successful home working
Posts tagged case studies
‘Office working has never suited me’
61 day ago
Sheree Lowe, also known as SundownerVA, is the latest contributor to the Home Office Gallery with her fascinating itemisation of the bits and pieces she carries round as a mobile worker. This is what she told me in the email that accompanied her photo:
‘Office working has never suited me. The main reason for this is that I feel completely stifled by routine. One of the reasons I stopped working for someone else was that when I walked into the office, I knew what I would be doing that day … and I knew what I would be doing the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and could see my dreary working life mapped out, all the way to the horizon.
‘Working for myself, no two days are the same, and the day I am expecting when I wake up in the morning is not usually the day I’m reflecting back on that evening! I love how great opportunities constantly come up if you’re open to them, and if you’re not in the right mood for something on one particular day, no worries, you can adjust your day accordingly. And THAT is why I don’t have an office! I don’t have a separate space for a home office at home, and I will never rent any office space if I can avoid it.’
I love this firstly because it confirms my own belief that you don’t need a dedicated space for a home office, and it’s always nice to feel right, and secondly because it so neatly sums up the reasons so many of us choose this path and continue on it, even when it gets hard – very hard – and a job and salary seem such a tempting alternative.
Sheree asked me why I set up Work from Home Wisdom. The short answer is that I work for myself because working for someone else feels limiting and lacking in fulfilment. And I’m doing this work relating to home working because I previously ran a cleaning business that was financially very successful but mind-numbingly dull.
I knew that my next venture had to be something that drew much more on my experience and skills and allowed me to express myself more, and after a very long time this is what it turned out to be! I’m still working on how to make it as financially viable as the cleaning business, and I’ll be telling you more about my plans soon.
Why have you chosen to do what you do? Was it carefully planned or did you fall into it by accident?
Expanding the home office into self storage
31 month ago
by Judy
in Home business
Part 2 of the guest post by Big Yellow Self Storage begun with Maximising space for home business:
The major benefit of business self storage is the flexibility. Take, for example, a freelance accountant who works from home. With the run up to the end of the financial year, they find themselves, as you’d expect, inundated with documents from their clients – all needing to be carefully organised, kept safe, and on hand for easy reference.
Our accountant initially rents a storage room for a few months to house the overflow of paperwork (the facility is a quick car ride down the road… the UK now has as many self storage facilities as it does McDonald’s restaurants – around 1,200), but finds the storage space much easier to work in because, as a blank canvass, it can be organised in any way they want.
Suddenly our accountant takes on a new huge client. Good news for the business, and no problem in terms of space either. Our accountant can remove the partition to the next storage room (as it’s available) and create one bigger space – with enough room for a chair and desk, this time too. When all the chaos of the tax returns is complete, the Accountant can either shut down the room completely until next year, or maintain a smaller space.
Of course, you’re probably thinking – how could you leave clients’ important documents “offsite”? But like we said earlier – security is taken very seriously and the perception of storage space as being a large galvanised shed in the middle of nowhere is also no longer true. At Big Yellow, customers are given their own unique PIN, which gives access to the lifts; sensors show when rooms are accessed and even if a room is occupied. 24 hour CCTV, parameter fencing and individually alarmed rooms, means that security is definitely not something you need to worry about. And you probably can’t say the same about your hallway…
Big Yellow Self Storage has more than 70 purpose-built self-storage sites across the UK. Our industrial units to let range from 10 sq ft for a locker up to 500 sq ft, with everything in between.
Maximising space for home business
91 month ago
by Judy
in Home business
Today’s guest post by Big Yellow Self Storage explains how home workers can make use of storage facilities for more efficient working and to help expand their business:
Anyone who’s worked from home knows that space comes at a premium. If you’re turning over stock or merchandise (if you’re an eBay seller or a small online retailer for example), it can seem like a good idea to use up any household storage space first – an attic, a garage or a hall cupboard, say.
The problems come when you need to scale up, or if you need an environment that’s not potentially damp, hard to access, or vying for space with a vacuum cleaner. For those of us that aren’t burdened with stock, there are the acres of paperwork, perhaps tools and other equipment to look after, and the challenge of how to carve out an office space when there’s just so much stuff around.
Many businesses that start in the home are now making the transition to using storage space as a flexible solution. Take Martin Shaw, who owns a specialist book storage company: “I started working from home and using my garage, but when we got bigger I needed to use storage space.”
