Publication Date: Friday Feb 6, 1998

Setting up shop

So you've decided--this is the year to break out on your own. You'd rather roll out of bed and arrive at work in your bathrobe. You're convinced that you'd also rather take breaks when you want, and you'd just as soon skip out on all those staff meetings which seem to eat up the better part of every day.

Setting up a home office can indeed be liberating, offering a heap of benefits such as flexibility of hours and dress code, as well as solitude. But keep in mind that embedded within the phrase "no staff meetings" is "no staff."

The isolation can indeed be daunting, says Karen Csjetey, director of the Women's Entrepreneur program at the Palo Alto YWCA. "You're so cut off from the rest of the world."

To help self-starters get off on the right track, Csjetey leads a variety of classes and support groups for women business owners. Men are also welcome to attend, and some do, Csjetey says, adding that other resources include the Small Business Development Center in Sunnyvale, as well as several courses at local community colleges.

Regularly in contact with a variety of work-at-homers, Csjetey has seen it all, including folks who get up bright and early, dress themselves as if they were heading off to "the office," walk down the street for a cup of coffee and conversation, and then come back home and get to work.

That can be the hardest part--actually getting to work.

Launching and maintaining a successful business from home necessitates having not only the right work environment but also plenty of self-discipline. That means ignoring the calls of the dirty laundry and the stocked refrigerator, says Csjetey, who herself used to work at home and still does occasionally.

What's more, it means ignoring the personal phone calls, says Palo Alto entrepreneur Jeanne Smith, who has been happily working out of her home for the past six years.

Smith, a professional organizer, is especially qualified to offer up advice on how to get a home office off the ground. She first got into her own business, which she calls "Exit, Stage Right," after several of her relatives died and she was faced with the task of getting their affairs in order.

While many of her clients are people who need help doing the same thing with their own recently deceased loved ones' belongings and financial matters, over time the business has evolved to include clients who simply need help getting their own everyday lives into some semblance of order--folks who come to her with complaints such as "my closets are overflowing."

Smith's both personal and professional advice to people interested in setting up a viable home office is to set up a work environment that is physically cordoned off from the rest of the house.

Practicing what she preaches, Smith's own office is a separate room in her house--she even has a separate outside entrance. Inside is a rather typical work space, complete with the usual equipment, including a storage area which can be closed off, to reduce clutter.

Indeed, organizing your space effectively should be a high priority, advises Bill Espinosa, who helped establish the Palo Alto branch of the Knowhere Store, an outfit on the corner of Middlefield Road and Colorado Avenue in Palo Alto which offers a unique range of products and concepts for the "individual knowledge worker," Espinosa says, defined by him as "anyone that sits down and tries to get something done."

"When operating a home office, one thing you run out of very quickly is places where your spouse will let you put stuff," Espinosa says.

And what's also essential, Espinosa adds, is having the right tools to do the job, whatever that job happens to be. While an architect's implements may be quite different from those of an artist or a computer programmer, Espinosa recommends that the bare essentials these days includes a desk, computer and some kind of scratch pad. According to him, the latter should ideally be big and erasable. The Knowhere Store, for instance, sells 8- and 10-foot "work walls," which are really just large, movable eraserboards for brainstorming and thought-organizing.

The attribute "movable" is a key one, according to Espinosa. In fact, nearly everything in the Knowhere Store--desks, file cabinets, bookcases--is on wheels, an innovative design feature that can keep the home worker's environment from becoming stale too quickly.

Besides furniture, the Knowhere Store also helps people starting out in other novel ways. "Hotelling," for instance is an option in which a worker can rent space on the store's second floor for a period of months to help them get his or her business off the ground.

The store also offers a variety of seminars and workshops, along with a limited number of products, all things that, according to Espinosa, are conducive to creative thought.

Such innovation is rarely cheap--expect help from the Knowhere Store to run you at least a thousand dollars. But that can be money well spent if it helps to get you started on the right foot.

For those on a skimpier budget, outfits such as Office Depot are an inexpensive resource for general supplies. And Repo Depot, on East Charleston Road in Palo Alto, sells new and used office furniture. While new furniture there costs anywhere from $300 to $800, some of the used items are available for less than $100.

Certain features, such as a lightning-fast ISDN computer line are essential only for some types of work, such as computer consulting. But other items span the range of pretty much any kind of home business. If you're serious about succeeding at working at home, consider the following necessary ingredients: Telephone/answering machine with at least one separate line. Computer Fax/copier (some come as combination units with a desktop scanner included) Post office box (about $35 per year) Business cards and/or brochures (can cost less than $100 up to several hundred dollars, depending on the style and quantity) Office furniture basics (desk with plenty of work space, bookcase, file cabinets)

And also give some thought to your at-home work style. While "getting to work" at home can be a hurdle, closing the office can be equally difficult. In order to separate work from home, it may be a good idea to set regular hours, or at least adhere to "no-work" days at least once a week.

Closing the home office door and returning "home" may be easier for someone who is alone at home for most of the day.

Jeanne Smith has a male colleague who works at home, where his wife and children also are around everyday. To help the kids understand that Daddy is working, he wears a special hat, Smith says.

"When he takes the hat off, he goes back to being Daddy."1 n This is Part II in a two-part series on home offices. Last week explored the financial ramifications of working from home. 

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