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Where are You Running Your Business Review

Where are you running your business? So I'm gonna answer all these questions for me personally so that you can just see that I do do the work, right? Where do I run my business? I actually have two homes. Life is incredibly complicated. I live in Brooklyn, New York, during the week. I've said this a couple times that if you never heard it before, I live in Brooklyn, New York, during the week. My daughters go to school in Brooklyn. I have a husband who has a wedding photography studio in Philadelphia, and his daughters go to school there. So we go back and forth between Philadelphia and Brooklyn. And if that sounds complicated, it is. But we've been doing it for years, and we make it work. So I have a studio in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that I work out during the week, and I also have an entire work station set up at my husband studio outside of Philadelphia. So I work in a bunch of different places. I do some work at home when I'm home in Brooklyn. You know, those days that I can't just...

seem to get out of my pajamas and all I want to do is marathon how I met your mother while sitting on the So if I have a new show for those of you who find it very amusing. Nice thing to watch a lot of TV. I've been watching the strain on FX. Have you watched this? Did you gotta watch it? It's a book Siri's, but it's also it's like the walking dead, but with vampires that have they suck out of their throats like it's you got. You guys gotta watch this. But some days I just want to be on the sofa watching. That's like So what? I'll work at home on my laptop. I also work in my, um, in my studio do computer work there when I need to sit down and really focus. And when I'm out with Cliff, I work from our studio out there. If I had tried to do this complicated, working in a bunch of different places my first year of being in business, I would have failed immediately. It took me like 13 years of learning how to compartmentalize when I'm calling a wedding like I know for net, like when I'm calling down a wedding I want to do it in front of the TV. It's just how I do it best when I'm blogging, I need to be in a room with no distractions, right? Like so if I've found where I need to work and how and I've learned things that I don't want to do and I don't have to dio But I do have two homes and humorously enough, I'll have to studio. So don't do that. Like, if you're considering, don't do that. It's crazy. I also have, like, 65 hard drives and information everywhere, and it's insanity. So I'm gonna read what some people have done, and then I'm gonna talk about common things. A lot of people were citing the same pros and cons, So we're gonna get to that. So Kimberly here I've run my business out of my home from the beginning. This was an easy decision for me, since I had no funds to start my business. Keeping it at home helps keep the costs down and allows me to stay home with my three year old son. I also very rarely meet with clients in person. In all of my shoots are on location. I will state that I have a goal to have an executive suite shortly after my son starts school. I just need to get out of my house. So this is what a lot of the responses were looking like, such as this one. In conclusion, I decided to go ahead and stay the course work from home because what I'm doing currently is working. My two year plan is to have an office in our uptown district with the historical buildings and such. And I won't rule out the possibility of sharing office space with another business or even another photographer. Our coffee lady doesn't have space to have people sitting enjoy their coffee, and I know she's actively looking to rent space. I could very well, sure space with her. Let that soak in for a moment. My office would be a coffee shop. Redon, if I'm able to find another business owner to share space with my two year plan, could very well come to fruition within one year. I share my studio in Brooklyn with another photographer. His name's Jeffrey Mosher. He is a headshot photographer. He also does weddings. It's a perfect, you know, It's a perfect match. He has specific needs out of the space. So do I. We very rarely overlap. I have no problems. Sharing with somebody else is fine. But what I've been noticing in everybody that emailed in, we're talking about where you're going to run your business. There were common pros to staying home, and they were being home for your kids, in your palace, in your pet, in your family. And that's absolutely a pro. If you're working from home, you're you're there. That's a great thing. Clients love coming to my house. Clients loved coming to my house. They loved it. They loved coming into my apartment. I have a great apartment. We would spend the 1st 20 minutes of every single meeting talking about New York real estate. But they're did just reach a certain point that I just didn't want them in my house. Like even though they liked it, even though they felt like they got to know me a little bit better. I had to clean up every time they came over like it was just some of my life needs to be mine, right? Like I'm pretty good at sharing on instagram I share on Facebook. You know, I let people get to know me, but my life is my life that nobody knows anything about. Like I'm not. It makes it sound like I go home to some secret layer and become a different person. That's not what's going on, but I have to have some measure of privacy, and having clients in my house was just