Guest post by Steve Anderson

Working from home was a dream long before it became a reality, and that’s because I needed plenty of time to convince myself that leaving the corporate office was not some crazy dream.

In hindsight, I’m sure I wasted too much time agonizing over the potential drawbacks. “I’m with a successful business, making great connections, challenging myself professionally. How do I leave this?”

It was good to ask those questions, but I needed to also ask myself another obvious question: “How much would I have to be offered to leave it all?” Could I leave for the same salary? Could I work from home for 10 percent less? or 20? or 30 percent?

Ask yourself that question, but before you answer it, answer this question: “How much money am I actually earning?”

“Easy,” you answer. “It’s right there on the paycheck, right?”

Is it? Have you ever calculated how much “real income” you pocket after all the payroll taxes, benefit deductions, and work-related expenses? I made the calculation (which shows that you don’t have to be a CPA) and it made my decision to move home infinitely easier.

In a nutshell, here’s how I did it:
I took my salary per week, then pulled the weekly deductions (dental, health, retirement, federal and state taxes). Then, I made columns for my expenses each week: fuel for my commute, eating out for lunch, dry cleaning … and anything else I wouldn’t have spent if I worked from home (like $400 on each of three new suits … shirts, ties, shoes, not included).

That gave me my “net.” Ouch. It was a huge eye opener to see how much I really pocketed at the end of a week. But I wasn’t done.

I then took that “net” and divided it by the real hours I was working each week in the office. I say “real hours,” because if you’re working 40 or 50 or 60 hours every week, you should know how much you’re earning for each of those hours – even if you arrive at a number that’s surprising and perhaps disappointing.

I’d suggest you go even further and calculate the total time you’re out of your home each day. (If you leave at 8:00 and get home at 6:00, that’s 10 hours a day or 50 hours per week.) Now, divide your “net” by that number … and feel free to wince.

Only when you’ve made your calculation should you compare your current salary to the income you’d make working from home. By looking deeply at the math, you may very well find that you could take a $5,000 or $10,000 cut at home, and still earn more per hour AND end up with the same net yearly income you’d make in a corporate office.

Naturally, results are certainly going to vary. Be sure to include self-employment tax and expenses such as health insurance and a retirement fund. (Insurance through your spouse is a huge cost saver.)

But when it’s all said and done, you might find that’s easier to go home than you ever imagined.

Steve Anderson is the Word Guy at pounce.com, a full-service boutique specializing in creative and strategic planning for print and Web marketing.

• Delegate. My friend has a hard time letting go of tasks to the point of micromanaging. When she does delegate, she ends up doing most of the tasks herself or redoing whatever it is she has asked someone to do. Delegating works well if you clearly explain what you want someone to do and then follow up near the deadline date. When someone knows that you’re going to follow up, they’re more likely to do as you ask.

• Focus on the big picture instead of obsessing over small, insignificant tasks. Her retail business is so busy that she rarely finds time to post the next week’s schedule until the weekend. Her employees don’t know what hours they’re supposed to work the following week until late Saturday.  She’s finally agreed to create the schedule a week in advance.

• Listen to the experts. My friend acquired her company from a longtime friend of hers who wanted to retire. Although he doesn’t come to the store anymore, he’s always available to give her advice, share shortcuts and even train her staff. She refuses his help because she wants to prove to herself that she can run the business on her own. When she realizes that her stubbornness is costing her time and money, she’ll accept help when it’s offered and listen to someone with experience.

• Train everyone to cover all positions. She hasn’t taken the time to teach all of her employees how to use the cash register, how to price items or even how to close up shop at the end of the day. That means that every day she has to either open or close her store and can’t take days off. (Her husband already calls her business “the other man.”) When she finally trains each employee to cover any position, she’ll be able to take some time off to recharge.

Take a close look at the way you work. Are you busy or effective?

Costa Rican home office

In another blog post, I mentioned that my home office radar is always on. My recent trip to Costa Rica was no exception. While my sons and I were waiting to go rappelling, I noticed the owner’s home office. I qualify this as a home office because the owner lives in apartments attached to his home office and the reception area.

