5 Tips For The Aspiring Stay-At-Home Entrepreneur

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It seems as though everyone these days has a side hustle on the side of their regular job, but having a successful home-based business comes with challenges of its own. From work/life balance to day-to-day operations of running a business from your home, there are many considerations for the successful entrepreneur: personal, professional, and legal. If you have or are thinking about starting a home-based business, our Small Business Consulting Service can help self-employed sole proprietors get their business off the ground and soaring to new heights! And our Home Based Business Add On may be right for you if you need legal advice and assistance 24/7 from experienced, dedicated attorneys: from reading contracts to making sure you get paid, having a lawyer in your pocket removes stress and lets you focus on what you do best. Learn more about this add-on to your Legal Protection Plan and read on for a few home-based business tips.

Make A Schedule & Stick To It

If it's work time, be working. If you're with your kids, be with your kids and not distracted doing something else for your home-based business. Setting office hours can help you get more done and keep your professional and personal lives separate. Don't answer work or business calls during family time and make sure your family knows when it's your work time... and stick to it!

Take Breaks

You can't run a successful business if you're running on empty, so make sure to set aside time for yourself as well as time for family and time for work. Get to bed early and take naps when you can. Nothing gets accomplished if you're not taking care of yourself.

Keep A Planner

Plan everything: meetings, calls, lunches, date nights, birthday parties, classes, vacations, goals, rest time, play time, and more. Anything and everything can be planned, and making sure you get to everything means making plans every day and sticking to them. Set goals for each day, week, month, and year. Don't think that you have to put dates with your spouse or lunch with your friends off to have a highly successful business; they just need to be planned in advance. You're working hard to be able to spend time with your family and friends!

Delegate Wherever Possible

When your business becomes more successful, consider hiring out some of the things that take up a lot of your time. Consider hiring a cleaning service to come in once or twice per week, set up an online system to make your appointments and meetings for you, or consider hiring an accountant to take over those tasks. As your business becomes more successful, you'll be able to find ways to create more time by delegating out tasks that take up a lot of time.

Networking

Your business will grow faster the more people you know, so building relationships with your clients and others you do business with will be important as your business grows. You may even find that, as you get closer to the people you interact with, that your professional and personal lives can bleed into each other a little here and there; for instance bringing your kids to a casual meeting or other event.

If you have questions about starting or managing a home based business, our Small Business Consulting Services and Home-Based Business add on may be good options for you. Make an appointment to discuss your business needs today!

How To Write A Small Business Operating Agreement

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An operating agreement is an important document that details how your business is to be run and managed, clearly stating the rules and regulations by which your business will be run. It includes the rights of partners, outside contractors, and more. While writing an operating agreement should be fairly straightforward, there are a few items that should be included that will make your business operate more smoothly. If you need help drafting an operating agreement, our small business consulting services could be right for you. Set up an appointment today to talk about your small business goals and read on for a few tips about writing an Operations Agreement.

Ownership Parameters

If your business has partners or a board, your Operating Agreement should include the names and titles of everyone involved, as well as each person's ownership percentages. In order to properly determine benefits, responsibilities, profits, losses, liabilities, and assets, this information will be essential, as these aspects are formulated using each member's ownership percentage. It will be important to get all co-owners, members, and partners to work together to create your Operating Agreement so everyone is up-to-date and is properly compensated.

Rights & Responsibilities

The rights and responsibilities of each member should be outlined clearly, including voting rights, requirements of each role within the company, salaries, and duties of each role. This section clearly details each members' role in the company. It is also where determinations are made regarding how much sway each member has in decision making that impacts the company, its members, and other stake holders.

Membership Rules

Members of your board or partners may eventually want to move on to other projects, so it is important to outline how people can leave your membership and the process for joining, as well. Having a detailed procedure in place for onboarding or offboarding members may not even seem like something that could happen right now, but the future is unknown and preparation is key to smooth transitions.

Dissolution

While it's never fun to think about the end - especially when things are just beginning - not having a plan for dissolution is a recipe for disaster. A business can close for any number of reasons, and not having a plan for dissolving the company can make for stressful situations with other members. Like other parts of your Operating Agreement, this section will detail member rights, roles, and responsibilities, but only in reference to what is to be done at the closing of the company. This section will detail who is responsible for what, how debts and assets are to be sold or distributed, and may even restrict members from opening a similar business for a certain amount of time.

Severability

This section details the protections of the agreement if any part of the agreement turns out to be in violation of a law in your state or federally. This ensures that the aspects of the agreement that are not in conflict with the law are still enforceable.

If you need help crafting an operating agreement, we are here to help! Schedule an appointment today with our business consultants to talk about your business and what you might need from an operating agreement, as well as any other questions you might have about your business.