Starting your home based business is a challenge; everything is new, and it’s very easy to just put in the extra hours because you’re building something for yourself, not working extra hours for a boss who doesn’t appreciate your talents or work ethic. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the work and to dig down deep into the details that make your business yours.

Like all honeymoons, the pixie dust eventually wears off. It’s easy to get set in a routine, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s especially easy to get so overwhelmed with new home based businesses that your own company can fail.

Fact of the matter is that six out of seven new businesses fail within two years of opening. The number one cause is undercapitalization – not having enough money in the bank to both fund business expansion and meeting the needs of current customers. But entrepreneur burnout is the second leading cause.

So here are some tips to keep your business going.

1) Take breaks. No, really. If you don’t get in the habit of carving a day out of the week where you do nothing business related, and take it every week, you’re going to fry like an egg. Your relationship with your family will go downhill and your ability to adapt will falter.

2) Manage your time. Get in the habit of having a day-planner. Set goals each day and mark them off as you complete them. If you don’t do this, you’ll wonder where all the time went each day. Plus, it will give you a valuable, written record of what you accomplished on a given day.

3) Take two hours every week to look home businesses that are related to yours, ones servicing a similar niche. Discover what they’re doing; you’ll either find a different (and potentially better) way to streamline one of your own processes, or you’ll discover a niche of customers that you can service better than they can.

4) Take vacations. Schedule them in advance, know that when you come back, the first week is going to be hellish, but take them anyway. Taking a vacation before you burn out is the best way to avoid the problem in the first place.

5) Be aware of when your job description changes from entrepreneur to executive. This is one of the hardest transitions for a new business owner to make; executives don’t have fun jobs where they’re working hands on with the customers or the products or performing the services; they have to make the important decisions about purchasing and advertising budgets, scheduling employees, and hiring managers to get things done.

Go into it with your eyes open, and you’re less likely to break your company when you do so. This is also the transition that generally causes home business starters to sell their business and do something else.

posted by Chris Simpson