Five Tricks to Change Your Home Office from Fortune 5¢ to Fortune 500

When you started your own company with a small home office, you envisioned setting your own schedule, working in your pajamas, and having two extra hours of the day to work because you no longer had an hour commute each way. Today, you can’t see your desktop, your office is so cold that it feels like you work for Mr. Scrooge, and errands have taken over too much of your work week. If you want your business respected like a Fortune 500 company, treat it like one.

Choose the Best Location
If you were selecting a location for your office outside the home, you would consider several factors. You would consider your office’s proximity to your customers. You would consider the workspace carefully:

Does it have enough light? If there noise coming from the suite next door or from the road outside? Is the office cool enough, or too hot? Will the space adequately house the work surfaces you require such as desk, filing cabinet, and credenza?

Unfortunately, when many women select their home office space, they are not selecting from prime real estate. They tuck their desk into the corner of a room that doubles as a bedroom or den. Their laptop finds a resting place in 2 sq. ft. of kitchen tabletop, or they set up shop in a room that is not usable for anything else, such as the drafty upstairs loft or downstairs basement that nobody wants to inhabit because it feels like Antarctica year-round.

Make Your Workspace Productive
Eliminate distractions. It is likely that you chose a home office because you had visions of the increased productivity you would have when you removed the distractions of a too-far-away, bustling office. Lately though, you feel less productive in your home office and wonder why. It could mean that you have traded one set of distractions for another. Granted, your office no longer has a suite of video game testers shouting next door, but it comes with its own built-in distractions.

If your office space is a desk in a corner of your bedroom and the bed seems to beckon to you to sit and read when you should be working, move your office to another location in your home. Have you organized your workspace as you did when you worked in a “real” office? Chances are that your desktop looks very little like it did before you worked from home. Eliminate the clutter and organize your workspace for the productivity you envisioned and that you deserve. Purchase or create the organizationals tools for your desktop. Invest in a proper filing system, not the crates you used in college. Making your space feel more like a functional office space will do wonders for your productivity.

Surround Yourself with Inspiration
What revs your work engine and energizes you to make cold calls, write proposals or do whatever you do? If you are having a difficult time figuring out what puts you in an excited mood about your job, think about the last few times you felt inspired by your work. If the color turquoise reflects the turquoise jewelry you custom design, paint the wall in front of your desk that color. If your vision board encorporates all the elements of your business inspirations, give it a prominent position in your workspace. If music enlivens you when you have been sitting for too long in your home office, mix an office playlist of the ideal tunes to lift your mood and enhance your creativity. If pretty things inspire you and make you happy, use the antique lamp from your Grandma as your desk lamp. Create custom storage boxes, clips or baskets using Washi tape with the helpful tips on Pinterest. Hang your favorite painting or the autographed photo of your favorite president above your desk. Surround yourself with elements that inspire.

Create, and Post, your Schedule
White boards and bulletin boards are excellent tools to keep you on track and inform your family or roommate what your work hours are. The goal of a schedule is two-fold. The schedule allows you to track what you need to accomplish and when, in much that same way that you or your admin did when you worked outside the home. Set your hours and try to stick to them.

Some women can work just fine in their bathrobes; others need to feel like they went to work. If you fall into the latter category, get up at the same time each day. Shower, eat breakfast, grap that last cup of coffee, and head to your office. Avoid social media during work hours. Take a lunch break at a regular time everyday. As you demonstrate a greater respect for your work time, your family will begin to understand that when you are working, you are working and they cannot pull you away to run a forgotten lunch to school or to pick up the drycleaning that your husband forgot.

A schedule also serves as a reminder that just because your desk is at home, you do not live at your desk. Too many women who work from home feel like their workday never ends…because it doesn’t. The tempation to return to your desk to work at 10 pm can be just as overwhelming to some women as the laundry calling from the next room is to another.

Work from Home, Not Alone
Regardless how well you planned your home office, chances are that you did not plan to feel alone or disconnected. Working from home does not mean you have to work alone. Join organizations that benefit your business, and attend their meetings and events. Continuing to interact with others in your industry will subdue those feelings of isolation while keeping you connected.

Don’t feel like your home office means you have to handle everything yourself. Hire an IT expert to solve your software and network issues. How many other CEOs do you know that crawl under their desk to fix wiring issues? If organizing and filing your documents is an undertaking that ranks with oral surgery for you, hire a file clerk a couple hours per week. Your kids’ babysitter might even be willing to file for you, as needed. You won’t know until you ask.

The most important thing to remember for any woman working from a home office is treat your business like a business. Working from home can be an enormous blessing that allows you to work where you want, when you want, and on your own terms.

One Final Thought…
Don’t undervalue the work and the services you provide. Your work is not worth less because your rent is less than your competitor’s rent in the downtown high rise. You work the same hours on each project, you pay the same for materials, and you have the same education and experience that warrants top dollar. The only difference is, you can show up for work in your pink bathrobe and bunny slippers and no one will laugh.