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If you're looking for guidance in running your own home-based business, the last place you'd probably look for good advice would be a noted 19th century transcendentalist author. Though he certainly wasn't an online guru or a specialist in traffic generation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous essayist, lecturer and writer did offer an observation that can help anyone trying to build a business.

Emerson once said, "Every artist was first an amateur."

That's an incredibly simple statement. It's true on its face. It also holds a deeper meaning that new home business entrepreneurs should embrace wholeheartedly.

You may want to find your fortune today. You may aspire to instant success. You may assume you have a perfect plan and can execute it flawlessly. If you are building from the ground up, however, that is not going to happen.

Before you can reach the pinnacle of success, you will have to gather knowledge and the benefits of experience. Before you can be an "artist," you must struggle as an amateur.

That doesn't mean your guaranteed to suffer a series of failures or that you need to be battle-worn before making your home business profitable. Instead, it means that you need to recognize that as a new home business operator you will face issues and challenges you didn't expect and may not always find solutions immediately.

You will progress. You will learn and you can succeed. The route you take from amateur to artist is yours to choose.

I don't believe in reinventing the wheel or struggling to learn every in and out through personal experience. Instead, it seems far more sensible to gain the advantages of experience by finding a mentor to who can share lessons already learned. If you combine a good student with a good teacher, great things can happen.

Good instruction shortens the learning curve and closes the span between amateurism and professionalism.

A good mentor can give you the advice, guidance and background you need to make a transformation and to supercharge your home business.

Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us that being new and lacking information isn't shameful or avoidable. Every entrepreneurial success story started as just another person looking to do things for him- or herself. Being an amateur is natural.

The question, really, is how you want to get from point A to point B. Do you want to struggle against all odds, learning through trial and error? Or, would you prefer to avoid some of the pain and hardship by opening your mind and listening to the sage advice of someone who's been there before?

If you are motivated and dedicated, you will make the transition from "amateur" to "artist." How you decide to do it, however, is your decision. Choose wisely and profit!