There are multiple reasons a person might want to run their business from the comfort of their home. Perhaps there is a pandemic, or maybe they have a disability, or their caring for a loved one full-time. No matter what the reason, there are also many benefits to operating a business from home. They include lower overhead, zero travel time, less time getting ready in the mornings, lower food bills, and less stress.
If you think running a business from your home is an impossibility, here are five ideas that might make it possible.
1. Inventory and Shipping
If you have a product that needs to be shipped, there’s no need to leave your home to deliver your shipment. UPS and FedEx are completely willing to come to you. Even better, you can bypass the shipping altogether.
Unless you personally create your inventory, you don’t need to purchase and store it. Drop shipping has increased in popularity as it allows a business to promote the products but never have to store them.
With Drop shipping, you collect payment for the goods, and then have the company that stores the product ship it directly to the consumer. It’s a win-win situation for you, the vendor, and the supplier who stores all types of products but doesn’t want to invest in selling the products.
2. Record Keeping
An office is basically a place where you keep your files and records. If you go entirely digital, you really don’t even need an office. You can keep all your invoices, inventory, purchase orders, and communications stored directly on your hard drive or on a cloud. It actually streamlines all your processes to have everything at the tip of your fingers. No matter how old the receipt is, you’ll never have to hunt it down again.
3. Meetings
Like shopping malls, meeting rooms are a thing of the past. There’s no reason to uproot everyone from their busy day to come together for one hour when you can do everything you could do in a meeting room over the internet.
Applications like Zoom and Skype are revolutionizing the way people do business. They even incorporate the ability to share slides and whiteboards. Both apps start free and can be upgraded to include more meeting time, users and features.
4. Communication
A quarter of a century ago the internet forever changed the way in which people communicate. Today, email is one of the most popular forms of communication. Still, when a consumer wants to talk directly to a business, phone calls are the preferred method.
You don’t need a dedicated landline to meet your consumer demands. You can incorporate a virtual phone system that allows you to talk calls from wherever you are without giving out your personal number. You can even route calls to associates located somewhere else. You just need to make sure everyone with whom you want to connect calls also has the app installed on their devices.
5. Marketing
Marketing keeps getting easier and easier as far as having the ability to do it yourself. However, if you’re going to do it yourself, it’s an investment of time and energy. There are many great ways to market your business from your computer. You can start blogging and engaging with your customer base. You can also engage with them over social media. Engagement is one of the most important things you can do to strengthen your business because when people interact with your brand, they feel a loyalty to it.
You can also create YouTube videos featuring content that is related to your industry. This is a great form of advertisement and it can be enjoyable to watch your followers increase.
You can also buy advertising on many of the sites that your customer visits. If your customers are heavy social media users, buy advertising on Facebook. If they are professionals, purchase advertising on LinkedIn. If they are agricultural, buy advertising on popular ag forums. The internet allows advertising to become so much more targeted than it was in previous decades.
As you can see, you really can operate your entire business from your computer. With a few strokes of a keyboard, sales are shipping and items are being promoted. Business operations have ever been easier.
