Could You Work at Home?

Is your dream to work at home? If you are thinking about setting up your own business, you need to make sure you have the right disposition and enough motivation. Although it can be fun, liberating, exciting and has the potential to make you very rich, working at home requires a lot of hard work, can be lonely, means you have to do everything yourself - even the most boring of tasks - and has the potential to make you very poor. So, is working at home right for you?

Are you hard working and disciplined?

Or will a day at home find you watching GMTV (or your local equivalent) in the morning and glued to Richard and Judy at 5pm? Will you just have one more coffee and finish reading the paper before you get down to work, or will 9am see you in front of the computer working (not playing games). Will you miss office politics and gossip, lunchtime shopping sprees or a beer in the pub after work?

Will you survive without the regular pay cheques and paid holidays and sick leave?

Of course, unless you have a private income or someone to support you, you won't find yourself in that position for some time.You'll have to hang on in there with the day job until your home business takes off. This means setting up your business in your spare time - evenings, weekends, holidays and early mornings. Are you motivated enough to work all day and then start again when you get home in the evening?

Which Business?

OK, so you've decided that none of that's a problem. The next question is - which business will you go into?

This will depend on a lot of things - like how much money you have in the bank, where you live, the amount of space and time you have free.

For example, you are more likely to succeed in the bed and breakfast business if you have just inherited a huge house by the sea than if you share a bedsit in the inner city.

But one of the most important considerations is your own interest and enjoyment. If you do own a mansion with amazing sea views, but loathe the thought of strangers traipsing through your home, can't get out of bed before 11 at weekends, let alone cooking bacon and egg for 25, and detest housework, running a B&B would be your idea of hell.

So, your business must fit your interests and your start-up budget. Now it's time to get out your pen and start

If you haven't yet decided which business is for you, go to

for ideas on how to work at home.

32 Barnsbury Road - London - N1 0HD UK -Tel: 020 7713 5944