A Guest Post by
Rachel Carlson
BIG Challenges of Working From Home
One memory of my experience working from home sticks out to me – a video Skype meeting with one of my first clients. I rushed to put on some nice clothes, cleaned up my office a little and prepared as best I could. When the meeting finally happened, the client remarked “I expected to see a person in their pajamas in a tiny one bedroom apartment.”
And that’s a part of the “work from home problem” isn’t it? Normal business people, as they like to think of themselves, have some fairly critical prejudices against work-from-home workers. With that one remark, I realized that the client thought of people who work from home with two things in mind:
- I was probably too lazy to put on some decent clothes for a meeting.
- I was more than likely not making enough money to have more than a studio apartment.
This misconception is one of the biggest challenges of working from home – among many others. Once you convince your clients that you aren’t some slob, furiously clamoring for a living from the scraps of “real businesses,” you have an opportunity to overcome all the challenges and become a successful entrepreneur.
Setting Reasonable Hours
It’s true that few of us work the 9-5 grind. And why do so if you don’t have to? What is it really about that eight-hour period that makes it so “work-worthy?” I honestly admit that I hate working 9-5, and I don’t normally work in periods longer than four hours. When you work with clients, however, you have to set reasonable hours for when they can contact you. Try the following to keep those hours, without interfering with your preferred work schedule:
- Make yourself available for calls at a normal schedule (like 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.). If you’re getting so many calls that it’s interfering with your life, you have a very good problem and might need to consider hiring some help. It should go without saying that a mobile phone is essential.
- If you don’t want your mobile number published, simply forward your number through Phone.com with a more professional 888 number that you can give your clients. This has the added benefit of allowing you to see when it’s a work call (and avoid answering with a hearty “what’s up?”).
Competing With the “Big Box” Providers
This seems to be a bit of a misconception carried over from the brick and mortar business world. You can actually compete with larger companies quite easily. In fact, you have some decisive advantages:
- You don’t have much overhead, meaning you can usually undercut like crazy. But don’t get carried away. Do some research to find out how much your major competitors are charging for similar services and set your prices just under theirs. If you go too cheap, clients won’t believe that you do good work.
- You are a single person. Always highlight the fact that you are the only person a client needs to speak to – you take the order and finish it yourself. Clients usually love this. In many situations, you can even beat the turnaround times offered by large companies simply because of the lack of red tape.
- Do research on every client and gear your pitch towards their needs. If they are a small company, they’ll love that you work alone. Larger companies might get concerned with your slower turnaround time. With these types of clients, you don’t need to stress that you work from home. You do need to stress that you have an unprecedented personal dedication to each client.
- You can establish a deeply personal brand. If you design business cards, for example, and have received many compliments on your attention to raised print designs, leverage this with future clients. While larger companies have an army of professionals doing the same thing, nothing can beat your personal approach.
Meeting With Clients
It’s fairly rare that a client requests a face-to-face meeting. Actually, most of your clients will be very busy (or will want to seem like they are) and will convert after a single phone call or email. Some will prefer to do a video chat. If you serve some local clients, they might want to meet. But as a general rule, never invite the client to your home to do business. Instead, learn to love lunch meetings. Offering to take a client out to lunch to discuss a new contract is a great way to avoid having to reveal that you work from home, while showing a potential client that you have a professional attitude towards business.
On the other hand, I’ve secured more contracts over a beer than over lunch. If you work in a particularly casual industry like web development, SEO, or content writing, your best tool can be a clean, quiet bar. This works well for meetings after 5 p.m.
But remember that working from home is just an alternative to working in an office, not necessarily a license to show up in shorts and a t-shirt. Business people will still expect you to look professional, and you have to be very careful about casual business conversations. You still have a product to sell, and you need to project an image of professionalism at all times.
Sure there are little challenges that we face at home or in an office, but …
What do you find are the big challenges of working at home for you?
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Author’s Bio:
Rachel Carlson is a writer and student that works from home. While she spends a lot of her time writing, she also helps different companies like Clear Wireless with gaining exposure through various blogs and websites. She has recently started a new Twitter account and is finally going to give it a real shot. She can be followed at @carlson_rachel.
Thanks, Rachel. You covered this big topic in fresh way.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
