Should You Keep Your Growing Business at Home?

Many businesses will face this very question at some point. They start out as money making  ideas conceived and planned at the kitchen table. Sometimes due to careful planning, and other time quite unexpectedly, an idea takes off and becomes something big. The product or service you provide is in demand – big time. Clearly it’s time to re-evaluate your business plan and plan for growth and/or expansion. So that would mean the next logical step is to move out of your home office and into a commercial office space, right? Guess again.

According to the Small Business Association, in 2006 there were more than 15 million home-based businesses in the United States. Based on their analysis of the data they collected about these businesses, 6.6 million were considered “serious home businesses”  providing at least half of the owner’s household income. According to data from the Strategic  Business  Solutions, Inc. (SBSI) survey, half of start up companies  that participated in the survey were home-based, and half of those were still operating out of the home two years later. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering some of the largest enterprises like Microsoft, Apple, HP and Ford all started as home business ventures.

Your home can be the perfect setting for your small businesses to thrive long-term for many reasons. Lower overhead/operation costs and sophisticated technology make it much easier to start and operate a business from home. The economy is slowly recovering, but according to some experts it appears to be  easier to start and run a home-based business than find secure employment. What do you think?

Muslimahs Working at Home was created to provide women with an alternative to earning an income outside of the home. Our objective is to share resources and tools necessary to operate a successful, profitable, home-based business.