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Avoid Home Business Mistakes
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Article 4: Below-The-Radar Missteps
If subtle mistakes we’ve discussed often go unnoticed, this next class of faux pas is even more hidden from the eye.
These mistakes involve assumptions that can start a home-based business owner down a trail leading to disappointment and penny-wise, pound foolish decisions that will reap more grief than glory.
- NASE micro-business consultant Gene Fairbrother advises, “Don’t forget to get additional insurance for your home and car.”
That’s because regular auto insurance may not cover you if you use your car for business. Ask your auto insurer if a business use rider is available on your automobile policy. If not, clarify with your carrier what is and is not covered when you use your vehicle for business. Ask for advice on how to insure those activities.
- "Don’t believe all the hype that anyone can make $10,000 to $25,000 a month working out of their home,” warns Fairbrother. “Any successful business takes hard work, and people who promote ‘the road to riches from your dining room table’ are making the money, not the people who buy into their message.”
- Fairbrother also cautions against another similar error: assuming that a business will be “low risk running it out of your home.” Even a home-based business with little investment, Fairbrother says, “takes the same investigation and research as opening a storefront or any other business. You need to investigate the market and your ability to produce profits in that business.” A home-based business is still a business, and the same rules of commerce and laws of supply and demand apply.
- Another below-the-radar mistake is operating as if you’re the Lone Ranger. Face it, you’re not an expert in everything. Make a recurring event out of consultations with the free expert advisors at your local chapter of SCORE, which can be located by ZIP code at www.score.org.
- As SCORE’s Jack B. ReVelle explains, simply failing to “create a designated space located away from high traffic areas within the home” can have the effect over time of introducing unnecessary interruptions and distractions. If time is money (and it is), when time is lost, money’s down the drain.
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