a little bit too much. I can write off my office if you work at home. Yes, you can. Sort of. You need to talk to your I can't about writing off your office because that is one of my accountant told me, one of the biggest red flags that the IRS is people writing off a home office. Do you need to make sure that if you're going to do that, you're going to do it right and you're going to do it with the correct percentage and you're going to do it in a way that does not raise red flags now? When I was working at home the first couple of years, I in the 1st 6 years that I lived in Brooklyn, I did not write off my home office, even though I could, because the tax benefits of riding off the home office we're not enough for me to be okay with the red flag, but it would have raised with the I. R s, right, Like riding off 15% of my home. Didn't help that much when it came down to taxes, and I just I just rather not do that at all, so I didn't. The commute is easy. That is very true. I always have everything that I need here. Also very true. Sometimes I need a hard drive, and sometimes it's at the studio. And sometimes I need a hard drive, and sometimes I've taken it to Philly and one horrible time. I needed something for a shoot, and it was still in Philly like stuff contend to get strewn back and forth. I like multitasking. Some people are really good at putting in a load of laundry and then getting back to work, and I could go to work in my yoga pants or no pants. I mean, I did. There's a benefit to that. So common cons to staying at home. These were always what people were saying. They can't separate their home from their work. That was the biggest problem. And before you just jump into going out and getting a studio space, I really suggest that you spend the time trying to figure out if you can separate your home from your work when you are at home. Because for me it was a simple as putting my computer and putting my office in a separate room and closing the door at the end of the night and just disciplining myself to do that. So if you have trouble separating, try to learn how to separate before you just run out and start leasing office. I can't work when I'm home with my kids. I mean, that's true, Like it's really hard. I'm not going to say that. There's an easy way around this one. Keeping it cleans, the clients can come over. That's the pain. Clients might be allergic to, my pet. That's that's honestly, that's a very valid concern, especially for people who have cats proximity of my office to my bed in my fridge, and I'm not gonna lie. This is a problem for me. When I work at home, I literally hear a voice from my bed saying the kids aren't gonna be home till three cum lay down. You know you want Teoh. Why aren't you doing mawr your home all day? Ah, that's a bad one when you work from home and you have your business at home, if you have a spouse that works, not at home, you're going to suddenly become the default person for any deliveries, any repairs, any anything that needs to be done during the day. That's I mean, that's a really valid con. And it's lonely, honestly, The biggest reason why I ended up with a studio not only because I wanted to start doing glamour and boudoir, but because I was really tired of having no grown ups to talk Teoh during the day like it was I would go an entire work week without talking anyone other than my husband and my kids and the clients I talked to on the phone like I was really kind of losing social interaction with the rest of the world. And it's kind of nice to have to put on real pants and go to an office so common pros to having a space and buy a space I mean a physical location outside of your home where you work, you get your business out of your house. It makes you look more professional. You don't have clients in your house. You don't have props, gear or stuff in the house being able to get all of my huge collection of old hard drive out of my house and into my studio with Major, an easy mental separation of home and work, and then common cons having a space. And these are things that when people were sending in their homework assignments, these were being listed over and over and over again. It's more money to outlay every single month. I would need an employee on. I want to talk about this one. Just because you have a studio space doesn't mean you need an employee just like this one here, which is I would need office hours. I have a studio and I don't have office hours, and I don't have an employee that works in there. You know, just because you have a studio doesn't mean you need to unlock the doors at 9 a.m. and lock the doors at five PM and let people just wander in. You know, my studio is by appointment only, and there's nobody in their working at every single day. It doesn't have to be that kind of a studio. I would need to double or triple sales to pay for the space. And most importantly, I shall want to You have to. Having a studio doesn't make you a professional, and my reasons for it were so that I would have a states to do head shots and beauty and boudoir. It was at the place that I was at sort of in the market that I'm at. It legitimised my business a little bit more. I was able to share it with another photographer. So the amount that I'm paying every single month to put a physical space on my business that is not my house was big. I wanted to have my business on Google Maps, and I didn't want to have my house on Google Maps. Um, and so the outlet every single month was worth it for me. Even though I'm not in there every single day working