Any business in the world, whether it is a home business or a multinational mega corporation must always have two types of people. The first are employees and the second are employers. Without both, a company or any business won't and can't function properly. To demonstrate this let me ask you two questions.

OK. The first one, assume that you are looking for a job. I don't tell you how much I'm going to pay you, I just ask you how many hours you'd be prepared to work for what I'm going to pay you. It's a fixed sum monthly, with no bonus or overtime pay. So how many hours are you willing to work for that payment ? Now think about this carefully as you don't know if I'm going to offer you $100K or $1. So what's your answer ?

40 hours ?
30 hours ?
20 hours ?

Often people are willing to work long hours for a guaranteed income and this is a good demonstration of that. You see if you asked me that question I'd want to work as few hours as possible as an employee. I'd start at 10 minutes on Wednesday after lunch and we could negotiate from there. Now there's nothing wrong with that because as an employee I'm just looking for a wage. I'm looking to add value to your business in as little time as possible and get paid as much as possible for doing that.

Now let me ask you another question. Lets say that you're sat on the other side of the desk. You're now the employer and you're looking to see how many hours I'm prepared to work. So how many hours would you want me to work for your business in order to receive that payment ?

20 hours ?
30 hours ?
40 hours ?

As an employer I'd be wanting you to work as many hours as possible for as little as possible. I'd probably start at 120 hours a week for $1 and negotiate from there. You see I have to think like that because I'm the owner and the employer and its my job to make the most money possible using the least amount of money possible. One of the ways to do that is to extract the most amount of value from my employees for the least amount of payment. I'd want my employees to makes hundreds if not thousands of dollars for my business in exchange for every one dollar I'm prepared to pay them.

So right about now you're maybe thinking what this has to do with setting a schedule that's right for your business. So let me explain just a little bit.

When you set a schedule you're actually going to be wearing both hats. You'll be wearing the hat of the employee and the employer.

Now what usually happens is that people will be prepared to work as many hours as it takes to make a set number of dollars in their business. This is possibly one of the biggest mistakes that you can make as a home business owner. Whatever you do the worst thing you can do is stop. Lets say that you've decided that you want to earn at least $2000 a week and you do that by Tuesday. In most home based businesses that means that you can now take the rest of the week off. What you should actually do is to just stick to your schedule and continue. There's an old saying that goes ?make hay while the sun shines? and that is exactly what you should be doing in your home business. When you're on form and making money just keep going while it continues.

The other thing that you should also be aware of is that it is also a lot easier to keep going than it is to stop and then start again. Once you stop you lose all momentum and it becomes all the much harder to actually start all over again.

OK, so lets look at how you go about setting a schedule.

The first thing you do is put your employee hat on. You know, the one where you want to make as much as possible for as little work as possible.

So look at your week coming up and think about all the things that you want to get done this week, AS AN EMPLOYEE. So you're going to have things like you need to take the car into the garage for repair, or you need to spend time with the kids, or go shopping for a present for a friend, or any number of things. So put these in your plan. This is important because you own your own business and then you should have the ability to schedule these things into your schedule.

Now take off that employee hat and put on the hat of the owner. I literally mean it. Now you're just going to think as an owner. Now as an owner, do you know what my response to all those things you wrote down ? I DON'T CARE ! As the owner in your business you want to maximise the value generated so you want your employee working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

However, as with everything the optimum solution is somewhere in between. What you need to do as the owner is look at the schedule and ask yourself a question. That simple question is ?does this schedule allow me to do everything in my business that I want to accomplish this week?? If the answer to that question is yes then congratulations, you hit your schedule for next week without any problems. What usually happens though is that you soon realise that in fact if you allow your business to function based on the needs and request of the employee then in actual fact you can't possibly accomplish everything, because the employee in you will always want to not do anything, to just sit there and enjoy the fruits of their labour. So what will usually happen is a negotiation between the employer and employee. Its just in this case they are both you.

First off, before we go any further I think its only fair to tell you to not discuss that you do this with anyone as they may think that you are more than a little crazy, and whatever you do, do not tell your psychiatrist that you negotiate your work schedule with yourself !

So what you need to do now is as the employer tell yourself that sorry but the current schedule is not acceptable and you need x number of hours more from your employee. Now comes the painful part. You need to go through your schedule and trim away some of the things that you really wanted to do. The good news though is that as you are the boss as well you can actually choose which of these things it is that you sacrifice.

And that's basically how you set a schedule. Now I know it sounds simple but believe me it isn't. Often you're trimming away ?high value? personal things to work on your business but its what you need to do. It usually about this time that people start struggling with trying to decide how much they want or need to work. A common question is often, ?well how much time should I put in my schedule?.

Unfortunately this is a question that is almost impossible to answer. The reason isn't because I'm mean and evil and want to keep the good stuff from you? honestly its not. The reason is because I don't know what you want from your business and where it sits on your priority list. I can tell you that the more time and effort you put into your business now, the more rewards you'll see from your business in the future and that I'd would recommend 15hours plus a week if you can. Often business growth is exponential which is why delaying from doing something today can actually prove very, very expensive in the long run. We'll demonstrate that with quite a vivid example in the next article.

So back to the question of the day ? how much time should you put into your business. It's a surprising statistic but most people are willing to work harder for their boss or someone else's business than they are actually willing to work for their own business. This is something you need to be aware of and actually challenge yourself on. Keep your big reason why close by and every week ask yourself if you're working hard enough on your business. Often times the answer will be no.

I found that without a schedule I'd work very, very hard on the business up to the point where I'd made enough to pay the bills and pay for everything that I wanted to do. Then I'd practically stop working until next month. It wasn't until I started making a schedule every week and month, and then working the schedule that I really saw things start to take off in my business. You need to do the same.

One comment I do want to make here though is that if you're working a J.O.B during the week, then coming home in the evening and working on your business, you need to make sure that you spend some time in the weekend with your family. Don't sacrifice everything for your business, only to find out that once you've achieved the success that you're looking for you have no one to share it with. If you're asking your family to respect business time then its only fair to them and yourself, that you respect family time too. That means no answering the phone, no checking emails.

So hopefully about now you've got a good idea of how you should be putting together a schedule and why its important, so lets move onto the next article and look at Discipline.