USING your home as an office can be the ideal way to start up a business if
you need little more than a laptop computer and a telephone line. The home
is now the most popular location for start-ups, with more than 2,000 formed
each week.
But what happens when the business starts to expand? Do you have to move to
proper offices – or is it possible to stay put without limiting the
company’s potential?
How to run a business from home without outgrowing it is a dilemma facing many
entrepreneurs. They are reluctant to move into an office and give up the
benefits of working from home – but don’t want to restrict the growth of
their firm either.
The good news is that with a bit of lateral thinking it is possible to stay at
home without sacrificing the growth potential of your business. The solution
is to outsource everything that will not fit into your home – whether it be
staff, storage facilities or specialist skills.
Louise Leadbetter runs Honey PR, a national public-relations business, from
her home in Shropshire. She has solved the problem of finding space for
staff by creating a network of self-employed PR consultants who work from
their own homes.
She said: “Employing people has always been the greatest challenge in a
service industry. I have found the solution in outsourcing. I can supply
clients with bespoke teams of people according to their skills.”
And her lateral thinking is not confined to recruiting staff. When she decided
to get involved in a business that imported scooters from California, a move
that required far more storage space than she had at home, Leadbetter solved
the problem by renting an unused cowshed from a local farmer – and she got
it at a peppercorn rent.
“Doing it this way has enabled me to grow the business without having to give
up the freedom of working from home,” she said. “Now the only limit to the
growth is my ability to manage the teams I have created.
“Working from home means that I can arrange my work round my life. If I want
to go fishing for a couple of hours I can, and if I need to take my kids to
the doctor I don’t have to ask anybody. It is a personal choice whether you
want to grow your business while running it from home, but you definitely
can do both.”
Another home-based entrepreneur, Caroline Putus, who runs Enjoy Riding, a
horse-riding school, from her home near Ipswich, brought in specialist help
from outside to fill the gaps in her skills. She said: “I operate and grow
my business by outsourcing some areas, such as accounting, business
development and administration that I would struggle to do myself. My core
expertise is encouraging people to enjoy riding.”
Emma Jones, the founder of Enterprise Nation, an organisation and website set
up to support home-based firms, said people were adopting increasingly
innovative ways to enable them to run growing businesses from home. She
said: “Home business owners are ambitious when it comes to company growth
and they are innovative when it comes to finding ways of expanding the
business without outgrowing the home. They are outsourcing noncore functions
to specialists and they are hiring people who will work from their own homes
in an attempt to remain competitive.”
In a survey of its members, Enterprise Nation found that virtually all planned
to grow their business over the next year and 86% believed they could
achieve their targets while running the business from home. The survey also
found that 63% would rather outsource than employ full-time personnel, which
would require them to move their business out of the home.
The survey also highlighted the fact that for many people the lifestyle
benefits were so great that even if their businesses become large enough to
require a fully fledged office, they would prefer to seek out solutions that
would enable them to stay at home.
The biggest benefits of running a business from home are the lack of a commute
to work, the ability to juggle other commitments, such as looking after
children, and a more pleasant working environment.
One example of this is Paul Stuart-Smith, who set up a foreign-currency
transaction business, Integral FX, from his penthouse apartment after a
career with Morgan Stanley in London and New York. The business has doubled
its turnover in the past six months and Stuart-Smith is now considering
employing someone to help him but he does not want to move the business out
of his home.
He said: “I can start work early and have a number of transactions complete by
the time I take my children to school. I enjoy the flexibility of running
the business from home so I don’t want to move out. However, the business is
prospering so I am hoping to recruit someone who will work from their own
home. Keeping this business home-based means keeping overheads down and
productivity high.”
Indeed, one of the biggest deterrents to continuing to run a business from
home as it grows is not space or skills or technology, but trying to get to
grips with the myriad rules and regulations laid down by local councils over
matters such as planning permission and business rates.
Jones said: “The problem is that local authorities don’t make it clear what
the rules governing home-working in their area are. We would like them to
explain exactly what rules and regulations apply to businesses operating
from home. At present there remains a shadowy relationship between ambitious
home business owners and local councils.”
Enterprise Nation is working with the Department of Trade and Industry to
clarify the government’s position.