Reception area

The woman who works in the office told me that the owner spent several months finding the right (renewable) trees to cut down to use as dividers. Even the bookcases are made of wood found in the rain forest.

You decide…is this home office cool or what?

Here’s the deal: just because we’re working from home doesn’t mean that we’re available to wait for repair calls, UPS deliveries, or to pick up a friend’s kids from school when that friend can’t leave work.  Of course when it’s an emergency, there’s no question whether you should help out. But there’s a point where others can take advantage of you.

One woman in Zaslow’s article who was asked constantly for help from friends and neighbors, turned errand requests into a job.  She works part-time for a new online company called taskrabbit, that matches “senders” (people who need someone to do an errand for them) with “runners” (people who will handle the errand).  Now she’s paid for her time.

The bottom line is that someone who works from home is no different from her corporate counterpart except for having a more flexible schedule, dressing casually (if at all) and being available to handle last-minute emergencies.  She also has the freedom to say no to requests for favors when she’s doing what the person asking for the favor is doing, which is working.

Not knowing what I was going to do with the list, I took a risk and bought it from her daughter for a dollar.  After all, I was shocked that an eight-year-old would write a To-Do list, and her daughter was surprised that an adult would be dumb enough to pay for one.

What can you learn from this To Do list?  First, you’re never too young to plan your days; secondly, there’s nothing wrong with listing basic tasks that you may forget; and third, it’s good to wake up every morning (see #1), whether or not it’s on your To Do list.

• Stop scribbling notes on any stray scraps of paper. Use your handheld, a daily planner or even a simple spiral notebook to keep track of notes to yourself. While I’m a huge fan of sticky notes, those suckers are easy to lose, especially when they stick to the back of another piece of paper.

• Write a list of specific work goals each day and mark them off as you finish them. Keep the list realistic.

• Have a set place to keep everything from paper clips to pens.

• Take a few seconds to put things back when you’re finished. If you think about it, it takes a few minutes to put something away, but you’ll save time in the long run.

• Make your work area as compact as possible. You’ll save time if you can grab everything you need — your phone, printer and files — without getting out of your seat.

• Leave your desk for 5 minutes every 1 ½ hours to stretch your body and invigorate your mind. After you start following the tip above, you’ll welcome the time away from your chair.

• Use a supportive chair, ergonomic keyboard and a desk that’s the right height to keep you from straining your back and your wrists while you type.

• Store phone numbers electronically within your handheld or within a contact management program. Then you can toss all of those business cards that are cluttering your desk.

• Set a time to leave your home office each day — and stick to it. Have you ever noticed that the less time you have to work, the more you accomplish? And the more time you have, the more time it takes for you to finish?

• Always carry a handheld, a daily planner or even a small notepad to jot down ideas that come to you after hours.

What do you do to be more efficient?

• Focus on one area of your life that’s organized. Think hard. There has to be something in your life that’s organized. Maybe you’re an impeccable dresser, or you keep your favorite supplies in one place. Consider everything you’re doing now to get organized, no matter how small it may be, and pat yourself on the back. Who cares if no one notices the changes you’re making? It’s your life, not theirs.

• Consider your priorities. If something is important to you, you’ll change it.  If not, you won’t— and in some cases you shouldn’t. If you make only a few changes in the way you work, you could be more productive and maintain your creativity

• Ask yourself why you’re having trouble getting organized. Instead of beating yourself up over missed appointments or postponed decisions about paper, face it: you may be someone who thrives in a disorganized environment.  Work around your need for a bit of disorganization and designate one place to put your keys every time you come home or figure out one place to keep track of appointments and enter them as you make them

Before you throw in the organizing towel, realize that being right-brained doesn’t doom you to a life of chaos. If you change the way you think, you’ll reduce your stress level and leave yourself open to accomplish more.

• Learn some stealth moves. If you decide to leave the room during the call, make sure it’s during a time when no one will notice. When you’re the next one on the agenda, it’ll be fairly obvious to everyone on the call that you’ve left your computer.

