Establishing your own home-based business is a mark of success both personally and career-wise. However, there are many challenges just to get the business up and running, and yet more challenges lie ahead. If you’re lucky, one of your biggest challenges will be an unexpected growth of customers who demand your services, once they discover you’re talented and deliver a quality product or service! But, not everyone’s so lucky, and the challenges we meet can be much more vexing. Addressing these obstacles requires an array of personal and professional characteristics. Taking inventory of what you have in your management toolkit will help you meet these challenges with your head held high, and exceed your own expectations!
Plan Your Life
Being home-based requires you to be more careful about your daily planner than someone who works for a more traditional company. The reason is simple. Clients have expectations of you 24/7, and leaving your job to come home for the day is not an option. Many without their own business don’t understand that it’s more demanding on your personal schedule than a job that ends at 5:00.
Growth Protection
This is more about having someone available to help you part-time should your business grow too fast in too short a period of time. It’s always part of the business plan to have controlled growth, but sometimes, good things happen. So don’t let a good thing become a problem. Make connections with quality people who can do quality work on short notice. When needed, they can be hired in a pinch. Just make sure the pay rates and work requirements are understood before putting them on your short list of available help.
Personal Emergencies
Everyone will encounter some type of personal emergency if they’re operating a home-based business for any length of time. This can put clients, and revenues, on hold or possibly result in their loss. There are several ways to meet this challenge, the first being hiring that person waiting in the wings to come on board. A second option is to have a trusted friend who can deal with the situation for you, such as in the case of a sick child. A third option is to inform clients upfront that in the case of a personal emergency, projects can be temporarily delayed when given the appropriate notice. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Sleep Deprivation
Sometimes, a home-based business will wreak havoc with your sleeping schedule – if you’re able to have one at all. The demands of clients can get downright frustrating, but as a home-based business you provide both the product and service and the customer support. There are personal emergencies and there are business emergencies. The best way to meet the sleep challenge is to be flexible enough to make trade-offs. Accept the fact that there will be days you have to exchange sleep for profit. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, make time to get some earned, undisturbed extra sleep. That’s why there’s voice mail, after all!
The number of challenges for anyone running their a home-based business is as varied as the qualities of the people who operate them. In most cases, it’;s a matter of the person’s willingness to plan, sacrifice, and sometimes endure, for the end result of having the advantages of working from home. Meeting challenges often requires swapping one thing for another, and they can be successfully met with the right approach.
Plan Your Life
Being home-based requires you to be more careful about your daily planner than someone who works for a more traditional company. The reason is simple. Clients have expectations of you 24/7, and leaving your job to come home for the day is not an option. Many without their own business don’t understand that it’s more demanding on your personal schedule than a job that ends at 5:00.
Growth Protection
This is more about having someone available to help you part-time should your business grow too fast in too short a period of time. It’s always part of the business plan to have controlled growth, but sometimes, good things happen. So don’t let a good thing become a problem. Make connections with quality people who can do quality work on short notice. When needed, they can be hired in a pinch. Just make sure the pay rates and work requirements are understood before putting them on your short list of available help.
Personal Emergencies
Everyone will encounter some type of personal emergency if they’re operating a home-based business for any length of time. This can put clients, and revenues, on hold or possibly result in their loss. There are several ways to meet this challenge, the first being hiring that person waiting in the wings to come on board. A second option is to have a trusted friend who can deal with the situation for you, such as in the case of a sick child. A third option is to inform clients upfront that in the case of a personal emergency, projects can be temporarily delayed when given the appropriate notice. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Sleep Deprivation
Sometimes, a home-based business will wreak havoc with your sleeping schedule – if you’re able to have one at all. The demands of clients can get downright frustrating, but as a home-based business you provide both the product and service and the customer support. There are personal emergencies and there are business emergencies. The best way to meet the sleep challenge is to be flexible enough to make trade-offs. Accept the fact that there will be days you have to exchange sleep for profit. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, make time to get some earned, undisturbed extra sleep. That’s why there’s voice mail, after all!
The number of challenges for anyone running their a home-based business is as varied as the qualities of the people who operate them. In most cases, it’;s a matter of the person’s willingness to plan, sacrifice, and sometimes endure, for the end result of having the advantages of working from home. Meeting challenges often requires swapping one thing for another, and they can be successfully met with the right approach.
Bessa Hayworth writes all about working and learning from home. Her recent work is about Affordable Online RN to BSN Programs for busy moms.
1 Comment
Rhonda H. · December 10, 2015 at 8:48 pm
I work from home as a virtual assistant, internet researcher, blogging, and more. It is a challenge juggling the demands of a job and family. But one way I’ve found to reduce some of that stress is to use a virtual office service. Peachtree Offices located in Atlanta offers a wide range of virtual office packages to meet the needs of a busy working mom.
http://www.peachtreeoffices.com/