For most home based jobs you should be OK. But check it out, you’re better off finding out now. Type planning and your city name into Google and you’re there! Simple.
5. Tax – There are real tax benefits to working at home. At this stage my advice is for you to collect all your receipts. We’ll cover this is more detail later.

We love home work jobs and we’ve made a success out of doing it. You can too!

I’ve worked in many corporate offices and hated most of them. The day started with commutes that ranged from 30-75 minutes each way. Before I had my own parking space, I’d spend ages and real money parking my car. In fact there are people I used to work with paying over $500 per month! When I finally arrived at the church of work I was greeted by windows that never opened, AC that seemed solely designed to spread germs, fluorescent lights that gave us headaches. Don’t forget the color scheme. Beige, more, beige, brown and magnolia. Sounds more like a law firm!

The kitchen space was either a health hazard, a war zone, or both, as people fought over powdered milk and nasty cold coffee. Then there was the office politics, the gossiping and the interminable meetings. Don’t even get me started on my PC and tech support. I could go on, but you know what I mean. The only office I loved was built in an old house in London. Of course, the reason was obvious, it felt like I was working at home.

Do you know something?

My home based business work has been very different. The commute involves a gentle walk to the kitchen which on a bad day, involving severe kid congestion, can last about 2 minutes. There are special treats. Yep, I can be a dad who takes his kids to school. It’s a 5 minute drive as they are both dropped off.

I once calculated that if I worked for 50 weeks a year, my home based business was saving me 2 hours a day commuting and an hour a day from needless meetings. Here’s the point. I could take about 14 weeks extra vacation a year and still get more done. Now that’s a thought!

This is not my office! The windows are open, the music will often be on and I can work at my pace. At 9am it’s freshly ground (Peet’s) coffee, toast and marmalade. Lunch is a sandwich that is a creation that’s a culinary pleasure rather than something that looked like it crawled onto my desk having escaped from the back of the office fridge. Water is purified and from the tap and 45 seconds from my desk – round trip.

Technology at home involves Skype, wireless headphones, Mac and music. The whole house is wireless. It just works and it’s a pleasure rather than a frustration.

So many women work at home and they’re smart. Home based business is not just for the inhabitants of Venus!

The point is that your home based business work experiences can be a huge benefit rather then a constant source of pain and frustration. There’s a reason that millions are changing and for most, they’ll never go back!

Funny story, my neighbors were confused at first. Where do you work? What’s your job? They are so, so envious as they leave at the crack of dawn for their life on the free way slow lane.

Be excited about working at home. Get off that treadmill for ever!

What do you think?

Note that we didn’t use the word great. If we were investing in a business we’d far prefer to be putting money into a good idea with a great team and plan than a great idea with a rotten team and plan. Graveyards are full of businesses with great ideas and rotten execution.

In fact Venture Investors (VC’s) have told us that it’s really all down to 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

At WDTD our goal is simple. We’ll help you take your inspiration and make the perspiration easier.

Back to those ideas. let’s help you get inspired!

One of the great benefits of working out of home is the flexibility and convenience. Combine this with the very low cost of starting out. It’s no wonder that 1.4 million women every year will start their own business.

We often get asked “I want to start my own business, but I’m not sure what I should do?”

Here are six trends that we are seeing

1) Consulting

This is the classic example of using your prior experience and contact list. Our businesses use many consultants because it’s cheaper to pay someone for a few days or weeks than go through the process of hiring someone. Outsourcing is a huge trend and you can take advantage of it. This area is vast.

We have two consulting businesses. One works with Fortune 500 type companies on major strategic issues. The other is focused on internet start ups. the reason we can do this is because of our experience in both fields and specifically Angelique’s years of consulting all over the world. It’s an example of what we have previously talked about. Using your experience.

2) Freelance

Take your skills and your contact list and start out at home. A great example of this is our book keeper. She manages our basic accounting work out of her home for all our businesses and does it for several other companies as well. She makes more money than she did in her previous job, works less hours and her time is totally flexible.

Another lady we know well does company business report writing. The ideas here are almost endless. We have also worked with a lady who is setting up an admin service for other small companies who don’t want to pay for a full time secretary. She’s building a network of women who are at home and passing them work based on the number of hours each women wannest to do per week.

3) Online marketing

Women are leaving previous jobs and becoming on line marketers. Working a few hours a day they are quickly building incremental income. We helped one lady do this as she was planning to have a child in 18 months and wanted to move her job to her house. She just had her first daughter – congratulations Lara!

Another area that women are actively involved in is using their experience in software like Adobe to start website development business. If you have a computer and an internet connection, you’re half way there. The cool thing here is that the start up is low cost and very quick. We have often hired a woman who turns round photoshop projects at high speed and creates beautiful work. Thanks Stephanie!

4) Food, catering & event planning

You don’t need a big business here. We’ve seen women making great money out of starting selling food they have cooked at home. The profit margins here are excellent. If you have a good set of contacts at companies you could start a catering business.

5) Health and fitness

Fitness training, exercise studios, and many more ideas. We worked with a lady who has started several specialist exercise studios. She was previously in the world of food products but had a passion for this. Liz is doing spectacularly well. Niche health and fitness is one of the top trends for small business. Don’t just think of humans. Pet related wellness is another growth area.

One of our friends came to us. She was frustrated at work, bored and becoming disillusioned. She and her husband agreed that she’d transition to a work at home mom. She was personally into physical therapy and started a massage business. Again, very low cost start up and a steadily increasing list of clients. She’s been amazingly innovative in growing her business to the point where she has now taken on a 2nd women to cover her demand. She’s happier and making decent money that is paying for all sorts of extras for the family.

Remember that your business idea does not have to be a multi million dollar monster. If it strikes the right personal and financial balance it can quickly change your life.

6) Interior design and staging

We know several businesses run by women doing exactly this. Even with the slump in home sales there is a constant demand for staged houses and there is a segment of the market that is always looking to improve their home space. Talk to a few realtors about staging. We know one lady who runs a staging business out of her apartment and keeps all the staging products in a pair of rented garages.

We wanted to give you a flavor of the ideas what we are seeing women using to change their lives. Remember that most of your best ideas will come from your experience or your hobbies and passion. Just make sure you plan your moves carefully and get the right support.

Be successful

Rob & Angelique