How to go to Work for Yourself with a Home-Based Business

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Dick Holbrook, in other words, has a wide background in an assortment of trades combined with varied and deep business experience. As a result of that backlog of hardearned lessons, Holbrook's principal advice is what he calls his Theory of Multiple Use: "Make everything serve double duty," he says. "The family car can pick up and deliver for business, the home and the office can share space and utilities, and so on."

Holbrook's theory makes sense in many ways. For one thing, it is certainly worth the effort to plan a new business with an eye toward the sharing of facilities already on hand so that expenses (or "overhead") are kept to a minimum. Then too, it also helps to know that when the family chariot performs business chores or when the bills come in for heat and electricity in the home/office, the parts of those expenses that are business related are honestly tax deductible.

But there's more to Dick's Theory of Multiple Use than that. For even if you have to rent an office or working space, you can share your loft or storefront or barn or whatever facilities you're leasing with other companies or individuals. And don't overlook the possibility of joining forces with someone whose business might attract customers to yours . . . and vice versa!

Dick Holbrook's idea shouldn't be limited just to offices and cars, either. The most obvious way to put multiple use to work is to apply it to you. How? By asking yourself what you can do or what additional service you can perform that is related to your business and uses its facilities but adds an extra source of revenue to help cover expenses.

For example: Can you teach your craft . . . trade . . . skill . . . knowledge? Almost any craftsperson, or artist, or agriculture/gardening expert can also give group or private lessons using the homegrown company's own resources! Anyone with a specialty who has access to neighbors or a community where this special knowledge can be shared can also "feed the kitty" at the office by teaching.

OK, now you know the advantages of making your home your office for its financial benefits. Unfortunately, that's only half the story, because there are drawbacks to that system, too, and one of the most significant of these is the difficulty of separating your family from your business obligations.

Probably the greatest difficulty in family business is the day-after-day an night after-night routine of working wi the same faces and personalities with n relief and no breaks!

The folks I me who'd made a successful go at family enterprise were all sensitive to this prob lem, but ty pointed to the mutual trus that's inherent within a close-knit family as a compensating aspect that actuall enhances the desirability of workin with your own kin.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print