Are you thinking about following my plan to make a living from home in your pajamas? Are you already working towards that goal? If so, then I suggest you sign up for a Fantasy Football league now (before the football season begins). Go ahead and ask me why. It’s a legitimate question. Go ahead and tell me you either don’t know anything about playing Fantasy Football or you don’t even know anything about the sport of football. I’ll tackle that one too. (Like how I got that football-related term in there?)

Let’s handle the last doubts first. You don’t know anything about either the sport of football or the game of Fantasy Football. That’s perfectly fine. Perhaps with some knowledge, you could hope to actually win the game at the end of the season, but for our purposes, winning isn’t really one of the goals. One of the goals is simply playing the game and learning to make decisions based on value judgments and risk factors. Another goal is learning how to deal with competitors so that you actually end up cooperating with your competition in an effort to help each of you further yourselves in the game. Simply participating in the game, regardless of your previous knowledge, will be of benefit.

So now that we know you don’t need to have any in-depth knowledge of either football or Fantasy Football, let me explain why I suggest you play Fantasy Football if you are starting to work from your home.

• Working from home does involve a lot of solitary time, however, if you don’t put together a team of people that you can rely on to help propel you towards the end goal, you will find it extremely difficult to get there on your own. You will be the one responsible for choosing who those people are, based on their skills and proven abilities.
• You’ll need to make decisions based on risk factors and you’ll need to be ready to reverse those decisions and take a different path if things don’t work out as planned.
• You’ll need to keep an eye on your competition and make adjustments to your own plans based on what your competitors are doing.
• You’ll sometimes need to cooperate with some of your competition in order to collectively compete with the strongest teams in your niche.

Playing Fantasy Football is usually free, so there’s no risk involved other than a little of your time. There are plenty of leagues available for sign up. I play in a league through Yahoo! but where doesn’t matter. I’d suggest asking some of your football-crazed friends if they are involved in a league that has open spots for new teams. Once you find a league to join, create your fantasy team and get ready for the draft.

What’s the draft? That’s the day all the teams in the league get to choose players for their teams. You are choosing from the list of all of the real players in the real NFL football league, and creating your fantasy team (your pretend dream team) from those players. Of course the other teams in the league will be hoping to snag the same great players as you, so there’s a bit of luck and skill involved. You each take turns making a choice, so that’s where luck comes into play. There’s always a bit of luck involved in business as well, so you may as well learn how to deal with both the good and bad luck that comes your way. The skill involves deciding who to choose in the first place, and in what order. Should you grab your favorite quarterback first, or get the best running back possible? Or maybe you should grab the best defense before someone else does? Even if you don’t know anything about the game or the players, you can use the vast amounts of stats and information available to make your choices. This gives you good experience in making decisions based on past performance and future possibilities.

Draft day is exciting, but the game lasts all season long. You’ve ended up with a team of players who, in reality, are playing for different teams. As each player finishes a game each week, his stats will help determine how well your fantasy team ends up in your fantasy league’s rankings. In the real world, some of your players may get injured or have some other complication that would render them useless for your fantasy team. You’ll need to be able to adjust when those situations arise. Do you have a backup player? Do you need to court one of your competitors and see if you can arrange for a trade? Maybe your competitor has a spare player in the position you need, and you have someone he’d love to trade for. This is where your negotiation skills come into play, and your ability to create win-win situations even with your fiercest competitors.

Fantasy Football is a lot of fun, but it also develops skills that are needed in the real world for your home-based business success. In the future, I’ll talk more in detail about building a team of people that will help propel your success, but for now, go play Fantasy Football and get a taste of what’s to come.

Good luck and have fun!

(from Smash Mouth. "AllStar" Astro Lounge. Interscope Records, 1999.)

Posted on August 25th, 2007 by DazzlinDonna
Filed under: Business Development