Once a month I make up a summary of the best articles from HomeBusinessWiz that month. These include:

· my newest "how-to" tutorials
· interviews with successful home business people about how they do it
· the latest updates about ways to make money working at home

To receive the HomeBusinessWiz Newsletter in your email each month, just type your email address into the form on the right hand side of this page and click the "submit" button.

Your privacy will be protected and your email address will not be used for any other purpose than to send this newsletter. You may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: On submitting your email here you will immediately be sent an email asking you to confirm your subscription. If you don't see this confirmation email in your Inbox, please check your spam filter and junk email box to see if it is there.

If you have any problems, let me know and I'll do my best to help.

I'm Barbra Sundquist and I'm the person behind HomeBusinessWiz. I’m 49 years old, married with three cats and no kids. Both my husband and I grew up on here on Vancouver Island and feel privileged to live in this beautiful part of Canada.

My first home-based business was selling Regal greeting cards at the age of eight. Believe it or not, my mother let me go door to door in our rural neighbourhood, entering the living rooms of complete strangers and doing my sales pitch. My favorite item in the gift catalogue was the baked potato gadget - a four-pronged thing that I now realize was basically useless to an experienced cook. But I must have been persuasive (or else they just wanted to get rid of me) because I sold a lot of them.

The 30% commission that I earned selling Regal whetted my appetite for more money-making ventures. One time I persuaded my younger sister and cousin to donate all their toys to my "store" and then sold them back for real money! My mom put the kibosh on that little venture pretty quickly.

By my teenage years I was engaged in a more legitimate home-based business: teaching private piano lessons from the basement of my family home. That gig went on for about eight years part-time and put me through university.

After graduating from the University of Victoria with an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a Master's in Public Administration, I decided it was time to enter the "real world" of employment. I got a job in human resource management with the federal government in Vancouver. Good pay, great benefits, wonderful career advancement opportunities - and I was miserable.

This may sound juvenile, but the two things I couldn't stand were: 1) riding up the elevator at exactly the same time every morning; and 2) having to stay at work on slow afternoons when I knew that I wasn't getting anything accomplished. Those two things offended my sense of autonomy something awful.

I stuck it out for two years, then left and moved back to Vancouver Island. I started doing contract work for my former employer and other government departments. After a while, I woke up one morning and realized "I think there is a name for what I am doing. I think I am a self-employed consultant". I decided I better buy a briefcase and get some business cards printed.

That was 20 years ago, and I've been self-employed and working from home ever since (except for an enjoyable stint teaching business management at a university). I look forward to sharing my knowledge with you on this site, so that you too can enjoy the freedom of having a successful home business.

Hi, I'm Barbra Sundquist and I'm the person behind HomeBusinessWiz.

I started this site so that I'd have a place to put all the articles, tutorials and other resources that I've collected over the years. And to be frank, so that I could just point clients to this site instead of having to email them resources!

HomeBusinessWiz has three main characteristics:

1) Simple

I love taking complicated information and making it simple. You'll find all the basics of starting and running a home-based business here, explained in clear, simple language. From the graphic design of the site to the content of the articles, simplicity is key to HomeBusinessWiz.

2) Practical

When I'm learning how to do something, I need it laid out step-by-step for me. So I try to do that for my readers as well.

3) Trustworthy

There's a lot of information about how to start and run a successful home-based business on the Internet. So much so that it can get confusing about whose advice to believe. I only recommend methods, techniques or products that I have actually used (or that someone I respect has used).

Acknowledgement

I read Darren Rowse's blog ProBlogger everyday, and have learned a lot about blogging from him. I also liked the design of ProBlogger so much that I borrowed some of the design features for HomeBusinessWiz from it. Darren's blog was designed by Rachel at Cre8d-Design.