KATHY MURDOCK: So a product-related business is one in which you are selling and making a product. For instance, you might design jewelry and decide to sell that. You may sell candles or make-up. There are some great pros to working in a product-oriented business, because first of all, if you’re successful you can probably make quite a bit more money than you would if you were working in a service-oriented business. It would require less time, because in a service-oriented business you are providing a service; in a product-oriented business you’re selling a product, and once you have the products made, all you have to do is ship them out. Also, you can pretty much do the work from anywhere if you have an online store. You can take your laptop and take care of all of the business that you need to do from anywhere in the world. However, there are some cons to a product business. First of all, you need storage space. If you have a product that you’re selling, you’re going to need to put it somewhere. Are you going to put it in your house or are you going to need to rent out additional space as the company grows? Also, you’re going to need to ship everything out. How are you going to handle that? Are you going to actually take the things to the post office when they need to ship or are you going to have somebody that does that for you? Start up can be expensive. When you’re making a product you need all the materials for the product, and you also need packing items such as boxes, tissue paper, labels—and that can all add up. Finally, it’s difficult to take time off. People are always going to be purchasing your product. It doesn’t matter what time of the year it is, so you may be busier at Christmastime, than you are, for instance, in the summer, depending on the type of products you’re selling. But people are always going to be ordering your products, so you’re always going to have to be available to answer to customers, to talk to customers, to take orders, and to ship items out. So, as you’re considering starting a product-oriented business, take these things into consideration.