Needless to say here, starting any at-home business is great, be it a contracting business, e-commerce, any sort of services you provide, you name it, it’s great being at home and being your own boss. Plus, it helps that it starts out small and fun, orders come in at a calm pace, and everything feels pretty easy. Then, growth starts happening and, yeah, it gets real fast. Now, it’s true, the massive shift itself is amazing, and for a lot of people it’s literally overnight, especially if they somehow go viral on TikTok, for example.
Now, even so, it also opens the door to mistakes that make everything feel harder than it needs to be. So, a few things are worth watching out for before the busy days hit and life turns into a juggling act.
Waiting Until the Last Minute to Stock Supplies
It helps to address this one first, because it sounds obvious, it sounds like low-hanging fruit in terms of advice, doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised how common this mistake is. You basically have to experience a few times before you actually learn your lesson, so usually, even hindsight just doesn’t help. So, at first, running low on tape or ink doesn’t feel like a crisis.
You just think, “okay, I’ll order more later”, which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but then an order rush shows up, and the printer’s out of ink, and everything else is running low too, or you ran out right in the middle of doing something that needs to be done ASAP. That’s why you need to be on top of things, but even ordering from a place like Cartridge Save before things get low keeps everything smooth instead of that annoying meltdown where everything is basically at a standstill.
Trying to DIY Everything Forever
Being resourceful is great, but at some point, handwriting every label and trimming every packing slip with kitchen scissors stops being cute, or efficient, or whatever label you want to slap on manual labor like that. Keep in mind that these things basically just eat time and energy. So, instead, having a couple of simple upgrades like a label printer or a decent paper cutter can seriously help.
Well, these are examples, but just spend money on whatever will actually help. There’s no reason to cheap out when time is being spent. They’re not expensive compared to the hours saved. It frees up time to actually grow the business, or, you know, take a break like a normal human.
Ignoring the Space Issue
Again, growth was already mentioned here, but a small business grows fast. One day, the dining table had a few envelopes on it. Two weeks later, it’s holding half the inventory, that’s just the dining table, imagine how it might be for the rest of the house here. Growth is going to happen, and sometimes, your house won’t be enough. Some use self-storage, some buy a shed or one of those garden home office buildings, but you’ll probably need to look into something.
