Working At Home – Does Any One Take You Seriously?

I’ve been working at home, full-time, for a few years now. It hasn’t been as easy I thought it would be, but it has been very fulfilling. It’s not just the realities of building a passive income business which has its challenges, its the issue of people’s reactions to the fact that I stay home all day and have no children or other “obvious” reason to be there. You need to grow a thick skin if you are planning on building your own business – particularly if you are doing it online.

Very, very few people understand how I make money online. Most people think the height of sophistication on the internet is being able to use Facebook or Twitter. Many of my friends use neither and some still haven’t really gotten a handle on email yet!

Therefore, trying to actually make them understand that I make a living developing my websites and being paid by advertisers (which is even the simplest explanation of it) leaves them at best thinking I am a web designer for hire, and worst – well I hate to think what dark and illegal things they think I do working from home all day. I know many of them think I just sleep all day or watch TV. I’ve even been told that I need to “get a real job” on a few occasions, and the funny thing is that I make more money than those people do while doing it on my own terms, and they have jobs they hate while making less than I do – yet I am the one that needs to get a real job in their minds. Haha!

Though I will say, before you can get other people to take your work at home business seriously – you need to take it seriously yourself. I have never owned my own business before this. It took me quite a long time to understand the correct answer to when someone asked me what I did for a living was “I am an entrepreneur, I am the owner of my own online business”. Its not a hobby or an experiment – and until you stop thinking it of like that you will find it hard to get others to take you seriously. And you do want your business to be taken seriously. First off, it will make it a lot easier to control your time. Having worked away from home for most of my life I love the fact that I can take deliveries during the day, run errands, be there for the someone to fix anything that breaks, and so on. But you don’t want to become the social center of the neighborhood if you are trying to get some work done! Set boundaries with friends and family so they don’t just drop by when they feel like it and stay for hours.

Also remember to dream big – don’t talk about making some “pin money” or “a little cash on the side” – because oddly if you talk that way that is all that you will make – a little. Its called a self-limiting belief and they are alive and well for many people starting their own work from home business – particularly women.

So take your business seriously. Get yourself some business cards, a decent computer setup, a comfortable chair, working hours, and a separate home office if possible. If you can’t handle the accounts or the technical stuff – outsource them – building a successful passive income business means that you will need to invest in your business as well. That’s probably the single biggest way to take it to the next level.