1. Determine what hours and days of the week you will be working. When you are working for yourself and from a home office you basically have 24 hours 7 days a week available as your workweek. Sure, some of your time may need to fall within a “normal” workweek to accommodate meeting with clients and networking but for the most part you can work whenever you like. What freedom. Right? Well it can be, but what I have found is that if you don’t decide what time of the day and/or days of the week you are going to work that it is very difficult to establish a routine. Without a routine, you have no set schedule and without a set schedule you work till 2 a.m. and then try to go to bed when your brain is still racing with all the “new” ideas you want to try. Remember, you still need to take care of yourself and get your required number of hours of sleep. You don’t want to neglect that because if you are sick, you aren’t generating business, and if you aren’t generating business you don’t have income (no such things as paid sick days when you are self-employed). I never had a problem with time management at work and believe what I have been experiencing is not a problem with time management but rather what part of the day am I going to consider my work day.

2. Set a space in your home aside as your office. If you think you can work on your laptop anywhere in your house, you are not going to have the focus you need. If you don’t use a particular spot for an office, you will get easily distracted by things that never distracted you before i.e. Today Show, your pets, friends phone calls or even the mailman. Once you determine where your office space will be, use it. Don’t do what I did and just go into it when you needed your headset or a reference book. Having this space as your office also creates a separation between your business and home life.

3. You need to give leave people with the perception that you are running a serious business. I found that not only others but even I sometimes lost the thought that I was running a “real” business. When asked what I was doing with all my free time, I usually hesitated before I shared the fact that I started a consulting business. Not sure why that is but I believe it was because I wasn’t sure what the focus of my business was, who my potential clients were or even if I thought I was going to really make a go of it. Some ways to give the impression that your business is truly legit are: business cards, an office phone number, business email address, business stationery, and a business website.

4. How will you handle the financial aspects of running your business. You need to figure out all of your expenses including your salary. Oh yeah, you need to continue to have some sort of income coming in on a regular basis and/or you need to know how long you can go without making any money. Both of these are something you need to figure out and get agreement on with your family. It is definitely going to affect all of your lives so everyone should know upfront that there will probably be changes to your way of life. You also need to set some financial goals including a timeline to be used to measure how you are progressing. Develop a plan to adjust if you aren’t meeting your goals. JM Clark Consulting • http://www.JMClarkConsulting.com • Penfield, NY 14526

5 Marketing is also a difficult part of running your business. I am not sure that it is any more difficult when you are running a home based business but it is a challenge to find customers and clients. You will need to determine various ways to market your business and try all of them. Eventually you will find what works best for your business and will focus more of you marketing on just a few but never give up trying new ones or brush a thought off with a “that won’t work for me” without giving it a try. You just never know and there are new methods available all the time. I would never have thought that using Facebook or Twitter would be considered a marketing alternative but have found both a good way to get the word out. Press releases, online social networking, on sight networking, business alliances, blogs and newsletters are some others.

6 My home based business has provided me with a lot of challenges but definitely has provided me with some advantages too, the main one being that I can work part time and slowly grow my business so I don’t need a large financial commitment. Here are some things I am now doing to address many of the challenges I have mentioned above:

1. Monthly Action Plan. I post them on my white board so I don’t lose sight of them and this helps me to keep track of what I have completed and what I still have left to do.

2. Ask for help and advise. I found that working alone I had no one to bounce ideas off of so I needed to depend on a few people whose opinions I trust and value. They have become my “test” market for articles, workshops, surveys etc. I am not sure they realize how valuable they are to me and I want to thank them for caring and being there for me.

3. Persistence. Don’t get discouraged when something doesn’t work out as you thought it would. Determine what didn’t work and what you could have done differently. Remember it…and move on. The most important part is to figure out what works for you and get busy doing it!

Jane Clark is the owner of JM Clark Consulting specializing in Leadership Development and Inclusion & Diversity Training. She helps business leaders enhance their leadership skills, strengthen their knowledge about the value of diversity, manage their careers and grow personally. JM Clark Consulting offers onsite workshops, teleseminars and coaching, as well as a biweekly newsletter, Consultant’s Corner. Check out http://www.JMClarkConsulting.com

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