Home-based businesses and working from home are tremendously popular right now. The popularity was already growing, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it accelerated the trend toward working from home by necessity.
By 2025, it’s estimated that more than 36 million Americans will be working remotely—an 87% increase from before the pandemic.
There are logistical and financial benefits of creating a business that allows you to work from home.
For example, you save significant amounts of money on overhead. Rent can be thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a month for a dedicated office space.
You’re also reducing your commute time, so you can focus on the strategic elements of growing your business, wasting no time.
You have flexibility as far as how you spend your time and where you put your energy, and you can also scale your business up in the way that works best for you.
The following are some general tips to help you if you want to start a thriving home-based business.
Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses
The most important thing you can do to build a successful business is to have a solid foundation.
This means that you assess your own talents, and you understand both your strengths and weaknesses when you’re coming up with the concept.
You should think about where your skills lie and also know where you have deficits because this will help you understand where you might need to bring employees or freelancers onto your team.
Regardless of your skillet and talents, a home-based entrepreneur is going to have to be a self-starter and someone who’s intrinsically motivated because you aren’t going to have people around you most of the time, making sure you’re staying on track.
Structure Your Day
While one of the benefits of being a home-based business owner is the flexibility, if you want to be successful, you still need to have a structure and flow to your day. That doesn’t mean you can’t move things around as you need to, but in general your day needs to have a pretty consistent start and finish.
Structure your day around how you work best.
For example, if you work best in the morning, make the bulk of your strategic work during those hours where you feel fresh and creative, and save the other things for after lunch.
Use Technology and Automation
There are so many cloud-based software and automation solutions that you can use to operate and optimize nearly every aspect of your business so take advantage.
There are benefits to using technology and automation.
First, you can get more done with fewer resources, which is always a top priority for entrepreneurs.
You can also start to develop a scalable business. Cloud-based technology solutions can easily be scaled up as your business grows or even down if you’re facing a slump.
If you hire remote employees or you use freelancers, they can also easily access what they need when it’s cloud-based.
The Technicalities
It’s important that you view your business as what it is—a real one. There may be a tendency to cut corners on some of the technicalities if your business is home-based, and that can lead to later problems.
Avoid this by going over the legal and financial elements of your business from the start with professionals.
For example, to protect your personal assets, you’ll need to structure your business legally.
Your home-based business might be best suited to a sole proprietorship or a limited liability company.
These structural decisions can be complex, and they have legal and tax-related ramifications, so talk to an attorney or tax professional.
You’ll also need to get a federal Employer Identification Number unless you’re going to operate as a sole proprietor, and depending on your industry and state, you may need business permits or licenses.
Home-based business owners may also need specific insurance. You could face lawsuits, injuries, illnesses or data breaches, and having the right business insurance can protect you legally and financially in these wide-ranging scenarios.
When you’re creating a home-based business, the most important thing to remember is to focus on the fundamentals. A big trap for home-based entrepreneurs is that they think they can cut corners because they are working from home.
The problem then becomes that you might not be able to grow the way you want to, or if you grow too quickly, you might not be able to manage that.
When you have a strong foundation, you can weather storms and also scale your business up successfully.
