In Australia, there are over 2 million small businesses. Like us here at Integration Kings, a majority of them are a home-based business.

Many things need to be considered when one decides to start-up a home-based business, such as: the risks, the insurance, finances, office setup, hardware, software, employee obligations, and the list goes on.

There have been countless articles over the years that discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working from home. We believe the positives hugely outweigh the negatives. Mostly we enjoy the flexibility and convenience, with the added bonus of staying in our pyjamas a little longer.

Integration Kings started out a few years ago, with some ideas and a small home office. It was tough, coming from a structured environment and steady paycheck, and going into the complete unknown. Would we make it? Could we make it?

All the uncertainties and stresses with starting a business from scratch can be a huge headache, but with perseverance and the right tools and people in place the transitions can be made easier. There are few elements that enabled us to propel forward and start to make some ground with the business. These are 3 things that worked for us, and that we are sure will work for anyone in the same position: 

  1. Your long-term vision to grow and succeed; incorporate goals and targets - You must have your 'why' established to know the purpose for you to get out of bed everyday consistently motivated. Having goals and targets to work towards keeps you focused and moving forward.

  2. Basic systems - These are used to streamline and save time for yourself. We started out with just two main systems in place: Xero for Accounting and Capsule for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). These two alone helped to make us more efficient, contributing to growth.

  3. Networking - Working from home you don't get much in the way of social interaction, so going out networking is great for this. You will get to engage and connect with peers and like-minded individuals, the added bonus is that you also have the potential to generate leads and referrals.

Of course there are plenty of other considerations to be made when working from home, but these are the three that we believe are necessary for longetivity. What we have discussed was relevant for us as a start-up, but depending on your industry, your needs may be greater or less. If you are a start-up or even if you are an established business we can help navigate one of the things we find important - Systems. As a Cloud Integrator this is our strength; we enjoy helping businesses get streamlined.

There's a better way to do business.  



Paula

The Author - Paula King

Paula is the administration and content manager at Integration Kings. With a university degree in journalism and a keen aptitude for researching, she strives to make sense of complex and technical concepts and create easy to understand content.