By Kirk Bannerman



Do people that are successful in home based businesses share
some common characteristics and, if so, what are the primary
ones?

The dictionary defines successful as:

*having a favorable outcome, or
*having obtained something desired or intended, or
*having achieved wealth or eminence

When applied to a home business, I think the definition of the
word successful involves a combination of financial gain, time
flexibility, and being able to call your own shots (being your
own boss). The order of importance will vary from person to
person.

I have had the good fortune to be quite successful with
home-based internet businesses. No, that is not completely
accurate, I have had success because I have invested a lot of
sweat equity in my work at home business activities.

Having spent many years in the corporate world, I am a firm
believer in the team aspect of business and so I naturally
gravitated toward network marketing instead of trying to go
solo selling products/services and competing with the big players
like Yahoo, Amazon and the other well known names.

After doing considerable research, I found a very well
established and financially solid internet-based company to work
with. Using my business experience in the "offline world" and
developing my internet marketing skills on the fly in an OJT
(aka: on-the-job-training) format, things have gone very well and
I recently spent some time trying to identify some of the primary
traits that are common in my most successful team members.

Whether you"re breeding bird dogs, or race horses, or drafting
college football players to play in the NFL...it"s important to
develop "markers" that can be very useful in predicting success.
From my offline, traditional, business experience I have known
this from the get-go, but for some reason I was slow to learn
(or, was it re-learn?) that identifying the people with a high
likelihood of success is even more important when developing an
online network marketing business that depends upon teamwork.

Reflecting back on many of the truly successful people I have
worked with in network marketing, I made a list of the numerous
success factors that emerged when I assessed each person
individually. After compiling the list, three factors seemed to
stand out as being the most common success indicators. In no
particular order, these factors were:

*approaching the business with a long term perspective. It takes
a lot of time to become an "overnight success"

*exhibiting the tenacity of a pit bull

*being able to ride the emotional roller coaster (two steps
forward and one step back) in the early stages of developing
the business

Just because a person has these characteristics, it does not
ensure success and, on the flip side, a person is not necessarily
doomed to failure just because he or she does not possess them
all.