2011-07-30-Home Based Self-Employment
Seminars@Hadley
Home Based Self-Employment
Presented by
Urban Miyares
Moderated by
Billy Brookshire
August 30, 2011
Billy Brookshire
Good morning, my friends. Welcome to Seminars@Hadley. We’re going to get started so we can make the most out of our time together today. Welcome to this presentation on Home Based Self-Employment. So that we can get right down to it, I want to introduce you to your presenter today. His name is Urban Miyares.
Urban was just on the Today Show for those of you who were fortunate enough to see him. Urban is the president of the Disabled Businesspersons Association. Just an excellent presenter and knows lots and lots about this subject of self-employment. We are eager to hear what you’ve got to say, Urban. So that’s why right now I’m going to hand the microphone over to you.
Urban Miyares
Well thank you, Billy. Hello everybody. Welcome. We’re going to cover home based businesses and in the next hour we’re going to cover two days worth of workshops. So please bear with me if I go through some things a little quickly. However, we’re going to focus mainly on the start up: Should you or shouldn’t you start a business from the home? And what does it really take to get into a home based business?
But before I get into that, I want to give you some bad news. If you’re been reading the news, you know that we’re in a recession. As a matter of fact, they’re calling it a worldwide recession and things don’t look good. For those in the United States, they’re even talking about the Social Security Administration running out of money by the year 2017. That’s only six years from now. We’ve heard these stories before. How true they are – we don’t know.
But if it does happen where you no longer receive benefits that you expect from your government or others, what are you going to do about it? For a number of people I’ve worked with, starting a home based business is a way now to prepare to offset any financial shortchange you might have or shortcomings. You know, others, of course, go into the home based arena just to get in the business world, be active again, maybe supplement, maybe they have a child, a grandchild that’s going to college. They want to get a new car. They’re just not cutting it with today’s economy and putting the food in the refrigerator they would like or going out as often as they want. That extra $50 or $100 a week in profit would make a big difference in their lives.
Then we have a number of people who do it for their social aspect, to get out of the house and meet new people. So these are things that you could look at when considering a home based business. I want to start right now with some good news. I gave you the bad news about it. One of the things I want to tell you about: self -employment is sweeping the country as well as the world.
Self-employment, especially from the home, has always been popular – especially in rural communities. But as far as it goes in the media, it seems like it’s a brand new thing that’s come up that people have really started to look at. They’re starting businesses from the home, maybe due to unemployment or another reason. And it’s always been around, it’s just that they don’t record all the home based businesses. I know in the United States, they estimate that over 30 million people have a business from the home. And you say, “Well, I don’t know if I want to get a home based business.” Well, if you’ve ever had a garage sale or gone to a swap meet or a flea market and sold something, you’ve had a home based business already and you just didn’t know it.
And probably – in the United States – you didn’t file that profit on your tax returns. I believe that’s Line 13 under “Other Income”. Like it or not, you probably have been in a home based business even if it was only for a few hours of one day or have been associated with somebody that’s in a home based business. Just remember that if you’re going to wait until tomorrow to do something, you’ve already lost today, then. And there’s no way of recapturing that day gone. So a home based business is a great way to experiment or explore the possibilities of getting into business. So we’re going to cover the different types of home based businesses and show you how to do it.
But first of all, before you get into any business – and especially a home based business – you have to do a self evaluation. And somebody’s self evaluation should not be done by you personally but done by others to help you identify things. I’m talking mainly about those soft skills and hard skills. Soft skills are primarily – and I call them the ABCs of soft skills – things that you possess. Hard skills are those technical aspects you have. Maybe you’re well versed in computers or you can sing or you’re a good writer – or something of that nature that you have a technical skill that if you were going to look for employment or you are employed, people are hiring you for that hard skill.
Your soft skills are personal things – I said the ABCs. Let’s start out with A. A basically is your appearance: What do you look like? Well, you might say, “It doesn’t matter what I look like. I work from the home.” But you’re going to find out that means a lot. It’s what other people think of you that’s important. How do you look? Your hair? Your nails? Your face? We deal in a business world that’s a sighted world. And we have to compete on their level and you’re going to discover that when you have a home based business, you’re going to have to leave the house. The people you run into and meet just may become your customers. So your appearance is critical.
The other thing is your attitude. You might think you have the great attitude and perfect attitude but it’s what other people think that’s important. Are you a pessimist? Well, you might be a pessimist but don’t let other people know about it. Are you always looking for the dark side of things? Are you always negative about things or finding out what doesn’t work? Well that’s okay to have on a personal basis and share it those in your household if you want. But when you’re out in the public, and especially if you’re in business, you’re going to have to change that. So I am going to take a break now just with the A of the soft skills – and that is your appearance and your attitude and see if there are any questions so far.
Billy Brookshire
Any questions so far, folks?
Caller
How do you acquire the information that you need in the soft skill area? Do you have people fill out a form or sit down and talk with them? What’s the process?
Urban Miyares
Great question: How do you acquire that? Well first of all you should do a self assessment and you might see it’s good or not. And then go to your friends, first of all, and say, “You know, I’m looking to improve myself. I’m thinking about starting a business and you can help me out. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.” And if you’re the personality that they would hurt your feelings try not to show it. That’s part of your attitude. So you’ve got to mask things. Don’t forget: when you’re in business you’re an actor.
