Start Your Own Business

Author: Kathy Burns-Millyard

When most people think of working from home, they immediately think "freedom". And with that thought follows the thoughts of "freedom to do what I want, when I want", "freedom to set my own schedule", "freedom to sleep in or go have fun when I decide to"... the list goes on.

Once you've started your business though, you'll likely receive an immediate reality check. It doesn't work out quite the way you thought it would.

To some degree, the above comments are true in a home business environment ñ but not always and sometimes not even often. Let's look at each statement and see how reality fits in.

"Freedom to sleep in or go have fun when I decide to"
If you have children, especially early risers or older children who have to get up and ready for school, you'll find that you can't sleep in. I have three school children and my day routinely starts at 6:00 - 6:30am. They get up early on the weekends too, so I rarely sleep past 8 - 9am even on Saturdays and Sundays.

If you have clients, partners or prospects who are in a different time zone, you'll find yourself receiving phone calls at 9am ñ their time ñ even if their time is three hours ahead of yours. This can be avoided to some degree by placing prominent hours of operation and time zone notices on your sales materials, but not everyone will see those. The easiest way to avoid this is to simply turn off your office phone during personal hours. If you do though, make sure you remember to turn it back on when you start work each day and check your voice mail regularly.

As for going out and having fun whenever you decide to... well, maybe. When you're first starting a business, you'll often find yourself stressed out or worried about making a success of things. When you're worried about generating income espe....[MORE]