Working from home

This question is to you who work from home...

I am now 52 and one of my life goals was to be able to work from home
by the time I am 55. This is a soft goal and know that it is very
economy driven.
The question I have is how did you get started? How were you able to
find clients? How did you spread the word that your services are
available?

I've been designing using SWX since 96, previously at a major company
just outside of Boston and now for a smaller one in New Hampshire and
feel it's time to start moving towards this goal. Right now I am able
to use the software at home that I use at my company, but will
purchase my own seat when the move to home happens. I will be getting
a good start in that my company and I have discussed this and they
would be willing to keep me as their "Solidworks" designer, but will
need to get the word out for additional work.
I was thinking maybe a website, but how do you choose a company name
and know if it is already being used?

I seem to remember a great thread on salary and how it compared to
your direct job salary, but that is probably six months old.

Feel free to email me privately about this...

Thanks,
Steve P.

 

Steve:

Sometimes I work from home. The best way to get started is a really bad
hang-over. Nothing will make you want to stay home more than that.

Second step is to put your bathrobe on. I don't know, I've got this
weird thing about showing up to work naked, especially first thing in
the morning.

The most important step is cracking open that first early morning beer,
just to take the edge off the hangover. Much the same way those type
A's drink a pot of coffee before their second cigarette break. Plus,
Yuengling is cheaper than Starbucks, especially if you're just starting
out and are on a budget.

It's also important to have your ergonomics figured out properly. Get
the recliner facing in between the 40" flatscreen tv and your monitor.
Make sure you've got extra batteries for the remote(s) and your wireless
mouse/keyboard. The hardest part is getting the angle right so the ears
of your bunny slippers don't block your line of sight. Of course for
any business, you must start out by investing in the right equipment, so
you must have a recliner with a 6-pack cooler built into the arm rest.

Customers generally ruin the experience, and must be avoided when
possible, especially when you've been at this for a while and become
emotionally involved in the soaps.;oP

Anyway, good luck!

matt



(Steve Pero) wrote in

 

Customers? Hopefully he's not married.....because his wife could ruin it
also.

Keep up the good work, Matt.

Dan

 

Steve

Re your question on websites / business names

Most search engines will not search for a particular name WITHIN a domain
name, but http://www.domainsurfer.com/ will, and is useful tool in this
circumstance.
It will not display domains that are "on hold", but if you try to register
such a domain, you will be told at time of application.

The main thing I found when I first went on my own, was that the key to
building a customer base was, for the first year or 18 months, to forget
about whether my activities looked like a sustainable business proposition :
the key is to make sure each customer gets EXCELLENT value, regardless of
what you have to do to make that happen.

If that means chewing through the midnight oil and/or some savings in the
meantime, so be it. For me, it worked to the extent I have never had to
solicit work since.

(You might strike a customer whose business culture is so dysfunctional that
nothing you do will satisfy them that they are getting value. That has
happened to me once in the last decade, and it nearly killed me, but in the
end I clung to the fact that, as well as *I* could judge, they were getting
value)


Good luck

 

Just an observation . . . a six-pack cooler in the arm rest won't do you
much good unless you also have a bedpan built-in to the chair, or else
unless you have the cajones to catheterize yourself. However, having
six beers might be good enough to kill the pain such that you could
endure it . . . if you can "hold it" that long.

'Sporky'

 

Looks to me like the link below has an error in it. Using IE 6.0 and
the message indicates:
Error Occurred While Processing Request
The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually
indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code.

 

I just tried it and got right in. You have to be logged in before hitting
the link or it won't take you to it.

WT

 

Hey, thanks for all of the great suggestions. I'm going to investigate this
further for sure and hopefully will be able to get some work and try it PT
at first. I already have one job lined up!

Thanks, great forum....
Steve P.

 

Don't burn your bridges !!

 

Steve,

I used mycorporation.com, in Massachusetts you have to pay a yearly
fee. I am not certain about New Hampshire. They will do a search
for company name, liability and such.

We plan to have a New England users group meeting in late April - if
you develop a flyer about what your new company does we can put it
next to the food table so everyone will take one.

Regards, Marie