Pros, Cons, and Solutions for Starting a Business from Home

More and more individuals are and taking the plunge and starting a home-based business. We’ll help you map out some of the advantages and disadvantages to starting a business from home. Not to mention, we’ll share valuable tools every home-based business should utilize.

Pros to starting a business from home:

• You’re your own boss. Finally, you don’t have to report to anyone but yourself. No more feeling micromanaged, undervalued, and unappreciated.

• Spend more time with your family. Since you’ll be working from home, your commute time will be lowered to a total of 15 seconds. The walk down the hall is so short you might be tempted to stay in your pajamas! Not to mention, you determine your schedule—100% of the time.

• Enjoy greater tax benefits. You’ll begin to enjoy a list of tax deductions only available to those running a home-based business. For example, if you have an area in your home dedicated to your business operations, you can take a home office deduction.

Cons of a home-based business:

Starting a business from home does not come without a price. As you contemplate all of the pros, be sure you’ve also considered the cons.

• You’ll have to deal with an overabundance of distractions. You’ll constantly be surrounded by all of the things you need to accomplish—both home and work related.

• It’ll be even harder to “leave work at the office.” Because you can so easily jump in and out of home and work life, you might feel like you work longer, later hours.

• You’re now the head of ALL departments. No longer will you answer to just one title. You will have to manage all business-related responsibilities from accounting, to marketing, to customer service, and the list goes on.

• You don’t have immediate access to professional conference rooms. Now that you run your business out of your home, you don’t have access to furnished, fully-stocked office space for client meetings. After all, you can’t hold conferences and important meetings in your living room.

Overcoming the cons:

Don’t let this list scare you away from starting a home-based business. Here’s a list of must-haves to help you make the transition to a successful and manageable home-based business.

• Use a task management tool. One of the favorite tools available for businesses of all sizes is Jira. This tool allows individuals or teams to track a project and, from many different perspectives, visualize its progress. It’s simple to assign due dates or assign tasks to teammates. Sticking to a calendar and actively managing projects will help you keep your business running smoothly and minimize the tendency to feel overwhelmed by all tasks at hand.

• Find reliable virtual receptionist services. A virtual receptionist is a live person that you can hire to help with tasks a typical receptionist might do. These services might include scheduling appointments, forwarding calls, managing incoming calls, voicemail management, online faxing, taking messages, order processing, and even customer service. Imagine freeing yourself of all of the time you spend managing these tedious tasks with a virtual receptionist! For a reasonable price, Davinci Virtual offers professional, U.S.-based virtual receptionist services in all kinds of packages to meet your needs precisely.

• Sign up for virtual office solutions. Davinci also offers home-based businesses virtual office services. When running a small business, it is tough to justify leasing and maintaining an office space for client walk-ins, postage, and client meetings. With virtual office solutions, you don’t have to. At a much smaller cost, you can utilize one of the Davinci meeting spaces as your registered business address to place on business cards, websites, local listings, etc. You can also sign up for mail forwarding, and even have your business listed in the building’s directory. Most Davinci virtual office solution packages include access to onsite office spaces and conference rooms.

• Use Davinci meeting room rentals. If you’re ever in need of a day-office or even a professional space to host a meeting, use Davinci meeting room rental services. You’ll have over 3,000 meeting spaces to choose from in over 900 locations. Davinci Meeting Rooms also include services such as an onsite front desk greeter, copying, printing, LCD projectors and screens, high-definition video/phone conferencing, mailing, food and beverage catering, and more. These services are especially useful to the business traveler. Utilize the mobile-friendly, online meeting room reservation tool to search for location availability near you.

Already started a home-based business? What do you wish you had known before? Share your story and advice with us in the comments below.

About Coco Quillen

Coco is the Chief Operating Officer at Davinci Virtual Office Solutions. She manages the strategic development and operational implementation of services for Davinci. She works closely with all teams to ensure customers are well taken care of.