Now that some 16 million Americans work from home, your potential clients and customers are beginning to get comfortable with the idea that perhaps some people actually do conduct professional quality businesses from home. More and more tools are available to help make this possible for you (such as great phone systems and services).
The real question is, do you want or need to go to the extent of disguising the fact that your office is at home? I hope not, because I can't really recommend including such a basic deception in your dealings with customers and clients. Maybe it's your intention to let customers in on the secret as soon as you've had a chance to make a first impression on them, free of any anti home office bias on their part. Well, if you really feel it is necessary, here are some tips, including a few uncovered recently by Wall Street Journal reporter Katia Brener:
- Hire a hidden typist. David Young, a communications consultant in Township, PA, types "mbs" at the bottom of his letters, as if they were his secretary's initials. In fact, they stand for "make believe secretary."
- Put the family behind a glass wall. Mike Pitts, an advertising consultant in Manhattan Beach, CA, keeps family noises out of his office background (without losing all contact with his family) with a set of French doors leading to his office. The doors are always closed, but children or visitors can see whether Dad would mind being interrupted without actually disturbing him. Use your tools well. If you want to invest in state of the art computer and communications equipment, record a message that sounds just like the digital robot inside your telephone, or send out a flyer made up of the hokiest cookie cutter graphics imaginable that scream, "I FOUND THIS ON PAGE ONE OF THE MANUAL," go ahead. But with a little creativity, personalization and professional help if you need it, you can present a with it, dignified face and ear to the world. Make sure you look and sound as good as your gear allows.
- Give your address the best possible positioning. It's not really worth moving from Broken Bones Trail to State Street in order to give your home based start up stationery the right ring. So if your street address is hopelessly suburban sounding or just plain ugly, use a post office box (at least until you have to disclose your street address for courier service). Many mail box franchises offer suite addresses if that approach suits your fancy.
- Reach out to meet someone. To spare your family the agony of appearing well behaved, and to avoid the likelihood that you'll be under the kitchen sink when your influential guests arrive, schedule meetings at comfortable public rooms. One of our local banks will loan office space as well as money. You could even consider this new wrinkle on the commercial real estate scene: "corporate identity settings."
On the other hand, wouldn't you rather be up front about your home office and put your energy into delivering such out standing products or services that no one will care where you work? Of course.
Can you handle the solitude?
This last measure of whether your business is suited for home basing is the most personal and subjective, and can even lead to surprising confessionals. Humorist John Buskin, based at home in New York, offers these reflections on his 10 years as a house worker:
Often I'd fall to my knees, sobbing in isolation, offering up insane acts of charity or contrition in return for a phoned summons to a business lunch. I talked to myself incessantly. I sang as well, at a passionately high volume, opting for various selections from an eclectic repertoire that included the spirited, zippy Trini Lopez version of "If I Had a Hammer"; the giddy instrumental, "Holiday for Strings"; and the soulful, introspective "I'm a Girl Watcher."
When checks arrived on time, I'd ape walk through the house, cackling maniacally. When they didn't, I'd shriek with paranoid visions of salivating office dingoes shredding my work, taking credit for it or, worse, performing it aloud in a Dumb Guy persona to an assemblage of guffawing suits. Countless times as when my wife would appear at my workroom door offering up an assortment of vise grips and brightly recounting the convoluted tale of a crotchety plumbing aperture, usually after the preamble "On your next break . . ." I was a hair's breadth from homicide.
I sincerely hope your experience is just as exciting. These, then, are the four main areas in which to look for compatibility between your work and your home:
- Can you put in productive hours there?
- Can you avoid becoming hopelessly distracted?
- Can you seem businesslike and serve customers well?
- Can you handle the isolation?