• Don’t post messages on Facebook during the call. When co-workers have access to your Facebook account, they’ll know whether you’re spending more time on your wall than on the call. They may even point it out to everyone during the call, as in “Did you just post something on your wall?” which can be a bit embarrassing.

• If you have a dog, put him outside, send him to a neighbor’s house or give him a Kong filled with peanut butter to keep him busy and quiet. No one wants to talk over a barking dog, especially when the dog barks as loud as mine.

• When you’re waiting for everyone to connect to the online call, make sure others can’t hear you talking on your cell phone. Maybe I’m being picky but I don’t want to hear about what you’re wearing or what you want your spouse to wear (or in some cases not wear) later that evening. Some icky things you hear, just can’t be erased from your mind.

The final thing I learned during the call is that I like audio chats better than video chats. The best part is that I can sit at my desk in jeans and a t-shirt (makeup optional) while I know that the corporate execs on the other end of the line are dressed for work. When you work from home, every day is Casual Friday!

When I look back at my career and think about every job I’ve ever had, I realize I’ve experienced the same thing. At first I’d learn everything I could and then eventually I’d go into autopilot.  There was nothing new to learn, my boss refused to do anything differently and I quit using my business skills.

Working from home has changed everything.  As my own boss, I can’t afford to sit back and coast through each business day.  Instead, I make a conscious effort to develop more skills. This keeps me in the loop and keeps my business from being left behind.  There are a few ways to do the same.

• Sign up for webinars in your field. You could spend a solid year (virtually) attending every webinar offered on the Web and still you couldn’t attend all of them. The good news is that because there are many free, quality webinars out there, your only investment is time.

• Read whatever and whenever you can. The Internet is filled with articles on almost any topic you can think of. So why not take advantage of free advice from experts around the world? Advice from business books will cost you more, but if you switch to ebooks you’ll spend less than you would on a traditional book and you’ll be able to take hundreds of books with you at all times that weigh next to nothing.

• Get involved in online forums. Forums are a great way to network with others and build business relationships that will help you grow your business. The bottom line is that you don’t have to meet face-to-face with someone to share ideas and information.

• Enroll in classes you can take online or in person. Either way, classes involve time and money. Decide whether the investment is worth it.

As my son continues to develop his driving skills, I continue to learn new ways to grow my business. I’m also getting better at not pressing an imaginary brake while he’s driving.

Later that day, I called a mutual friend and she told me that six months ago my friend started his own business and was doing well over six figures. As I clicked off the call, I realized that I did to him what others have done to me for years. I’d assumed that because he was running an errand in the middle of the day and was casually dressed, he wasn’t working.

It’s no wonder that others have trouble taking us seriously when we work from home. Consider why:

• You can go to your child’s events during school or anytime in the summer.
• If you want to take the day off to spend with your family, you can.
• You can sleep late and work through the night because you don’t have to wake up early to get to work.
• You can schedule repair calls or deliveries anytime during the day.

Those of us who work from home “get it.” We have flexibility that our corporate counterparts don’t have and at times, don’t understand. There are a few things you can do to help others realize that even though you have a home office, you’re still working.

• Set guidelines and boundaries with your family and friends. They need to understand that you can’t take personal calls all day or at times you need to work uninterrupted. It’s a balancing act that can be challenging.

• Learn to say no when friends or family ask you to wait for the repair person or a UPS delivery. They need to know that although you’re working from home, you’re still working.

• Treat your business as a business, not a hobby. That means that you don’t work for free. Your time is worth something to your clients. It should be worth the same (or more) to your friends and family.

• Use one e-mail address for personal use and another for business. The goal is to keep your business e-mail address clear for clients and important messages while your personal address is for annoying joke e-mails that your friends can’t resist sending.

• Set up two Twitter accounts: one for business and one for personal use. Your personal tweets can include cryptic messages to friends and the latest update of where you are, while your business tweets should be professional and helpful to others who can use your services.

The bottom line is that you can’t get everyone to take you seriously but then again, who cares? You have the freedom that others only dream about during their daily commute to work. Eventually they’ll come around — probably when they’re working from home too.