You, as a home based business entrepreneur generally start out prepared with a business plan, plenty of capital, knowledge of the product or service she or he is selling, a good web site, a marketing and advertising plan, and the means to get the product or service to market. We hope. Not easy to do but it takes some time and is being done everyday now by millions of us business type determined entrepreneurs.
What often happens, however, are surprises and situations that the you the entrepreneur business man or woman simply did not think of. While these can be annoying, a pain and worrisome, and make you feel like throwing things, they don't necessarily have to mean that the entrepreneur has to put aside his or her home based business idea. No way baby.
Two common situations or challenges that can arise in a home based business are zoning restrictions and noisy neighbors. Someone may have moved into an area before they decided to become an entrepreneur and opened a home based business. Now he or she finds out the zoning may be a problem.
He and she should not panic. The first thing is to check the zoning ordinances. Then, if things are still messed up, you can panic. Then, the next step, is to do something about it to solve the problem. The primary issues with businesses based out of the home are neighborhood disturbances caused by the business: clients making noise. Teach your clients to behave and respect your area.
Clients coming and going at all hours. Use appointments to solve this problem to separate clients. Clients taking up parking space on the street. Have your timely clients park in your driveway and in front of your house only. If an entrepreneur has a home based business that does not typically have clients coming by, there usually is not an issue. Examples of this might be online store businesses, article writers, editors, graphic artists, virtual assistants, and services that go out to their customers like landscapers and errand services.
Just do not let your neighbors know about your home business as much as possible. Make your neighbors bird dogs for your business and give them little money prizes every time they find you a client. Problem solved. Even if the entrepreneur should find out that the home based business is restricted by zoning it is still quite possible to talk to the neighbors, get their okay, and then go through the proper government channels to get a permit for conditional use or a zoning variance.
Also, to shut up your neighbors, give them some services for free or low cost. Noisy neighbors can be a problem for an entrepreneur with a home based business, and if it is just a question of loud rock music the resolution is to ask nicely. If that does not take care of it there are law enforcement options. If, however, there are perfectly allowable things outdoors, such as lawn mowers, a child care center down the street, the neighborhood pool party, and so forth that the owner cannot do much about, there are things that help mute the noise.
Something as simple as rearranging furniture, or lined and weather stripped drapes could help considerably. A more expensive option, but one that would allow the entrepreneur to still view the beautiful outdoors while working at her home business would be to replace the office windows with new triple glazed ones that keep out noise. Another alternative is to replace annoying sounds with soothing ones like background classical music, or a fish tanks gurgle can make a big noise difference.
Wind machines that block out all noise are also available, on the internet at reasonable prices, that block out all noise. Enjoy your peace and quiet now so you can whistle while you work.
James M. Lowe writes original articles about home business opportunities.
