These days it seems as if I hear about mass layoffs everyday! I receive various feeds from several newspapers around the country, and looking back at them I can literally see stories about mass layoffs in each feed. Today it happens to be 5,000 from Boeing, yesterday it was Build-A-Bear Workshop. And on top of that, many of the contacts I have in large corporations are being laid off and turning to consulting or other entrepreneurial jobs.

What is interesting to me though, is that all those who are “trying it on their own,” are starting their businesses from their home. It’s a logical start, but deeper research and thought reveals a whole lot more.

Obviously a person’s home is the most logical place to start a small business. It is already paid for, has utilities taken care of, and most of the time can bet outfitted with a home office relatively quickly. And while I am a firm believer in the home office, as all of our employees work out of their home offices, I do think it’s important to set boundaries. Similar to the training we do for many large corporations, individuals need to set boundaries or “covenants” as we refer to them in our training. These covenants should be rules around work time, work site, breaks, data management, storage, data disposal, etc.

What I often see happen is people are accustomed to the covenants of their previous office. However, most likely those covenants will now have to change since you are working from home. While I don’t disagree this is a good thing, it can also be a very tough thing for people to do. We often suggest that people make a schedule that allows for breaks and what not. Part of the covenants for this schedule could then be, no washing dishes or doing laundry. While I agree that it may not be that big of a deal, for many who don’t set boundaries, a full laundry basket or last night’s dishes can be a large distraction for someone working from home. What will start out as finishing up the dishes will turn into cleaning the counters, which leads to cleaning the table, which leads to sweeping the floor, which leads to picking up the family room, which leads to… you get the point.

Work site covenants also need to be set. Such covenants may be that all client data is securely stored in a locked cabinet, and all contracts secured in a fireproof safe or filing cabinet. Often times, these little nuances that are have been traditionally taken care of by office personnel, now become the responsibility of the individual entrepreneur.

Take the time to set some Covenants for yourself. I’ll bet that within days of sticking to these covenants you will feel less stressed (I often used to feel guilty eating lunch and putting my lunch plate into a sink of last nights dishes, then it would just bug me until I took the time to clean everything) and be more productive. (One of my covenants is now to make sure I go to bed with an empty sink. That way the next days lunch plate goes into a clean sink and doesn’t seem overwhelming.)

Set some boundaries and you will encounter less distractions and stress. This will help you a great deal as you venture out into the world of Telecommuting Entrepreneurs.

For more information on how you can build a virtual company or advice on working from home. Please feel free to contact me directly.

Brandon Dempsey
SuiteCommute
Brandon@SuiteCommute.com
888-878-4832