How to stay business-like in your home business

Julia Bickerstaff is a business coach who advises home businesses, medium-sized companies and helps start up entrepreneurs turn their vision into a real business.

She shares her tips for ensuring your home business and office remains a place to do business.

“I think you need a separate place to do your work from home and you need to be quite work-like about it. I think if your work is all spread around your home life, you can get very distracted and it doesn’t give a good head space.”

“I have a thing that if I’ve got difficult phone conversations to do, I actually have to put a pair of heels on and make myself a bit professional.”

“I think it’s important that people that work at home get out and see people because I think they can actually become a little bit wrapped up with themselves. They don’t go out and see enough clients or potential customers. Even if your business is say an internet business and you don’t actually need to see customers, you still need to understand your customers. And I see people who spend too much time at home not interacting enough with who their customer base would be and therefore misunderstanding who they’re actually aiming for.”

“And I think to actually set some hours is good. Say “my hours of work are nine to five” but if I’m working at home, that’s what I’m actually going to do in those hours. I’m not going to fiddle around and be in the kitchen, I’m actually going to work and I’m going to have other times when I’m at home and I’m not working. To actually sort of compartmentalise it a bit, I think that’s quite important.”

Read our full interview with Julia Bickerstaff.