When Dorothy tapped those shiny red shoes and cited the famous quote, ‘There’s no place like home,’ she had the privilege of never having tried to operate a fully functioning business from one tiny box room office.
We know that for sure, because wicked witches and boom-voiced wizards would’ve felt like a walk in the park compared to climbing over piles of orders just to get her desk. Home would’ve been the last place she wanted to be!
Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves – the ability to start your enterprise from the comfort of your home base is a huge privilege. Eventually, though, your home office may simply stop serving your purpose, and could even affect your performance, rather than making your business productive like it should.
Expansion is particularly dependent on your ability to recognise when your company could thrive from moving out of home once and for all. But how do you know when it’s finally time? Keep on reading to find out.
# 1 - Failing to Scale as you Should
A lack of scalability has to be the most telling sign that your home office has run its course. Your home can only take so much stock before it, and probably you, break.
The more your business grows, the harder you’ll find it to manage everything without dropping balls and eventually having to turn down orders. Not to mention that a growing team will never fit in that space.
Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to wait until your scalability is already faltering before making this all-important move, at least not if you ever want to actually grow. It’s vital to keep an eye on business data that reflects customer trends, profit margins, and beyond.
This should give you a clear sign when your business hits a reliable upward trajectory, at which point it’s probably a good idea to start looking at some offices.
# 2 - Turning Down Client Meetings
A lot of business happens remotely these days, and most of your early clients probably won’t think anything of having a video call in place of an in-person meeting.
However, if you’re looking to expand through major B2B deals that really get your products out there, it’ll start to look a little fishy if you’re always dishing out Zoom links instead of meeting clients face-to-face.
Yet, walking them through your home to sit squashed in that tiny office is hardly going to make you look like a fully grown professional. So what can you do?
Honestly, you do have options here. For instance, if your profits aren’t instantly up to a dedicated office space, you could always opt for coworking meeting rooms, which prove that you’re a determined up-and-coming entrepreneur.
However, at a certain stage, borrowed meeting spaces can also make you look a little amateur. As such, it’s always worth seeking a dedicated company office as soon as your profits are up to the task.
That way, you can ensure a fully branded meeting space that proves you’re a company well worth that client’s consideration.
# 3 - Service That Starts to Falter
There’s also a risk that your home-based service will start to falter as your business grows. After all, your home internet connection isn’t built for complex processes, and your solo home phone number will never serve multiple purposes in quite the right way.
This lacking infrastructure is perhaps the most dangerous thing about your home office, because it’s the thing most likely to result in angry customers who can’t get hold of you, or can’t place their orders. As well as never coming back to buy again, those customers who are most annoyed by these inefficiencies will report back to their friends.
And that’s an undeniably bad omen for your budding business.
Don’t wait for problems to strike before you take action about this. If you’re already receiving complaints, a large part of the damage will already be done. Instead, you need to be entirely honest with yourself about your home office capabilities.
Warning signs like slow loading internet, downtime periods for your website, and an inability to effectively manage incoming calls should all be enough to kick you into action. Unlike our other pointers, however, simply seeking an office to call your own isn’t the only step you’ll need to take here.
Ensuring commercial-grade infrastructure also means investing in an office refurbishment that’s fully tailored to your business and its needs. This is the only way to ensure a space that’s truly up to the job, and it’s something you’ll never be able to manage from home.
# 4 - Hitting Burnout Hard
If you somehow manage to juggle all of the balls from your home office, then burnout could be the thing that sees it all come crashing down. That’s because it’s never easy to step away from work when your entire company has its home base in your house.
Entrepreneurs who work solely from home offices report putting in more hours, struggling to maintain work/life balance, and generally getting into a bad way. As well as again increasing the risk of costly mistakes through sheer exhaustion, burnout of this nature may leave you in a place where you’re about ready to walk away and go back to far less stressful shift work.
Spending any time working outside of your home can help to overcome this, even if that means heading to coworking spaces or a garden office every day.
Ideally, though, getting this balance just right will see you with your own fully kitted office, where you should make an effort to keep your work-based technology, packing materials, and products at all times.
This will make it far easier to step away when you need to, and you can bet your business will perform far better as a result.
Home offices are the heart and soul of many founding businesses, but be aware that holding onto that starting point for too long could drag your business down in these potentially fatal ways!
