Next year, I will celebrate my 14th year of working from my home office. It has been an amazing experience for me in so many ways. It has delivered me the opportunity to be with my children more often (turning 14 and 17 over the coming months), which was one of the key motivators for me starting a event and wedding business that I could work in, from home. But even as rewarding as that has been, I am learning that the real rewards have been mine personally. I truly work in an environment that feeds my creative soul and ‘gets the most out of me’, as a worker. And by that I don’t mean I have an amazing home office that makes me feel creative when I walk into it. At times I have and at times I haven’t; currently I am in the midst of a seriously big renovation project that has spanned years and my office is often moving about. So no, its not about how it looks, its about how it makes me feel. It’s the qualities I have developed over the years, such as being disciplined, self-motivated and someone who can teach themselves what they need to know, to get the job done. This is what makes it all worthwhile for me.
Working from home is not for everyone. If you need company, you need to consider if the work you are doing will give you enough people to engage with, often enough, to make it satisfying for you. Wedding and Event Planning tends to do this, but there may be days, when you have to be in the office and working and you will be by yourself. You have to be able to motivate yourself and enjoy your own company to make working for yourself, from home work.
If launching a business and working from home are two of the reasons you are drawn to the wedding & event planning and design industry, you may enjoy this post I wrote for the Academy almost two years ago. It includes some lessons I learnt that may benefit you too.
If you would like to talk to me about your business idea or working from home, I would love to hear from you. In Australia you can call me on 1300 854 200 but I am happy to talk to anyone from anywhere in the world about this subject simply email me.
