Jeremy Kaplan
Running your business from home isn’t easy for anyone. Here are some tips to help you become a pro at it…
Create Your Own Work Space
First of all, it’s time to create your own work space at home. It’s important to pick an area that has plenty of natural light, and where the light won’t shine on your computer screen too much as this might give you a headache. You might also choose an area where you can open a window every now and then if it isn’t raining – fresh air will definitely help if you’ve been working hard for a while and you’re sleepy or you’ve got a sore head! Invest in filing cabinets to keep everything neat, and put up a cork noticeboard over your desk so you can pin up all your important reminders.
Get Out And Network
Even if you love to work from home, you need to ditch your pajamas and get out of your home office every once in a while and out into the real world. Keep an eye open for any networking events in your local area – not only will they keep you current and learning new things about your industry but they’ll also help you connect with new clients. They might also help to prevent you from turning into a hermit, which is unfortunately easy to do if you work from home all the time!
Communicate With Your Clients
It’s important to make sure that you’re easy to contact – otherwise people will give up and move onto another company. Get clear business cards printed up and make sure that you have a clearly labelled contact page on your site which contains your phone number, email address and postal address. If you don’t want to give out your home address then you can use a company like physical address which will forward your mail both physically and digitally.
Use Social Media
Getting in touch with the modern world is tough for some people but it’s also essential – which means that you need to get on social media, whether you do it yourself or you hire a digital expert to help you out with a strategy. Get Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and make sure that you update them frequently (with proofread updates – poor grammar and spelling on social media doesn’t look fantastic!). It’s important to create a voice that’s both chatty and professional to make sure that people want to follow you on social media sites. Post links to your own blog, to related articles, and use it to network with other professionals.
Be Flexible But Work Hard
Finally, don’t use the excuse of not having a boss breathing down your neck to slack off. It can be tempting to prioritise other things over work but you can’t let that happen – keep to normal working hours as much as you can, even if you have to be flexible sometimes because of various real life personal reasons. Working from home means you have to be extremely self disciplined – remember that your livelihood depends on it!
