Starting a Work From Home Business: Is Working with Family or Friends the Right Strategy?

It’s great to invite your friends over for dinner and have your family over for Christmas, and it’s certainly nice to get advice from your friends and be constantly comforted by your family. But are you willing to allow them to work beside you every day, plan things out with you, work out strategies to perform and complete a given task, and in general, share your secrets or look over your shoulder.

This is essentially the scenario you face if you start up a work from home business, and you involve someone other than yourself while doing it.

A home-based business can give you the chance to earn money without having to worry about whether you will keep your job or if your boss likes you. You are, moreover, your own boss: you dictate when you should be at your office, you have full control over all your products and services, and you can run your business on your own if you choose. You may also choose to tap into the expertise of friends and family, but you will have to ask yourself if it is a good strategy to start with.

What are the advantages of working with friends and family?

First of all, because you know them well enough and have already hung out with them or grown up with them, then there is a greater chance that you will get along with them. This can be very important in making business decisions, when you have to work out documents and strategies and need another brain to think along with yours. This can also be very important when you have to get the word out on your products and services and take your marketing machine out for a spin. Having a friend or family member close by allows you to take advantage of an instant network.

However, there are also disadvantages associated with working from home with family and friends. Because you have no office to go to, you will inevitably spend a lot of time with a friend or family member, from planning to implementation, customer service to marketing. The adage of familiarity breeds contempt has a lot of basis, and you just might have to see how much patience you have when dealing with friends who want to have their way in your business and refuse to hear you out, as well as with family that want to invite even more people in your family into the business in order to “earn more money and keep it in.”

So, should you involve friends and family?

The short answer is: it depends. Do you work well on your own and want to have things your own way? Do you resent it when people argue with you, and do you find yourself finishing the job faster if you do it by yourself? Then you may have to be up front about this to friends or family who may want to join in; by being honest and polite about your wish to do things on your own, you will get rid of the risk of having no choice but to take on that friend or cousin who just won’t go away.

On the other hand, if you like working with people and cooperating on projects, then you can consider involving friends and family in your enterprise. Just be sure to have as few cooks as possible making the broth the first time around: this is because way too many people off hand can also mean way too many possibilities and ideas, which can be difficult to reconcile come implementation time. Moreover, you may want to pick friends only, or family only; you can find yourself stuck in the middle and not knowing who to defend or side with if a fight suddenly breaks out.

Having people to help you out on your road to financial independence and success can be a great way to start a business. But think of yourself first, and how you can succeed best. The key here is to know what you want, and then let that play into how you run your business. This way, you don’t have to take any extra effort to please everybody else, and you can keep your energy devoted to making your work from home career prosper.

Author-Bio

Written by Cesar Campos - WAHE Author & Small Business Advisor

For more information please visit Work from Home Careers and Solutions