Running a business from home has many advantages and disadvantages but overall the plusses can far out way the minuses.   One of the biggest problems facing the home worker is “How to expand the business” particularly if space and time are at a premium.

Home is now the most popular location for new start up businesses and around 2000 of them are formed every week in the UK; all you need is

• a room or part of a room,
• a phone line with an Internet connection, and
• a computer and possibly
• a decent website

Once you have at least three or all four, you’re in business. 

Working from home can certainly reduce the outgoings when it comes to travel, office rents etc., and it can enhance work life balance providing you lay down some hard and fast rules as to work time and family time.     By and large the home worker can control better the time of day that they work and in doing so improve output by working when they are feeling at your most productive.

Having said all this, sooner or later if your business is successful you will come up on the dilemma of the business outgrowing the space you have at home and at this point you wonder how you will manage to grow the business without moving into bigger premises. 

Working from home requires a little bit of lateral thinking as the business starts to grow, particularly if the space you have is limited.   As a business grows the owner has to look carefully at the need for staff, storage, increasing sales, distribution and of course specialist skills like book keeping and marketing / PR.   The more you can focus on the delivery of your “product” the more profit you will make and of course as a result you will have more satisfied customers.   This means delegating jobs to others, but taking on an employee can be one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the very small business (micro enterprise) with employment protection legislation as it now is, not to mention the myriad of regulations that business owners have to know about and be wary of, if not active in or with.  

So many businesses these days actually prefer to stay small or more correctly prefer not to out grow their capabilities lest they actually have to employ someone.   However, the more enterprising owners have become to realise that the answer lies in “Outsourcing” and one way to grow your business is to use other like minded business people to achieve that objective.   Here are some of the skills and services you can outsource; -

• Book-keeping
• Marketing and PR
• Storage
• Appointment making and secretarial
• Website development and Internet Marketing

Whilst you won’t get these services for free, outsourcing them to other small businesses means that you are building a network of customer focussed suppliers who not only will provide the skills or services you need to allow you to concentrate on the important aspects of running your business, they will also become potential introducers of business from their own client base.     That is what networking is about.

Too many owner managers try to do everything themselves and as a result end up with marketing that is poor and ineffective for the time and money spent on it; waste lots of time on paperwork when they should be producing the end product and move into offices or workshops when all they really need is somewhere to store raw materials or finished goods.

The lesson then is to look at your business closely and work out what only you can do, -anything else can usually be outsourced, often at a reasonable cost and this will free you up to grow your business.

At the Cumbria Business Portal we have helped a number of our clients outsource to benefit their operation by taking over their Internet Marketing and website monitoring.   In the process we have been able to introduce them to accountants that handle book-keeping services, payroll and accounting as well as designers and marketing specialists who can help them with many aspects of running their businesses from freeing up valuable time, to getting their message across and creating a strong brand for their businesses.

So before you start your new business or look for ways to grow or diversify an existing business – talk to us.   Not only will you be able to tap into our Internet and web development skills, you can also share in our knowledge of business management and our trusted network of suppliers.

To find out how we can help go to Cumbria Business Portal – We really do understand the needs of small businesses!