You wouldn’t think it but one of the foundations of home based business success is to be thankful of other people and to be helpful to them. The only way you can get to the top is by yourself and the leverage of others. Thanking them along the way is only right and being helpful to others is only natural.

When you’re struggling in your home based business, who do you turn to? Maybe friends or family? But sometimes they don’t understand where you’re coming from or really what you do. They may tell you to give up and go find “a real job”. You turn to those people who understand, and they are other home business entrepreneurs. They know what it’s like to struggle, to feel lonely, and unsuccessful. They’ve been down that road before and now they’re returning favors to help others that were in their same position. Sometimes it’s not about what you get out of life, but what you put into it.

The best way of returning thanks to them is by listening to them when they have problems, read their blog, join their mailing list, and getting to know them. You want people to read your website and join your list, but if you’re not on anyone’s list… why would they join yours? THEY may not know you’re on their list, but you do. You get in life what you put out. And what will you put out? One-sided relationships?
This is a good opportunity to join meetup groups of like-minded individuals such as an Internet Marketing group or a group of Network Marketers. Be authentic when meeting people, show your general interest, take their card, and do follow-ups!

Coinciding with being thankful, there is being helpful to others. There’s someone new starting out everywhere, and once you reached a certain level of success or knowledge… you should start spreading that around. After all, someone has helped you along the way and maybe you could be that for someone else.

Ways of helping others without costing you a lot of time is to join social media networks and answering questions, writing helpful articles that aren’t intend to sell anything, and finding someone on their way up and just extending a hand of welcome.

By helping people, this doesn’t mean you should let them take advantage of you. You still have to maintain your own business and personal life. So set aside time each week to help and keep to the time you allotted.

Don’t forget to thank the little people when you’ve reached the top!

You really wouldn’t think negotiating skills are needed for your home based business success. However, it’s imperative to at least know the basics especially if you ever plan on taking your business offline (either now or in the future). You’re constantly selling yourself and this may include your services, so negotiating is important. Not to mention it may come in handy if you’re buying high ticket items, whether it’s products or cars.

Negotiating is not just settling on the price of something, it is also reaching a goal or managing something. Also, the word usually embodies something that is negative. However, negotiating should be a positive experience because you’re trying to compromise with someone so you both reach a goal. You will be dealing with customers, other home business entrepreneurs, as well as people you look up to such as “gurus” or other Internet Marketers. You could negotiate a JV deal or an email swap.

Negotiating is all about communication. If you don’t have communication skills, you may want to look into that first. Being shy and reserved is something that you’ll have to work through if you plan on having home based business success offline. If you plan on taking your business offline or even meeting other marketers are seminars or workshops. Communication is vital.

The secret to good negotiating is LISTENING. It’s not just listening with your ears, there are other factors as well. To illustrate this, here’s a study that Dr. Albert Mehrabian, of UCLA, did on the ways we communicate:

– Words: 7%
– Tone of Voice: 38%
– Body Language: 55%

If you notice; 93% of all communication is non-verbal. Tone of voice is not what we say, it’s HOW we say it, which is every bit important as the words spoken.

Start today with paying attention to all three of these things everytime you encounter someone. Once you make a habit of paying attention to all of this, the easier it becomes over time and the better you become at handling all levels of communication to ensure your home based business success.

There are plenty of websites out there to help teach you negotiation skills. I would highly recommend you work on these because you’ll never know when you may need them. Not just for home based business success but for day-to-day life as well.