Starting up a business can be a very daunting prospect, for a whole array of reasons, up to and including the fact that you likely lack the physical premises with which to create an office space. At least, this is probably true if you’re anything like most entrepreneurs and side-hustlers, who begin with relatively few resources and have to consciously work their way up to a position of greater flexibility.
Fortunately, however, it is possible to start a business from home — and to be successful with that business, too. On the one hand, business ventures such as affiliate marketing are very low-investment by their nature, require no physical stock, and allow you to do everything you need to do from your sofa, in your underwear, if needs be (although this certainly isn’t the ideal approach to maximising productivity).
On the other hand, however, even more “conventional” businesses — those involving stock, or even a functional storefront — can be run successfully out of a home garage, although it may be wise to invest in commercial garage doors as required, in order to accommodate for the particular requirements of your business.
So, if you’ve got a garage but have been uneasy about the prospect of starting your own business from home, here are some ways in which you can use your garage to start up a home business.
Use it as a place to store and organise stock and goods
If you sell any kind of product — be it items of clothing, electronics, art, of music albums, you’re going to need a place to store the stuff you’re selling. While modern industries have covered some of the bases here — there are, for example, print-on-demand booksellers which allow you to sell paperback books without keeping your own self-published supply in stock — it is nonetheless the case that entrepreneurs, by and large, will either need to store their own merchandise and goods, or pay someone else to do so. Often, “paying someone else” is a prohibitively expensive option.
Luckily, you can use your garage as a warehouse. While you may, at first, be skeptical that your garage is nowhere near the size of a commercial warehouse, this may not be an issue in the early days of your business. The questions to ask are — how many products do you realistically expect to sell in a given week? How many products do you expect to produce in a given week? How quickly can new batches of product be produced to meet demand? How much space does each unit of your product take up? How much space do you have available in your garage?
Often, you’ll find that the logistics work out so that storing goods in your warehouse is a good and effective solution, until such a time as your business has increased in success and scope, at which point you may need to invest in other storage options, and at which point those other storage options will likely be much more affordable, as well.
Turn it into a professional office all on its own
Certain businesses don’t really need physical office space, in the sense of having a dedicated area in which you interface with your customers and offer them your services.
Conversely, however, many businesses will need some form of publicly-accessible office, and in these cases, transforming your garage into that office space is often a feasible and cost-effective way of working things out.
Consider the example of someone who wants to make a living as an alternative-health specialist, with an ultimate goal of producing a supplement range, and selling them at a decent price point, while doing consultations with patients on a day-to-day basis.
Would this person be more successful at winning client trust, and up-selling, if he or she were to invite their clients into their living room, with their kids running around, and the TV on, or would they be better positioned for success if they had their own physical “practice” where a client/patient could feel that they were in a proper professional setting, and not just visiting the home of some hobbyist who happened to be interested in making money on the side?
A moderately-spacious garage can often be enough to create a compelling, if compact, storefront for the benefit of customers. The process can be as simple as having the floors and walls done, introducing some partitions, to create a separate “office” space for consultations, and waiting area, and maybe having a toilet installed in an adjacent area.
The rest of the professional image can be accomplished fairly well by the ornaments you display on the walls, and the way you present yourself, personally. You could even have limited “office days” per week, and arrange a part-time receptionist to be available on those days.
Use it as a secluded area of the home where you focus on your work wholeheartedly
While not every business requires a dedicated, customer-facing storefront area, every business certainly does need a space where you can get some work done, keep your files and resources together, and avoid the inevitable crisis that emerges when you don’t set up a proper division between your personal and professional lives.
While this can, at a push, be as simple as setting aside a dedicated desk and chair in your apartment which are used solely for work, ideally, you’ll have more of a dedicated workspace at your disposal.
While you could, hypothetically, work from your sofa wearing your pajamas from the night before, this strategy tends not to lead to optimal productivity. As a general rule, the more you can arrange your circumstances so that you feel like a professional and are able to convince yourself, on a subconscious level, of your professional credentials — the greater the likelihood that you are going to be able to attack your work, consistently, with confidence and zeal, and without being overly tempted by procrastination.
Even a small garage can serve as an excellent home-office space. Consider which props you’ll find useful, if not essential, and add them to the room. This could include filing cabinets, a particular style of desk and chair (maybe even a standing desk), motivational posters, and more.