Work From Home? Key Personal Issues

For anyone to work from home, there are many important issues you need to consider before taking the plunge. The main focus of this article is to do with the personal attributes you need to run a successful home based business.

Sure, you’ll need the phone, computer, desk, fax etc to carry out the work, but without these personal qualities, you are doomed to fail:

SEPARATE YOUR WORK LIFE FROM YOUR HOME LIFE

It might make sense initially to take over the spare bedroom, garage, verandah etc and set it up as an office. Initial cost savings are about the only long term bonus to this strategy.

Eventually, your 24 hour a day presence in the house can become a major issue - especially if you’ve got kids!

Unless you stick to “office hours”, you’ll find yourself tinkering away with the business well into the night… something your family and spouse will not take kindly to, no matter how you attempt to justify it.

Kids don’t understand the person on the phone is a client. In their rush to answer the phone before you, or when they ask you at full volume to do something, or pick a fight with siblings while you’re on the phone, ask yourself “What message does that send to your client?”

Choose a room that can be isolated from the main house. One that is free of distractions which offers peace and privacy. One that has a door which can be shut at the end of your business day!

To met clients face to face, the only way is to go to their place. No matter how spick and span your house/office is… it is still a residence. It is not a place of business!

If things get difficult, go for a cheap serviced office. You may not have a “home based” business, but you may stay in business for yourself a bit longer!

YOUR NEW FOUND FREEDOM NEEDS ORGANISATION

To get started every day (even with a “normal” job) is often difficult to do… Imagine how much harder it can be when you are the boss?

“I can have another cuppa before getting started…”
“Honey, I might just dive up to the shops…”

The freedom that you now have can quite easily be your downfall before you know it.

It is vitally important that you quickly develop a routine, and stick to it (almost religiously) or you’ll find yourself off somewhere daydreaming or wasting time enjoying bright sunny days, when you really should be working!

ALLOCATE YOUR TIME WISELY

Being your own boss and working from home means the buck stops with you. YOU are the marketing person, the bookkeeper, the doer of everything! All of these tasks are just as important as the others. Time must be regularly set aside for them all, or else things just won’t happen (when they should). You will find yourself working late into the night catching up!

Your “normal” day should include regular time allocated for:

1. check incoming mail and respond.

Don’t put the piece of paper down to do later, because your “to-do” pile grows exponentially! Do it now!

2. chasing up new clients.

You DO lose the old ones (often through no fault of yours) and they need to be replaced. Work out your figures and set realistic targets - e.g. “I need to get one new client every two weeks”.

If you don’t achieve your target, allocate more time to this important activity. Initially, work out what it might be that you are doing wrong, and then work on correcting it.

3. keep in touch with existing clients.

This puts you back “in their face” on a regular basis, reminding them of your importance to their business. Among other things, they’re less likely to give you the “flick” because you’re such a communicative person. At least you should be aware of any “problems” that might be brewing, and you can nip them in the bud.

4. do your accounting.

Send out accounts when due, chase overdues, and pay the bills as you get them! Your business can’t survive without money, so make sure you bill your clients and chase them when they don’t pay. You can’t survive without the people you buy from, so keep them happy too, or else your 30 day account privileges will be no more.

5. do the research you need to do to prepare submissions for your new and existing clients

You won’t generate new business, or expand on existing business, just because of your good looks. Interpret what your customers want (even when they might not know it yet) and then sell them the idea.

6. do the work your clients have commissioned you to do

Somehow, find the time after all of the above to carry out the job you promised to do, and do it on time! Not every job will be interesting, but to your client, it is more important than any thing else in the world!

7. think… plan…

Don’t get snowed under with the day-to-day so much you lose sight of what your business is doing, and where it is going… If you do, it may be too late to rescue it if it needs it.

KEEP IN TOUCH WITH LATEST TRENDS ETC.

You are supposed to be a specialist in your field, which is why you set up business in the first place. You’ll be promoting yourself as knowledgeable, so make sure you are!

Just because you are aware of the latests trends etc in your industry does NOT mean you have to implement them straight away. Form an opinion on what is useful to your client and their needs.

Remember, if they ask for it, you have to know how to deliver the goods.

You don’t have to be a specialist at everything - in fact, you can’t possibly hope to be! Get to know other people you can work with to achieve the desired result for your customer.

KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR CLIENTS

Regular communication with existing clients (at least fortnightly) is so easy to do, but is often overlooked with disastrous consequences…

If you don’t keep in touch, they forget about you (and how great, helpful, wonderful, expert you are). When a new kid on the block pitches them a new idea, guess who might miss out, or be back-peddling to catch up lost ground?

It is SO MUCH easier to KEEP an existing client, than it is to make new ones! Don’t lose them through your own apathy or disorganisation.

Keep in touch and you have the ideal opportunity to put new ideas to generate extra business from your existing clients.

GET OUT AND ABOUT

The final essential ingredient (at this stage… there must be more) is to get out and about!

You can not stay confined to the “office”… for your own sanity if nothing else. That bright yellow ball in the sky is the sun, and you need that to work properly and to refresh yourself.

When you are out and about, your thinking becomes sharper, your ideas are focussed, but more important… You meet new people.

You start to “network” and get known in the community. That generates new leads for you to follow up.