How to Maintain Healthy Boundaries in Your Home Business

Five Ways to Establish a Private Office at Home

In a recent article The Small Business Association (SBA) reported that 25 percent of home businesses had a yearly gross income of between $100,000 and $500, 000.  The following companies began at home: Apple, Lillian Vernon, L.L. Bean, Xerox, Microsoft, Amazon.com and Disney. 

How would you like to add your company name to this list?  You can be as successful but in order to do so you must establish some healthy boundaries in order for your home business to grow. 

Charles Haanel author of the revolutionary 24 part Success course tells us to “Learn to keep the door shut, keep out of your mind, out of your office and out of your world every element that seeks admittance with no definite helpful end in view.”

The following is a list of ways to establish healthy boundaries in your home business. 

1. Choose a private room in your home with a door that can be shut. 

2. Hang a sign on the door that will inform people in your home of your business operating hours.  This may seem silly but it will serve as a reminder that you are operating a real business with set hours.  

3. Inform friends and neighbors of your business hours and ask them politely to abide by these hours.  There is a tendency for outsiders to not view your home business as a real job and they may find ways to involve you in things that will waste valuable time that you need to run your business.

4. Make a list of tasks that need to be achieved in order to advance your business.   Prioritize and place a time limit on each task.  Successful business people keep schedules that are either written or on their computers.  The use of a list or schedule will free up your mind and enable it to focus on more creative activities.

5. Become aware of time wasters such as lengthy e- mail reading, frivolous web surfing, T.V. watching, extended lunches etc.   Modern life is filled with distractions but you must set aside time to be alone and concentrate on your business goals.   Mr.  Haanel reminds us that there is “power in repose.”  He also states that we do our best concentrating in “The Silence.”  (A period of physical and mental stillness.) 

© 2007 Paul Shope, Laser Direct Marketing