Enterprise Nation

Emma Warren runs Portfolio Directors from a beautiful home in Somerset. The home office is in a converted extension that used to house a tractor. Out goes the tractor, in comes Emma’s business. Here she offers useful advice on creating the perfect home office environment.

Top Ten

Our top 10 tips for setting up your home office:

1. Even if you are only doing a few hours a week, create a space to work in, it doesn’t have to be grand but try and have all the things you will need to hand.  It can be as simple as a large laptop or work bag that has all you need in it, ready to work at any time.
2. If you’re setting up your own permanent desk space, there are lots of neat desk solutions, even ones that offer a roll-out office if you need to tidy things away completely at the end of the day (try www.argos.co.uk, www.ikea.com or www.johnlewis.com).  For a permanent desk area, an under-the-desk keyboard tray is also very useful as a keyboard can take up a lot of room on a work surface. Similarly, a laptop or an Acer Revo (tiny desktop PC) is space friendly as it minimises the desktop space you need (and it’s lighter to lug around!).  If you have more space but are a bit pushed for start-up funds, try Freecycling http://freecycle.org/ as a great way to pass on your unwanted items and obtain desks, chairs and filing cabinets (with the added benefit of polishing your “green” halo!).
3. Stationery-wise, if you have children, get your own pens, pencils etc and keep them with your office set – or you will waste lots of time retrieving pencils from under the sofa!  Lever Arch files are also really useful as you can put all your paperwork in one place and not worry about it being lost whilst moving heaps around.  If you get the colour coordinated ones, you can use different colours for different clients.    
4. Try and create some specific times to work, even if most of the time you snatch a few moments here and there – a concentrated period of time will help you feel that you’ve achieved more.  I always have a “To Do” list running, it’s a great way of keeping me organised and it feels great when I can cross something off – I give myself a mental pat on the back! Put it in a place that’s easily visible too, so that you won’t forget about it.
5. If you are trying to run a business, the home and look after children – take a look at the things you do and see what you can do to help make your day easier to manage.  I try to put washing on before I sit down at my desk and then hang it out when I take a break.  If I’ve got lots of phone calls and a pan of food to stir, I plan to do phone calls whilst stirring!
6. • If you are phoning clients and have children/dogs/anything potentially noisy around, try and do the calls while they’re occupied/not around as it will fluster you and may create a bad impression on your clients.
7. Explain to family and friends that you are working – there’s nothing more annoying that setting aside time to work and then someone pops round for coffee and doesn’t take the hint! 
8. Check out your insurance and mortgage conditions as sometimes you need to notify if you are working from home, especially if clients will come to your house. Times Online has a very useful section on who you will need to inform, and what you need to inform them about.
9. It can get lonely working from home, so try and join in with local networking activities to get you out and about and to meet valuable contacts.  Networking groups are springing up all over the country, just google networking and your local town name to find your nearest one – and go to a few to find the one that most suits your networking needs. 
10. If you can’t get always get out then try virtual networking.  Facebook is one that many people are familiar with, it allows you to connect with your friends and business colleagues, but it does have a downside as there are several highly addictive applications (games) that you can play on it – a great excuse for not applying yourself to that boring report! You can also connect with people via Windows Live Messenger or Skype, which gives you the ability to have live text, video and voice chats with contacts. Twitter is another great way of virtually meeting like-minded people and potentially getting referrals. It allows the user to give brief snapshots into their day to day activities, as well as following some Twitter-savvy business people and celebs.  Twitter help is quite useful or visit this site http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/ to find out how to get started on Twitter if you haven’t already given in to the bug.

• Emma Warren is Managing Director of Portfolio Directors