Two things that work-from-home employees often struggle with: maintaining a professional front and maintaining their privacy – trying to market your business but not wanting to do so with a personal address, telephone number, etc. can pose a dilemma.
A note on how virtual offices can help protect both your professionalism and your privacy:
Professionalism: Just because you might be scrubbing spaghetti sauce off the counter in between conference calls, or writing a memo with detergent stains on your sweater, doesn’t mean you can’t preserve a level of professionalism when it comes to your business and working from home. Unless you have the luxury of a very nice home office free of noise and distraction, there is no need to jeopardize potential business deals, new clients or any other transactions by hosting client or partner meetings in your home. Utilize the services and facilities around you. Renting a meeting room or day office at a convenient business center near your home is an investment worth making to maintain the professional front needed to run a business. Even work-from-homers needs to step outside of the home once in a while.
Privacy: There is a fine line between wanting to promote your business and its visibility through online directories, listings, etc. and wanting to avoid house calls from strangers or marketers as a result of listing your personal address or phone number on the Internet. The easy solution to this is to use an identity plan. Business centers allow you to register an address at their location that you can use for business listings, and get a local phone number so that you are not constantly marketing your home or mobile number to anyone and everyone. Just because you run your business out of your home full or part time, doesn’t mean the lines between your home and business need to become blurred – use a public address and phone number for your business to protect your personal privacy.
Seattle Office Blog 