Small Office, Home Office Information

by Stuart Livesey 

I’ve just been reading a rather sad blog entry written by a guy who has been working from home for the last few years. It’s sad because now he feels that he needs to go back to paid employment for a while. He’s sure he will be back to working from home again sometime in the next few years … but when you read between the lines you just know that’s never going to happen.

When you read between the lines you can also see that he probably made the move to self-employment from a home office without realising some of the consequences. So here is a list five things you should consider before you make the jump from working for someone else to running your own small business from home.

1. You can’t work with kids around. So many people think that they can save money by working from home because they can also care for the kids at the same time. Sadly that’s just not so. You can’t put the concentration into your work that might be required if you also have to care for your kids … and it doesn’t matter whether they’re toddlers or older.

2. You can’t spend all your time doing the work you like doing. That may sound a little strange but the fact is that if you work for yourself then much of your time is going to be spent chasing work, selling yourself, chasing up payments, doing admin work and a million and one other things than whatever it might be that you do best.

If you’re a graphic designer and you love what you’re doing don’t expect to spend all your time working on designs … in fact, don’t expect to spend a lot of your time working on designs. If you do and you neglect all those other things then it’s only a matter of time before your business fails.

3.You can’t take time off whenever you want to. Sure, you might be able to duck out for a coffee at odd times through the day but don’t expect to be able to take holidays whenever you want and weekends can be problematic too.

Toni and I were looking forward to a bit of a break this weekend until one of our major clients called on Saturday morning with some urgent work that just had to be done over the weekend. Of course we could have turned him down but we value his work and we like to keep him happy (the translation for that is: his work keeps our cashflow happening throughout the year and that helps us sleep at night).

4. You can’t expect a pay cheque at the end of every week. One big advantage of working for someone else is that regular pay cheque that comes in every week or every month. When you work for yourself there can be some very dry times - especially when you’re first starting out - when there is little or no money coming in. At other times you may have a lot of accounts outstanding for work you’ve done but the promise of money some time in the future doesn’t ease that empty feeling in your wallet.

If you can’t cope with the idea that some weeks your bank balance is going to look rather miserable then don’t start your own small business.

5. You can’t always buy those luxury items you or your family might want. Even when the money is rolling in there are contingencies that you should always be preparing for. That means that there will be times when your family might want something but you simply can’t afford it right then and there. Try explaining that to your wife or husband when they know that the bank balance is quite healthy and they’re really lusting after a jet ski or a new widescreen television.

There is no doubt that running your own small business from home can be very rewarding … but it can also be very difficult when your expectations exceed the reality.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 6:31 am and is filed under General Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.