Do people that are successful in home based businesses share some common characteristics and, if so, what are the primary ones?

The dictionary defines successful as:

• having a favorable outcome, or
• having obtained something desired or intended, or
• having achieved wealth or eminence

When applied to a home business, I think the definition of the word successful involves a combination of financial gain, time flexibility, and being able to call your own shots (being your own boss). The order of importance will vary from person to person.

I have had the good fortune to be quite successful with home-based internet businesses. No, that is not completely accurate, I have had success because I have invested a lot of sweat equity in my work at home business activities.

Having spent many years in the corporate world, I am a firm believer in the team aspect of business and so I naturally gravitated toward network marketing instead of trying to go solo selling products/services and competing with the big players like Yahoo, Amazon and the other well known names.

After doing considerable research, I found a very well established and financially solid internet-based company to work with. Using my business experience in the "offline world" and developing my internet marketing skills on the fly in an OJT (aka: on-the-job-training) format, things have gone very well and I recently spent some time trying to identify some of the primary traits that are common in my most successful team members.

Whether you're breeding bird dogs, or race horses, or drafting college football players to play in the NFL...it's important to develop "markers" that can be very useful in predicting success. >From my offline, traditional, business experience I have known this from the get-go, but for some reason I was slow to learn (or, was it re-learn?) that identifying the people with a high likelihood of success is even more important when developing an online network marketing business that depends upon teamwork.

Reflecting back on many of the truly successful people I have worked with in network marketing, I made a list of the numerous success factors that emerged when I assessed each person individually. After compiling the list, three factors seemed to stand out as being the most common success indicators. In no particular order, these factors were:

• approaching the business with a long term perspective. It takes a lot of time to become an "overnight success"

• exhibiting the tenacity of a pit bull

• being able to ride the emotional roller coaster (two steps forward and one step back) in the early stages of developing the business

Just because a person has these characteristics, it does not ensure success and, on the flip side, a person is not necessarily doomed to failure just because he or she does not possess them all.

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