23 May 2008

The secret to moving a home-based business

I'll be honest - I'm still figuring this one out. Moving house is stressful enough, but this is not just a case of flinging my clothes and books into boxes and then unpacking at leisure as I settle in.

This time, I need to move my freelance business too. I'm home-based so this all needs to be carried out as smoothly as possible with the least amount of disruption. The key here is planning. I'm already informing my regular clients that I'll be moving shortly. Today, I'll be ordering my phone line and broadband so it will hopefully all be up and running by the time I need to move my office.

My emails and URLs will, of course, not be changing but I need to pay my printer a visit to order some change of address stickers for my letterheads and cards. Freelance colleagues have also been immensely kind in helping me put together checklists of what I need to do and buy.

I'm fortunate that I'm not moving far and my landlord is a friend. I've already got the keys for Wordsmith Towers Mark II and I have the luxury of being able to move piecemeal over the next 3 weeks once I find a man with a van. The aim is to move as much of my personal stuff as possible first, then shift the office last...

Stay tuned as I discover if the theory is going to work in practice!

3 comments:

Juliet said...

You have shedloads of sympathy from Musings Mansions, I can tell you. Did it all 2 years ago with the additional distraction of three kids and all their clobber as well. Clients were all terrifically nice and 'understanding' about it for about three days tops, after which everyone got very stroppy when phones and broadband weren't connected as fast or as smoothly as planned.

All quite unbelievably stressful and another big downside of freelancing if one can't afford the luxury of simply taking a fortnight off like 'normal' people do!!

Fingers crossed that it all goes well for you over the next few weeks.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the three-day warning! I shall bear that in mind...

Anonymous said...

Good luck with that! :)