You're ready to get out of the corporate grind and start a business from home. You want to help people and have freedom and flexibility in the process.

You're ready to take the leap and make the dream a reality.

And it can be if you do it correctly. Here are three mistakes to avoid as your start your own business.

1. Find Clients, Not Jobs

When you decide to become a service provider, you need to think like a business-owner, not an employee.  

It’s tempting to take on part-time or freelance “gigs” where the client is dictating your pay and your working hours. By doing that, you have basically traded one job for another.

Whatever you do, set your rates, set your boundaries (aka work hours) and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s okay to negotiate, just make sure you are not settling and always stay in control of your decisions.

As tempting as it may be when starting out, be selective about your clients. Only work with people who respect your...

Today I want to share my thinking process for setting smart business goals with you. I like to work backwards from a financial goal to daily to-do lists. Here’s how that works. It always starts with a money goal. It helps if that goal has a meaning beyond the dollar figure. For example, let’s say that I want to buy a new car. The payment is around $400. To account for things like taxes and just to be safe, I’ll bump the goal up to $600. In other words, I need to add an extra $600 (or more… more is always better) to my monthly bottom line. Once that’s done and I am seeing that level of income on a regular basis, I’m ready to order my new car.

Once I know how much money I have to make, I can start to think about different ways to do just that. I could find more customers for one or several of my existing products. For example, if I have a $10 eBook, I would have to make an extra 60 sales per month. From there I can work backwards. If I know that on...