4 Things You Need Before Running A Business From Home
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Running a business from home is full of advantages – particularly for mothers. If you still have children to look after, it gives you an easy way of juggling your personal and professional lives. You can stay at home with the kids, yet run your business at the same time. Still, there are a few drawbacks that can surface if you’re not careful. To avoid them, here are a handful of things you desperately need:
A virtual address
What is a virtual address? In short, it’s an address in a different location that is attached to your business. You can put this address on your business cards and website, making it seem like your company is based in a different location. It’s advantageous for home businesses in a couple of ways, the key one being that it adds to your reputation. Listing a residential address as the address of your business can make you seem less than professional. It’s harsh, but consumers might trust you less than a company offering the same services from a proper office. With your virtual address, this is no longer an issue!
Secondly, virtual addresses can also be used as virtual mailboxes. There are loads of companies like Physical Address that sell virtual mailboxes for you to get mail sent to. From here, your mail is opened and scanned into a folder in the cloud, which you can access from home. Why is this beneficial for a home-based business? It stops instances where your business mail and personal mail get mixed up. You’ll be amazed at how many home business owners have thrown out important documents because they got caught up in all their junk mail.
A schedule
The beauty of working from home is that you can be more flexible with your work patterns. However, it will help you if you have some sort of schedule to follow. It doesn’t need to be a strict 9-5 schedule – play around with it to find something that works for you.
Nevertheless, a schedule is crucial as it aids with productivity. You know you have things to do, as well as targets to reach. It prevents instances where you just lazily get out of bed at midday and barely do any work. You’re forcing yourself to do things, and it will pay off in the long run.
A comfortable place to work
You don’t need a home office, though this is the dream for most home business owners! Instead, all you need is a comfortable place to work. This might be the kitchen table, the sofa, or a little desk that you put in your room. Find an area of your home where you feel productive and can sit and work without distractions. It will really help you focus on your work and get into the right mindset every day.
Speaking of which, never work in your bed. Working in your bed is bad from a psychological perspective. You associate your bed with rest, so you instinctively feel less productive when you’re lying on it. Similarly, when you spend all day working on your bed, it’s harder to then relax and go to sleep! It’s a lot better to have some sort of mental disconnect between your bed and work. This way, whenever you’re in bed, you instantly feel a sense of relaxation as your brain knows it’s not time to work.
Fast internet
You will rely on the internet for pretty much everything when you work from home. So, if you have slow internet speeds, your business will start to suffer. You physically can’t get as much work done as you would with faster internet speeds. You might be unable to do certain things because your connection is so poor – like making video calls or using web-based applications.
Consequently, you desperately need a fast internet if you want to run a business from home. This might mean you have to upgrade your current connection, or it could mean paying for a separate internet connection for your business. Many tax experts say this is the smarter idea as you can then write off the internet bill from this connection as a business expense!
Once you have all of these things in place, you’re ready to run your business from home. If you’ve already got a business, and you’re transitioning to work-from-home, it can take a while to adjust to your new way of life. But, if this is your first business venture, you can jump right in and feel super productive.
My name is Louise and I am the Digital Marketing and Administrative Assistant at MyBump2Baby. I have been writing in the parenting niche for over 2 years specialising in fertility, pregnancy, baby and baby name support articles.