Home Based Hurdles

A home based business entrepreneur generally starts out
prepared with a business plan, plenty of capital, knowledge
of the product or service she or he is selling, a good Web
site, a marketing and advertising plan, and the means to get
the product or service to market.

What happens often, however, are eventualities that the home
based business entrepreneur simply did not think of. While
these can be annoying and worrisome, they don't necessarily
have to mean that the entrepreneur has to put aside his or
her home based business idea.

Two common issues that can arise in a home based business
are zoning restrictions and noisy neighbors. Someone may
have moved into an area before they decided to become an
entrepreneur and open a home based business. Now he or she
finds out the zoning may be a problem. He shouldn't panic.
The first thing is to check the zoning ordinances.

The primary issues with businesses based out of the home are
neighborhood disturbances caused by the business - clients
making noise, coming and going at all hours, taking up
parking space on the street. If an entrepreneur has a home
based business that does not typically have clients coming
by, there usually is not an issue. Examples of this might be
online store businesses, writers and editors, graphic
artists, virtual assistants, and services that go out to
their customers like landscapers and errand services.

Even if the entrepreneur should find out that the home based
business is restricted by zoning it's still quite possible
to talk to the neighbors, get their okay and then go through
the proper government channels to get a permit for
conditional use or a zoning variance.

Noisy neighbors can be a problem for an entrepreneur with a
home based business, and if it's just a question of loud
rock music the resolution is to ask nicely. If that doesn't
take care of it there are law enforcement options. If,
however, there are perfectly allowable things out of doors,
such as lawn mowers, a child care center down the street,
the neighborhood pool party, and so forth, that the owner
can't do much about there are things that help mute the
noise. Something as simple as rearranging furniture, or
lined and weather-stripped drapes could help considerably.

A more expensive option, but one that would allow the
entrepreneur to still view the beautiful outdoors while
working at her home business would be to replace the office
windows with new triple glazed ones that keep out noise.
Another alternative is to replace annoying sounds with
soothing ones - background classical music, or a fish tank's
gurgle can make a big noise difference.