What I wish I knew before I started working from home
We surveyed several of our clients to find out what they wish they knew before they started working from home. Some of these things that you would have never considered and others are going to make you laugh.
For the best advice on making money from home, please be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our videos and hit the bell so that you get notified every time we post a new video. This video will help you avoid some of the pitfalls. They can stress you out and cause you to lose money when working from home. Make sure to stay till the end of the video for the top 3 things that you can do to make working from home more pleasurable and more profitable.
So after surveying everyone, we came up with 9 of the main things that people wish they knew before they started their businesses.
The first thing is, why is it that friends and family don’t think you’re really working?? They’re asking you to pick up their kids from school because they’re sick. They’re asking you to go to lunch and go shopping. They want you to go run errands with them or run errands for them. I don’t know why when you work from home, other people have a really hard time understanding that you are working.
So I don’t know what this is, but it seemed to be a common theme for everyone. So the best thing I can tell you is to have boundaries. For me, I usually just say I have a client call or I have a deadline. ‘I can’t do that. I would love to help you, but I have a deadline’ or ‘I have a client call.’ So you need to decide what you can say to your friends and family. You know that doesn’t put them off but makes it clear to them that you’re working.
So the second thing is making sure that you understand that YOU need to work from home and that you can’t just go and do all of the things you want to do. You can’t pop out for lunch. You can’t go shopping. You shouldn’t do laundry. You shouldn’t clean your house. You need to have some boundaries around your work schedule.
Now, I know most of us work from home. We work for ourselves because we like the flexibility and there is absolutely nothing wrong with running an errand in the middle of the day or even doing a load of laundry. As long as you’re staying on task with your workflow.
If you start getting behind on your workflow because you’re doing these other things you need to reel yourself in.
And this is something that I think most of us don’t realize because you know, again, I’m going to pop to the grocery store, I’ll be back in 15 minutes and it’s an hour before you get back, or you know, I’m just going upstairs to tidy the kids’ rooms and it won’t take but a minute, an hour and a half passes.
The problem with that is your work day goes on and on and on because you’re not finishing your work tasks. So the best thing to do is to really plan out your work and work your plan and that’ll make it easier for you to set boundaries with family and also for you to set boundaries with yourself. Okay, this one was something everyone talked about – it’s really easy to work ALL OF THE TIME because you love what you do and you’re passionate about it and you’re learning about marketing and you know you want to make as much money as you can, but sometimes being able to work all the time or working really long hours, doesn’t mean you’re more productive. It often means that you’re just very inefficient.
So you need to make sure that you are timing how long it takes you to do your task and you’re being efficient and you are setting deadlines for yourself. Because again, you can take a task that could take an hour and drag it out over four hours and that’s not helping you make more money. And it’s also not giving you a good work life balance.
So just because you can work all the time doesn’t mean you should. And just because you can work all the time does not mean you should be inefficient. So a lot of our people said they needed to have a designated space to work from.
Now this could go either way.
For Jeanne, she does have an office. She converted her garage into a fabulous office. Her garage door has all these amazing windows and she really enjoys having her own space to work from. I’m single and I don’t have kids, so I’m home alone most of the time. I worked from the dining room, from the couch, from my bed, from the Lanai, from the veranda by the pool. I just like working in different locations.
It hasn’t been until I started to shoot videos that I wish I had a designated space because that would make my life a whole lot easier. If you’re a person who enjoys working in different locations, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but a lot of our clients told us that they needed a designated space.
They needed to feel like they were walking into work in order to be productive, so that’s something you have to figure out for yourself. Again, none of these things are right or wrong. They’re just things that we all wish we knew in the beginning and you have to get into a flow and figure out what works best for you.
Another thing that came up with several of us is setting work hours, making sure that you have time that you’re off, and time that you’re working. Again, that can be challenging if you love what you do and the more hours you work, the more money you make. So it’s very easy to get work life balance, a little distorted, I guess. It’s up to you how many hours you work.
A lot of the feedback that we got was, I’m much happier now that I’ve set office hours, now that I’ve set my hours and I know when I’m going to work and when I’m going to be off. That may be something you want to start from the beginning so you have good work life balance and you don’t feel stressed out or overworked and you’re making sure to do the things that you love and that recharge your battery.
