Posted by Mike Bruno on Wed, Jan 13, 2010 @ 09:59 AM
I recently built a home office in my attic and moved my businesses from real office locations into the house. Now to be completely honest I still have a shared office with a communications firm so I am not exactly 100% working from home. However since I spend at least 50% of my time here I think I would be classifed as one.
Just so you understand my background-I started working at the age of 14 and started my first business at the age of 18. Since then I have been on my own, my own boss, my own problem for about 19 years now. When I started my first business I worked out of my parents house for years, dreaming of the big day I would have a "real" office. After about four years I finally ventured out and rented a small office about 15minutes from the house in a industrial park. That lasted for a year or so and I liked it but I am weird about my work stuff. I guess you can say I love to work and be surrounded by my business books, my idea files and my entrepreneurial projects. When I had moved the office out of the house I felt distant from "my stuff". I am also very organized so I like "my stuff" in one place if you know what I mean.
So eventually I bought my own house where once again I set up a home office. As my business grew I needed to hire more people and the home office just wasn't cutting it any more so once again I set up an outside office which is how I had been operating for the last 11 years. I found a way to bring my idea files and my business books home but it never felt the same, besides I was running a large company with allot of employees and didn't have time to think about the ideas, the planning and the entrepreneurial ideas like I once had.
So fast forward to today where I am sitting here on a Saturday writing this blog from my home office with the sound of my beautiful 8 month old baby girl downstairs in the back ground. Some of you may think that's the exact reason why you don't want a home office and if you asked me a year ago I would have said the same thing. But my life is different now, my attitude is different and my business experience tells me that you don't need a big flashy office to be successful. I now know success is how you define it and for me it means spending those precious moments with my daughter and two young sons when I want and when it matters most. Today I define my success as: being the best husband and father I can be and building and running sustainable businesses that I can run mostly from my home office.
I now run three businesses from my home office one of which is a
construction company, one is a
consulting company and one is top secret.
There are two other things I didn't mention-it has only been two weeks since I started working from home again and my wife just started a new job, so some days I play stay at home dad.
So I hope you will join me on my new journey as I look to build my future, my nest egg and to achieve my success as a homeprenuer. I will share the tools and the programs I use to stay efficient, stay connected, and hopefully build my fortune.
Please share your stories...