Discover how a few simple additions and changes to your home office can dramatically improve your productivity and impression on clients.
Once you decide to take the plunge and run your business from home, the first step is to set up your new home-based workspace. To do this, you have to determine where and how you work best.
You’re the boss. Design your home-office workspace around your own strengths and weaknesses. Disregard your mental vision of a “typical office” and begin creating an office that complements your strengths.
Set a dedicated workspace.
Find a spot in your home where you can separate your workspace from your personal space. Probably in a separate room with a door that you can close, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to distance yourself from the noises that your family or pets might make.
Ideally, the space should be large enough to accommodate any files you might have and have some extra room for when your business grows.
If you have options, choose the room based on what works best for your personality. If morning light motivates you, choose a room that is east-facing with a lot of windows. If a room with a view will be more of a distraction, choose a room without windows.
Invest in a room transformation to give yourself work “mindset”.
Professionals who work from home find that it can be difficult to get into the work “mindset”. There are endless distractions at home, and it isn’t easy to avoid distractions and get into that mindset. If you have the financial resources, invest in a room transformation, so you feel like a professional when you sit down to work.
You’re probably going to spend a lot of time in that room. Decorate it in a way that makes you happy, but motivates you at the same time. Make the room as comfortable for yourself as you can.
A minor investment in your home office will be well worth it given your more productive as a result.
Organize your office for success.
Being organized makes you more productive. Don’t use working from home as an excuse to be unorganized.
Set up a good system for organizing your business. You will need to know where everything is kept so that you can access it at a moment’s notice. clear and organize your digital work at the end of every day. If your performance suffers because of an unorganized home office, your business will suffer.
Don’t skimp on tech.
The cost for commercial grade office technology has come down so much, running a small business from home has never been easier.
Consider investing in business-grade Internet bandwidth at home to keep everything running smoothly.
Odds are that your phone is going to play a large role in your home-based business. For flexibility (and budgetary) reasons, it may be tempting to rely solely on a mobile phone for your business’s needs. This is a mistake. Mobile phone quality can be unreliable and sound quality is poor. It will result in making a poor impression on prospective clients and hurt your bottom line.
Invest in a commercial grade phone and internet. It may seem like an unnecessary expense at first. But, how will your most important client feel when your $20.00 a month phone drops calls every two minutes?
Consider a Virtual Office in an executive suite as second work location.
Your home office may be perfectly adequate to roll up your sleeves and getting work done, but meeting clients, employees or adversaries in your home may not be practical.
Or, you may that you get more done when you’re not working in your home from time-to-time.
Coffee shops are one alternative, but they can be loud, and public Wi-Fi can be sketchy. Libraries are quiet, but offer very little privacy and are not great places for meeting.
Consider some of these tips if you are about to or recently have opened your home-based business, and you will already be ahead of your competition!