So this one’s quite interesting. You stopped showering and you’re in your pajamas when the kids get home from school. A lot of the feedback came back that it’s very easy to just get the kids off to school, pop into the office, and before you know it, it’s three o’clock and you haven’t showered and you’re still in your pajamas. So that could or couldn’t be a bad thing, it is up to you. I like to get dressed and get ready for the day if I’m doing videos, I have a Zoom call, or I’m headed out to network. However, on days when I’m scripting videos or I’m doing a client work where I’m not seeing anyone, I am perfectly happy to stay in shorts and a t-shirt and sometimes I go for a swim in the middle of the day, so I don’t really want to have a shower.
So you decide what works best for you. I know a lot of people, they do better when they get up in the morning, they shower, they get dressed just like they’re going to work. And I know other people say, you know what, I hit the ground running. I don’t worry about showering, I’m productive. And then at the end of the day I get showered, I get dressed and I get on with my time with my family. If you already work from home, comment below, do you work in your PJ’s or do you shower and get dressed every morning? We’d love to know. So I guess the real question is, are you eating pie right now? I know working from home it’s really easily to snack and it’s really easy to just get off track with munching all day.
So that’s something I think we all wish we knew when we first started. So we didn’t gain that 20 pounds. Again.
something else everyone commented on was how much they miss face to face time. They didn’t realize that they would miss the camaraderie of being in an office. And I think that’s true for a lot of us. If we’re people, people,
and we’re not out meeting clients on a regular basis, you know, you’re busy doing client work.
So a great way to combat that is to use technology. Use Zoom instead of phone calls so you get to see people face to face. Make sure you’re out networking, and if you can, meet with your clients. It helps you have that one on one interaction. And I think that just helps you from feeling isolated and getting lonely because sometimes working at home can be very isolating. In fact, being a business owner, can be very isolating.
You feel like, you know, you’re the woman with three heads and nobody knows what you’re going through. So make sure you’re getting enough face time with the people you care about and that you’re charging your battery with social interaction if that’s important to you. In the description below, we have a list, a free list of 85 different businesses you could start from home. Make sure to click that link and get that list if you haven’t decided what
business you want to start. Okay, so as promised, I’m going to go over the 3 tips that everyone in our little chat decided were the most important for working from home and being successful.
The first one was plan your work and work your plan. If you get up each day knowing what tasks you need to get done and you’ve blocked your time, you’re more likely to get everything done in a timely fashion. Now, life happens. You get a call from a client that you weren’t expecting, you have to pick up a sick child from school, these things happen, but on a daily basis, if you plan your work and you work your plan, you’re far more likely to succeed in getting everything done.
The second one was quite interesting, saying yes means saying no. So every time you say yes to a request, you’re saying no to something else. So if you say yes to go out to lunch with a friend, then you may be saying no to sitting down and having dinner with your children at night because you’ve got to get your work done. So when someone has a request, take a moment to think about it. If I say yes to this, what else has to get moved? What else will change?
What will I have to say no to? It’s the best way to prioritize what you do. Make sure that every time you agree to do something, it’s the right move for your business and for you personally. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying, no, sorry I can’t do that.
And the 3rd tip was try different things. You have to figure out how to do this YOUR way. We’re all individuals. We’re all unique. And yes, when we asked this question, we ended up with a lot of common themes in the challenges from working from home, but at the end of the day, we’re all unique, we’re all different, we all have our likes and our dislikes. So try things. If setting up a schedule to meet your mom for lunch every Friday, alleviates some of the guilt that you have from always saying no, do that. If working from your PJ’s feels right, do that. If you’re much more productive, if you get up early and get dressed and ready for the day, do that. But if something’s not working, change it. If you feel like you’re not being productive or you feel like things could be going better, just try tweaking little things, making changes.
You could always change it back. Like I said before, I love not having an office. I love working from different places in my house until we started doing videos and now I realize I need a dedicated space. So things change as you and your business change and that’s okay. We’re going to link a video up here called, Can You Make Money Working From Home? Make sure to check that out, next.
We are truly excited to be a part of your entrepreneurial journey. If you haven’t already, please SUBSCRIBE to our channel, LIKE our video. That lets us know that you want more videos just like this, and please SHARE our video if you feel like it could help someone you know and we’ll see you in the next video. And don’t forget, DREAM BIG.
