Working From Home

What are your skills/talents/qualifications? What experience do you have? And do you have capital to invest in starting up a business? These plus others are all questions you need to ask yourself. Then look for what you consider to be "gaps in the market" i.e.things for which there might be a demand but where other people have not cornered that market first! I would be very interested to hear your ideas as I expect many ofus have had the Laura Ashley/ Cath Kidston/ Cambridge Satchel " kitchen table" dream or dreamt of being another JK Rowling writing our best-seller in our local Starbucks or Costa's!!

After I decided that I could not do social work for the whole of my career without going round the bend, I worked from home s a photographer. Went along to local college and did a qualification and took it from there.

I have no idea what sort of thing you have in mind, and whether low-key or ambitious. When I retired from a demanding job as a Hospital biomedical scientist, I was worried that I would be bored so decided to set up a business looking after pets and gardens in the owners' absence, either at holiday time or during their working day. As it happened, I found that I was far too busy enjoying life to start it up!
DD2 trained as a dog groomer, which she does in a summer house set up relatively cheaply in her garden. She has more customers than she can cope with. People always seem to manage to find money to spend on their pets.
I hope you come up with something to suit - good luck.

Do bear in mind that starting a business from home is not an instant way of earning money.

First you need something that you can "sell".

You need to set yourself up to carry on the business. some things need gualifications, some planning permission, and everything needs cash to start the ball rolling.

Then you need to publicise it, which will take either more cash or a lot of legging it round doors and notice boards with flyers, or both.

when the customers strt appearing - in dribs and drabs, usually at inconvenient times - you can't ease up on the publicity. If they thought you were good, they might tell their friends, but only one in a hundred of thoe friends will become a new customer. You have to keep plugging.

You will also have to keep regular and accurate accounts, because HMC will be after you for tax at some point, and if you have no records they will assuime that you have been coining it in.

Can you do all that?

Dog-walking?

Gardener?

Do you have any teaching experience - home tutoring?

Children's party-planning?

Domestic cleaning?

There are always the perennial kind of jobs like stuffing bumff into envelopes for mailshots - but they pay peanuts and are terminally boring.

Paula8 First thing is doing something that has a gap in the market and that you will enjoy,it is so easy to be at home and say "I don't feel like doing that to-day".
I do outside catering which happened just by chance when I did the catering for my DDs friends wedding as a present for the couple getting married.At the reception I was asked to cater for other functions and it has snowballed from there,I do a maximum of 6 a month and also have picked up the contract from the Local Council for catering at their monthly meetings.I needed to get my self on a Hygiene Course and have my kitchen passed by Enviromentel Health to check I had correct fridge storage etc.
Also make sure you make the tax man aware of you are doing and keep your records up to date.

And you'll almost certainly need public liability insurance for whatever you do.

I hope that all you Grans in Business are advertising yourselves on your Gransnet Local Page with a FREE listing!

Lots of excellent suggestions paula8 - how are you feeling about it?

It all depends upon whether you are looking for something interesting that also pays the bills a bit, or to replace a full time employed income. If you are just bored with what you are doing why not do something else, but still be employed? If you fancy opening a tea room, go and find a job working for someone else to see if it is for you. Be warned, there are pluses and minuses of working for yourself, especially if you employ staff. Some people have a portfolio of jobs, two or three part time jobs thus have a bit of variety, I have a couple of people working for me ( cleaning) who also have their own hairdressing/beautician business, my job gives them some financial security. Even HMRC have woken up to the fact that people have more than one employer or are a mixture of employee and self employed. But, make sure you get an accountant to sort it out for you, and make sure you pay NIC, it is too easy to slip through paying nothing with several jobs below the NIC threshold, small savings now but great losses when it comes to claiming your retirement pension.

There is a local lady who just does weeding, which I thought was quite enterprising. She leaves all the hedgecutting and lawnmowing to males. I wish I had thought of that, I used to do the lot.

Are you creative? Can you sell things on Etsy? Can you mend clothes and put zips in? Do upholstery? Make birthday cakes?

Register as a childminder? (6 weeks of courses I had to attend years ago, and a house inspection every now and then)

I did salaries and pensions from home for a while, but I don't know what you have done in the past. Many office jobs can be done at home if you have a computer.

Get yourself a full VBD (previously CRB) and offer to do school pick ups and take kids to their own homes after school until parent home from work. My DDs looking for someone to do that on the 3 days I can't!

Would you need to be registerd as a Childminder for this? Insurance, car seats/belts / boosters needed of course too.

Paula8 you say that you are "sick of the rat race" but you haven't said what you are currently doing, work wise?

Do you mean DBS pen?

Or VPL?

Soutra !

Yes I did! Dragon..too many acronyms!!!

So what's VBD? I'm intrigued.