Martin was surprised at the flexibility self storage afforded him: “I don’t have to just come here to pick books or store things; I can actually spend the day at the storage facility. You can really run it as a proper business.”
Using a self storage room as a distribution hub is only one way you can harness storage as a home worker. In July 2011, the Self Storage Association, reported a 5 per cent annual shift away from domestic customers towards business customers. Business self storage is becoming a solution for a new generation of smaller entrepreneurs, attracted by flexibility, affordable rents and the convenience of a no-ties agreement.
One of the biggest benefits is there are no business rates to pay (this can be a hurdle for small businesses that don’t have as much cash up front), and electricity is included in the overall room rental cost. Security, too, is folded in – and housing your expensive equipment at a storage facility may also help lower your insurance premiums because the facilities are seen as so secure.
To be continued
Home working technophobe Part 2
45 months ago
Yesterday’s post ‘A home working technophobe gets technical’ described how I found myself in bemused possession of a piece of kit that ‘connects and seamlessly switches between calls from PC, mobile and home phone’.
As there is no landline in my home office, I’ve been using this amazing bit of technology for making Skype calls, which I do every few days.
In the past my calls have regularly been interrupted by those irritating exchanges of ‘I’m losing you…can you hear me?…can you hear me now?’ Using my new black box thingy the better sound quality was immediately obvious to me, and I’m told I’m coming over clearer at the other end. I haven’t even used the separate mic yet – haven’t needed to.
The main advantage for me is that I can make calls on my mobile without using the handset. Using a mobile next to my ear makes my ear hurt and I get a sensation inside my ear even when I use it with the loudspeaker switched on and the mobile by my mouth. I keep mobile use to an absolute minimum, but occasionally there’s just no way round it so this little black box is a godsend.
So I suppose you’re wondering whether I’d actually make the decision to buy this piece of kit. The honest answer is that left to my own devices I’d never even be aware it existed, but if someone pointed out the factors mentioned above, I might actually consider it. And from me that’s tantamount to a recommendation from anyone tech-savvy.
A quick bit of web research shows they sell from about £135 upwards. No doubt there are distinct differences between models accounting for the price differences, but that’s where my non-techie mind goes blank again.
We’ve all got someone who seems to have been born understanding this stuff, so tell them what kind of calls you make and ask them for a translation if you feel your business calls could be more professional. I actually feel rather chuffed that my home office has been pulled into the 21st century since the photo above was taken two years ago. That’s the thing about us technophobes – once we’ve got it, we love it, but it will be a good few years before we’re willing to go through the process again!
A home working technophobe gets technical
105 months ago
I’ve been putting off writing this post. I could/should have done it two weeks ago, when I received a Smartspeaker through the post from the nice people at Plantronics, whose technology enables us home and mobile workers to communicate wherever we are. They wanted some feedback from what they call the Home-based Worker. In my case that also means a late adopter, and reluctant adopter, of technology.
In other words I am completely unexcited by new pieces of kit or software, and I grumble loudly whenever websites and programmes are updated, which they are, constantly. I’m simply unable to comprehend why Google feels the need to come out with Google+ when we’ve already got Facebook, Twitter and ad infinitum.
But I expect a fair proportion of home workers are like me, and have no interest in the equipment they use beyond being confident that it’s actually going to work. So what follows is a fumbling review of the Smartspeaker by a committed technophobe who nevertheless has a strong interest in working as effectively as I can and helping other home workers to do the same.
Left to me, anything black, shiny and box-shaped would stay in its packaging indefinitely, unless it contains chocolate, so I shamelessly asked the ever-patient A to connect it up for me. (Naturally I prefer to call this delegation, while I stick to what I do best, or at least much better).
I didn’t know what to expect so I was pleasantly surprised when a smallish (about 10 cm square) box emerged from the packaging, with a neat little wireless microphone perched on the side. A reports that it was easy and quick to connect, and that I could easily do it if I’d just be bothered to concentrate. Certainly the enclosed booklet has only two sides of incredibly brief instructions which any technophobe could manage to understand.
That’s as much as I can manage thinking and writing in what feels like a foreign language for which I have no dictionary, so we’ll take a break here. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about what happened when I started to use the Smartspeaker…
