Can I Work From Home With No Experience?

Today I’m answering the question, “Can I work from home with no experience?”

Good news. The first thing I’m going to share with you is why it may be better to not have any experience. Then I’m going to share the best type of business to start from home if you don’t have any experience. Lastly, I want to help you out with what to actually rely on when you don’t have credibility.

Why is it better to not have experience?

Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.” Well if you don’t have any experience working from home, that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing. Working from home is something I’ve done for the last 16 or 17 years. I left my last job back in 2005 and I’ve worked from home ever since. We’ve since grown an INC 5000 company from home and have a lot of virtual contractors and employees all around the globe.

I still work from home. I don’t have a formal office that I go to everyday. What I found is there’s such a lack of “how” to work from home that even with experience that doesn’t mean much. It may actually be detrimental because if you’ve built and developed bad habits, those are actually harder to break than it is to create brand new habits.

Two things. These are the two biggest things that I really want you to know if you’re considering working from home and have never done it.

Number one. You have to manage your time. If you’re used to working at a job, they tell you what to do and if you don’t do it, they give you feedback. Working from home (starting your own business or working with an existing business) you may not get that level of feedback and that level of outside time management. You have to manage your time except the difference is you’re not being watched, right? You have to be motivated enough to do the work you know you need to do so that you can build that and work from home.

Number two. The second thing that you’ll deal with is if you’re a social butterfly, working from home can be tough. No longer are you going to go into the break room and celebrate Susie’s birthday with a not so great cake. Sitting in on staff meetings and hearing what everyone else is up to…. Now for introverts, it’s a dream come true they love it…they think this is great. For extroverts, it can really be harmful for you. One thing to help you out is you may want to consider setting up Zoom meetings or outside meetings with some of your friends or colleagues so that you have some kind of interaction if that is a concern of yours.

Not having experience working from home should not be the dream stealer of you working from home. Working from home has a lot of major benefits. I’ve been able (unlike my first two sons who are much older…) to be really involved with my two younger kids at a much different level because of working from home. I don’t have to ask for permission to take time off. I’m not being asked to work on a weekend when I had a family trip planned. Working from home has a lot of benefits.

What is the best business to start to work from home?

What is the best business to start if you’re wanting to start a business from home? First…one book that I would highly suggest you read is called “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber. A few weeks ago, I had the absolute pleasure to spend about an hour with Michael who’s 85 years old now, still one of the sharpest guys I’ve ever met. The E-Myth is is really, really powerful book. Again if you’re wanting to start a business, definitely recommend it. In the book he highlights where people go wrong with starting a business and why so many businesses struggle. It’s because you don’t understand what identities you have to have as a business owner.

How do most people start a business? They’re the technical or tactical person at a job. They have a job and work for someone else. They are the best plumber or advertiser or graphics design or videographer or whatever. They’re the best at what they do in a technical or tactical scenario. They think “hey…you know I do a better job than the knucklehead running the company, I should start my own company…” and so they do.

They start their own company because they really understand the technical and tactical. Well technical and tactical is part of the deal but congruent with the question of this post, “how to work from home with no experience” is that experience can actually hurt them as a business owner. Why? because the person that is really good at what they do, what do they tend to do? The technical or tactical work…..more and more of it, which is not what is demanded of the business owner. The business owner needs to be a visionary and a manager. You have to be painting a vision of where the company is going and also managing the processes that other people are doing. You can’t do that, if you’re the super technical or tactical person doing all the work yourself.

What most people do (this is all from Michael Gerber, this is not my original content) is they trade a 40 hour a week job for an 80-hour week job. But they call it their business. With that being said, if you are the person that has to come up with the patents, trademarks, has to mix the stuff in your basement, get the molds from China or do whatever else you have to do, you may consider doing something in between or doing something totally different. Totally different would be network marketing.

Now why would I bring up network marketing? Network marketing is the lowest risk, lowest overhead way for the average ordinary person to start a business. You don’t have to figure out supply chain management, human resources, the formulation of the product, the technical or the compensation checks. All of those things are done for you. The only thing that you need to figure out (which you would need to figure out in any other business as well) is marketing, promotion and talking to people.

See….in any other business, you’d have to figure that out too but in network marketing, all the rest is figured out for you. You just have to do that part. Some people use network marketing as a springboard. They learn prospecting, marketing, promotion, recruiting….they learn those sorts of things then they start their own business. That’s one option…..or they fall in love with the low risk, low overhead nature of it and they decide to stick with network marketing. That is why if you don’t have experience, I highly suggest network marketing.

I am no longer in a network marketing company. Before I was a coach or trainer, I was the number one income earner of a company but I no longer build any team so I’m not trying to pitch you to join my team or anything. Get with someone that you know is in network marketing and ask the right questions and and see if it’s a fit for you. But….if you don’t have experience, that should be at the top of your list as a consideration.

Let’s hear from you!

Before I get to my last point, I would love to hear from you. What’s your work from home scenario? Are you currently working a job that now has you working remotely? Are you looking to start a business from home? Let’s hear your deal…what’s your work from home scenario? I would love to hear from you! I read and respond to every single comment and love to hear from you.

What should you rely on when you lack credibility?

What do you rely on when you lack credibility? First you have to understand “why” people buy things? They buy things to solve an existing problem or attain a desire. I recently bought (believe it or not) an ice barrel. I’ve been taking cold showers for maybe a year or so and I decided to step it up a notch and start doing ice baths. I was looking for the most convenient way to do it and I saw (online) this ice barrel. It’s something you sit in. You fill it with ice and it’s pure torture, but it’s amazing. Good for your circulation, immune system and quite frankly good for my defiance muscle. I definitely don’t like these things, but being more defiant to do things that will improve me that I don’t want to do is a great muscle to build.

I can tell you the person that I talked to that sold me that ice barrel, I don’t know their credentials, I didn’t ask “how many ice barrels have you sat in?” because I wanted what I wanted. I didn’t need to know their resume. When you lack credibility, lean on the benefits of whatever it is that you’re selling.

If you’re in network marketing, you’re going to stumble into your team group and have thousands of testimonials of people that have either made some money or people that have gotten a result or whatever…lean on those. Don’t make it about you, it shouldn’t be about you.

Whatever you’re trying to sell make it about the thing, this thing has helped people. If I go to Home Depot and I want to buy a lawnmower, I don’t get the resume of the person that’s selling it to me. Stop thinking you need to have credibility, stop thinking you need to have experience for you to make money.

What you need to do is find something that solves a problem or helps someone attain a desire….. locate stories and testimonials of it doing that thing and that becomes what you lean on. You lean on the benefits of the product or service that you’re trying to offer versus all the things that you know. You do that and you’ll be able to sell just about anything.

If you are wanting to change your life, work from home and maybe even make more money, I would highly suggest grabbing our best-selling book Time, Money, Freedom. Time, Money, Freedom is published by Hay House and is a best-selling book. We are very, very proud of it. My wife and I wrote this and it is “The 10 rules to radically reshape your life.” We talk a lot about finances, working from home and we also talk about relationships. If you need help around those things you can get it here….Higdongroup.com/time-money-freedom. It’s available on audible, on amazon and several places. Feel free to check out the reviews.