So once you pick up the phone for business and all, you’re acting. I’m acting right now. I’m going for that Academy Award. And if you’re not going for it at all times in the business world, you’re going to lose out. So you just need others to help you with that. In some cases people could tune in right away. They know that they’re a negative person or their attitude needs changing. So if it’s so difficult for you to do it, just try to do it some of the time – that time being when you’re in business.
So I hope that answers the question and I hope I’m speaking loud enough for everybody to hear me clearly. Well we got the attitude and all. Next is your behavior for B. ABC. And your behavior is: How do you act? How do you hold yourself? How is your mobility? Things that relate to you as a person with people looking at you before you even talk with them at all.
Are you always making a comment when someone says something? Do you say the final word after the last word is said? Do you always have to put your 2 cents in? You’ve got to change your personality in that area so that your behavior is different. Especially if the behavior is that of a negative – or could be counter to what the public wants. This really is How to Win Friends and Influence People-type of traits.
Soft skills are critical. By the way, soft skills are more important than hard skills even when you’re looking for employment. Have any of you ever gone out there and have gone for a job interview and you meet the qualifications and then you didn’t get the job but someone else did who was sighted? And right way, he says, “My blindness – that’s why they didn’t hire me.” Well if your soft skills were better – and we can always improve our soft skills no matter how well you think they are or others think they are. Possibly and probably the reason why you didn’t get hired was due to your weakness in soft skills. And soft skills – to me – training is everything.
The businesses that make it and don’t make it, often you’ll find the business owner whose soft skills are exceptional – as a matter of fact, almost in every case. I know a lot of very successful business people who really are idiots. They know nothing about their business at all but they are Mr. Public Relations or Mrs. Public Relations or Publicity.
Everybody’s their friend. You know, business is not who you know, it’s who knows you and likes you. And you’ll find that out when you’re in business. Your center of influence and contacts is more important than all the money you’ll spend in advertising. When I get people that are blind who are in business, they want to know how to market their product or service. Often there’s a soft skill weakness that they have and they need to work on that.
So the next one is your behavior: What’s your behavior for things? Now you can practice those in your own life and talking with others. If you’re always the center of a conversation, sit back and listen more and always jump in. If someone says to you, “I just went bowling and I got 150 score in my bowling game”, don’t jump in and say, “I bowl 150 or I bowl 160” to outdo them, do one-upsmanship. Your voice has no meaning in that conversation. They’re proud of what they did and congratulate them. Of course, if they ask you a question, it’s different.
So this is a part of it and we’ll cover that under C, and that is your communications. Your communication is so critical – not only your spoken word but your written word. I think some of you will agree with me. I could be in a group of people who are blind and just by the communications tell you who was born blind and who lost their sight later in life but had sight at one time.
There’s a different trend of communications and I’ll be a lot of you aren’t aware of that, especially those who have been blind all or most of your life. Communication is critical. When we go out in the public, do people forget we’re blind or do they cater to us because we stereotype ourselves so much when we’re blind? Going back to your appearance, your behavior, your characteristics and your communications.
And the characteristics is the other part of C: What are your traits and characteristics such as in public speaking and talking to others with sight loss? Do you look at people as if you could see them or does your head turn, does your head drop? Do you have certain blindisms that can be distracting to others with sight? So these are things that we have to do.
It’s rough. I know it’s rough. I’ve been through it and I constantly do it and people say, “Urban, you’re starting to touch your eyes a little bit too much when you’re publicly speaking.” I remember that. I instinctively want to do that. I forget to open my eyes when I do public speaking, especially when I’m tired. I have one eye that rolls: my left eye when I get tired. It just goes haywire. It looks like I’m looking in two different directions.
So do you have any traits like that? Are there any facial features? Do your eyes roll? Do your eyes go up, constantly up? Let others know. You might not be aware of it. You know, we can’t see ourselves in a mirror and do a self evaluation. Our hair – is it okay? Is it neat? Is our smile off? Don’t we smile? For those that maybe have been blind all or most of their life: What about your facial gestures?
This is part of our characteristics. We have to animate ourselves – not only with our mouth and our smile but with our hands. Often we stand there like a stone figure when we’re talking to others without any facial expressions, without any body movement, without turning our head. So these are some of the soft skills that you have to go – and I do a half day workshop on this in training and all so I just want to make you all become aware of soft skills. We’re not going to go into hard skills in this. But, really, you’ll discover that in business – to be successful – you really don’t need to know that much about your product or service, especially if you have soft skills.
I’ll take a break here and see if there’s any questions.
Billy Brookshire
Any questions, folks? I guess you’re back up, Urban. If you have questions, folks, by all means put them out there. Robert put a question into the chat room that I’ll bring up. He says, “When you mentioned mannerisms, what if it’s something…” Oops, it didn’t get the rest of it, Robert. It’s got, “When you mentioned mannerisms, what if it’s something…” I’m guessing, “you can’t control?” Gotcha. Thanks, Robert. He says he can’t control his eye movements.