What's in a Name? Maybe Everything. Maybe Not So Much.

If Donald J. Trump still carried the family moniker of Drumpf, do you think he’d emblazon it atop his hotels? Do you think that more than 60 percent of primary voters in his home state of New York would have chosen him?
As late night talk show host John Oliver of HBO recently noted, Trump’s ancestors changed the family name centuries ago, and the billionaire developer, promoter and presidential candidate is no doubt thankful every day for their foresight. Because, in the world of branding, names matter. -- Except when they don’t.

4 Things No One Tells You About 'Entrepreneur-ing' From Home

Running your own business is the American dream. Add “work from home” to the mix and it sounds like paradise, right? There are certainly plenty of upsides to running a successful (emphasis on “successful”) business from home. However, many entrepreneurs find themselves lost, overwhelmed and overworked.

I personally have worked at home for the past four years, running several businesses. Even my current free hosting company, we have eight people who all work from home in the San Francisco Bay area and we all meetup every other week at a co-working space.

With this come flexibility and problems, which is why it important to take a holistic look at what being an entrepreneur from home is really like.
Not every person or team is cut out for working from home. There’s a reason over 80 percent of small businesses fail within the first year. The more informed and prepared you are, the better off you’ll be. It’s not going to be all conferences from the couch, yoga pants and not setting alarms (although, at times, there’s that, too).
Here are a few biggies nobody tells you about taking this career path and how to prepare for it:

5 Million-Dollar Home-Based Business Ideas You Can Use Today

At last count, there were over 30,000 million-dollar, home-based businesses run by solo entrepreneurs. So, building one may not be easy, but it obviously isn't impossible.

According to the same survey, there were over 200,000 entrepreneurs with sales between $500,000 and $999,999, and over 400,000 entrepreneurs who were raking in $250,000 to $499,999 a year.


For anyone wanting to get into a home-based business, versus one on-site with employees, the fundamentals remain the same -- the "fundamentals" meaning those that influence success.

So, if you’re cut out for being a solopreneur, you too can take home a fat check while being your own boss; you don’t necessarily need to run a large company for that.

Here are five ways to leverage your skills or current situation to build your own home-based business by highlighting opportunities that have launched businesses average people turned into million-dollar success stories.