I've sometimes asked by fellow homebased business owners if
keeping your homebased status a secret is really all that important
anymore. Do clients really care? And if they do, what can you do
about it?
The chances are, your clients and customers really don't
care, as indicated by the fact that a majority of people who work
from home now use their home address for both personal and business
mail. When Sarah began her counseling practice in our home some
years ago, very few psychotherapists worked at home and her
colleagues questioned her judgment about working in this
unconventional setting. But even then, she discovered clients
actually preferred coming to our home than going to a chrome and
glass office building. In interviews with people across many
businesses, we regularly hear comments like, "My customers
have told me they come to me because I'm located in their
neighborhood." And with gasoline prices going up and up, we
suspect a nearby location will be increasingly important.
Of course, the internet is blind to location, so if you operate
a business on the web, whether your business is in an abandoned
school building in North Dakota or your apartment in Manhattan
makes no matter.
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Unfortunately, there are some exceptions when it's
preferable to use a separate address for your business. While
cities and counties have liberalized their zoning laws to allow
most homebased businesses, it's not uncommon for the Covenants,
Codes and Restrictions (CC&Rs) of common interest
developments--those with homeowners' associations--to forbid
home occupations within their walls. So if that applies to you and
what you do doesn't involve people coming to your home, noise,
or other activities that would irritate and draw attention from
neighbors, you may wish to use a different address for your
homebased business.
Using a different address for your business also makes sense if
you live on a street with a name like "Easy Jacks" or
"Slowpoke Lane" and don't like the business image it
conveys. And there are certain industries, such as cosmetics, whose
suppliers won't sell products to businesses in home locations,
so again an outside address would be important.
If, for whatever reason, using your home address for your
business isn't desirable, here are two things you can do:
- Use a mail-receiving service such as those offered by the
UPS Stores. This provides you with a street address to use in
correspondence or on your website, a decided advantage over using a
plain old post office box which automatically creates suspicion
about a business's status in some people's minds.
- Work out an arrangement with a related business to use their
address. You can usually do this for a nominal amount of
money.
Authors and career coaches Paul and Sarah Edwards are
Entrepreneur.com's "Homebased
Business" columnists. Their latest book is The Best Home Businesses for People 50+.
Contact them at www.workingfromhome.com.