Discipline Key to Home Business

…Blasingame, a small business expert, answers so many business-related questions that he recently launched a new Web site, askjim.biz, which functions as a search engine for people looking for business advice.

CNN: What were the circumstances that led you to work from home?

Blasingame: I’ve been home-based a couple of times, but I’m not now. The main reason people work from home is it allows them to start a business without having to pay the expenses of an office somewhere else. A lot of people start a home-based business part time. They do their job, they come home and they set up a little shop in the den or the attic or the basement … and it allows them to literally grow a business one teeny tiny step at a time without making a huge infrastructure decision. The last time I was home-based was in ’89, and I started a consulting company.

CNN: What are the qualities of a successful home-based business?

Blasingame: Discipline. First is discipline. You’ve got to be able to separate your work from your personal life. You’ve got to be able to set working hours so that when you work, you work, and when you’re not working you have quality personal time. You’ve got to make the decision to turn the computer off and not take e-mail. You’ve got to be able to say, “This is a job, it’s just a coincidence that it’s in my home, and so I’m going to work 8 to 5.”

But also you can time shift. You can say, “I’m an early morning person who has to pick my kids up at 3 o’clock from school.” So you can work 5 till 7, get up and take the kids to school, come back and work till 3 and go get your kids and come back. You don’t have to work a full shift like a regular 8 to 5 kind of thing.

But whatever you’re doing, you have to have regular hours, and you have to have the discipline to stick to those hours, otherwise you wind up not really getting a lot accomplished.

CNN: How does telecommuting fit in with being home-based?