Go away on a seemingly innocuous business trip. Return to find
your house in ruins with gaping 4- and 6-foot holes exposing your
home to the elements, with airplane debris scattered about your
yard. Sound like a bad dream? It gets worse, because not only is
your home a wreck, but your homebased business has also been
effectively dismantled by a freak accident.
You're probably shaking your head and thinking a plane will
never crash into your home. Before it happened, Bette Price
probably thought the same thing. Until a small plane with a
malfunctioning engine came down and crashed into her house in two
places before ending with a final crash into a neighbor's home.
Luckily, there were no fatalities, both Price and her husband
weren't home, and the majority of damage was done to her living
quarters, leaving her office relatively intact. But she still
suffered a 40 percent profit loss in 1997 due to the accident.
Just like a normal business, any home office can fall victim to
freak accidents, theft or any number of disastrous events. But many
homebased entrepreneurs don't prepare for the worst. Maybe you
think your business equipment is covered by your homeowner's
insurance, your home is safe for visitors or your nice neighborhood
isn't prone to burglary. But next thing you know, your home
catches on fire, your client trips over an errant cord or your
computer equipment is stolen, and both your home and your business
are threatened.
Content Continues Below
A Sense of Security
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| |  Quick Tips
 Close window shades and curtains so outsiders
can't see your office equipment.
Make it appear that someone's home by leaving lights on.
Always meet clients and potential new hires outside of your
office.
Change locks and passwords after letting employees go. | | | | |
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What can you do to protect your homebased business? First things
first: Don't announce to the whole world that you run a
business from home. "Don't put a big computer near the
window and work with the shades open," advises Janet Attard,
author of The Home Office and Small Business Answer
Book and founder of small-business content site Business Know-How. "You
want to keep some amount of privacy. You don't want to
broadcast that you're working from home with maybe thousands of
dollars of equipment and supplies there."
Another way to keep your office secure is to not invite visitors
to your home-for several reasons. For one thing, even if a
potential client or prospective employee is a fine, upstanding
citizen, you never know who they might know. "They may be
perfectly honest and come in and see all this equipment and talk
about it to their friends, who talk about it to their
friends," says Attard. "Suddenly, the wrong people hear
about it and you're being robbed."
Second, if no one visits your home, you don't have to worry
about accidents that you can be sued for. And you don't have to
worry when you last dusted or whether your moody dog will lunge at
guests.
And perhaps most important, you can protect your own safety.
"I never have people come to my home office," says
Lisa Kanarek, author
of Organizing Your Home Office For Success and
Home Office Life: Making a Space to Work at
Home. "I just meet them at their office or at
Starbucks. I always think if it's a new client, it's just
not a good idea. Unfortunately, times have changed so much, you
just never know. It's better to meet them on neutral
ground."
If you do have visitors, Attard suggests leaving a TV playing in
the background or, if you're a woman at home alone,
strategically placing a pair of men's shoes near the door so
visitors don't think you're alone.
And last but not least, if you have employees working in your
home, be smart about the inherent risks. Always meet prospective
employees off-site, keep items like business checks inaccessible,
and if you ever have an employee leave unhappily, change the locks.
One of Kanarek's clients fired an employee, only to have him
return and steal data off her hard drive.
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