For Millions, Home Is Where the Work Is

Have you ever had a day when, after battling home through rush-hour traffic, your nervous system quivering from seven hours with an impossible boss, you’ve collapsed into a chair and gasped “Enough! I’m going to start my own business at home”?

More than 10 million people in the United States have their office, studio, or workshop in their homes. Some of them earn part of their livelihood at home, others all of it.

These are the free spirits who can choose the hours that they work. Who can, if they feel like it, talk to their cats, dress in old T-shirts or eat lunch with their feet up while the stereo provides soothing music.

Working at home sounds wonderful.

But is it?

“Yes, it really is. But only if you’re realistic about what you’re getting into,” said Becky Colgan, president of the San Diego Chapter of the National Alliance of Homebased Businesswomen.

However, there are certain challenges, she said.

Discipline, lack of credibility and isolation are the three betes noires of the home based.

“It takes a great deal of discipline to get down to work when there’s no supervision,” Colgan said.

Who is going to know if you climb back into bed with a book? Go to a movie? Walk on the beach?

“I’ve known several very successful people who have tried it both ways and discovered they had to have a boss.”

And at home, she says, you always have the temptation to “do a few things first.” If you are working in somebody else’s office, you can’t see the weeds sprouting on your lawn, the toothpaste smears on the shower door, the house plant in the hallway that looks as if it’s going to expire in the next five minutes unless somebody gives it water.

Lack of credibility, of respect, can be another challenge.

Silk painter Susan D’Vincent, who lives in Encinitas, quit her job in government research three years ago to be at home with her young son.

Since then she has developed a successful business designing one-of-a-kind clothes.

“When people hear that you work out of your home, they tend to assume what you do is just your hobby,” she said.

Colgan agrees. “I haven’t had this trouble personally,” she said. “But one of our members--an accountant--told me that when she mentioned to a prospective client that her office was in her home he mumbled, ‘Oh, . . . well, maybe you’re not quite what I’m looking for.’ ”

The isolation of working at home, the third bete noire, was one of the main reasons the National Alliance of Homebased Businesswomen was founded (in New Jersey, in 1981).

Its aim is to encourage its members. It links them by newsletter. It provides useful information on such subjects as zoning laws, getting financial backing and how to cope with those days when struck by the old, “Is this business really going to make it?” blues.

Later this year, the organization will open its membership to men.

Cam Lemmon, a professional clown and computer consultant, founded the San Diego chapter in 1983.

“Cam belonged to a chapter in San Francisco,” Colgan said. “When she moved down here she found there weren’t any local chapters. So she followed the NAHB start-up guidelines and founded one.” Most chapters, she added, start in similar ways. “Then Cam’s computer business expanded so much she opened a couple of offices, and we lost her.”

The members of the San Diego chapter are a predominantly cheerful bunch. They meet once a month at Peter Chang’s restaurant in Encinitas.

“I’ve 60 names on my mailing list, but usually about 25 people show up,” Colgan said.

They network first. If someone has a particular problem they may do a little brainstorming as well. Then they have a guest speaker. “Making contacts, sharing ideas--it’s vital if you work at home,” said Mary Jo Mathews, who acts as secretary for the chapter.

Mathews got involved with mail-order publishing when she and a friend from Dallas put together a cookbook of their families’ Southern recipes.

That led to her own small publishing company, Seashore Publishers. Now she is in the planning stage of another mail-order cookbook by an Australian writer.

The national alliance lists 120 occupations as “suitable.” Attorneys often have offices at home. So do bookkeepers, architects, dating services, speech consultants, travel agents and psychotherapists.

“Quiet, tidy businesses, that don’t involve something smelly work best,” Colgan said. Those who live near you will obviously not consider you an asset to the neighborhood if whatever you do requires a shrieking electric saw.

Colgan’s own work is the quiet kind. An editor who “retired” when her second child was born, she has been polishing manuscripts at home for nearly five years, specializing in scientific and technical works.

The flexibility of her hours delights her.

“I work anywhere between 25 and 45 hours a week. Often at night. But I like that. It’s peaceful then.”

Her husband works as a media liaison for Scripps Institute of Oceanography and also writes at home. That’s a bonus, Colgan said, because he is so busy himself she doesn’t have the problem of him looming in her office doorway muttering, “Are you still working?”

One point Colgan emphasizes to anyone thinking of starting a own home-based business is that sometimes you have to make several attempts. Instant success is the exception, not the norm. (D’Vincent said she spent her entire first year on “false starts.”)

“If the first idea you have falls on its face, try another,” Colgan said. “One of our members, Faith Maybury, started a business called “At Your Service” for executive women. Faith figured they were all so busy that they wouldn’t have time to do things like buying gifts, planning parties, picking up husbands at airports.”

The executive women of San Diego County, however, didn’t seem quite ready for this.

“So Faith switched to planning events. Huge events; for thousands of people. Now she’s nationally known.”

Does Colgan think it likely that the home-based business may one day become the “in” thing? Even chic?

“Well, it’s possible,” she said.

In fact, considering that the wedding gown worn by Prince Andrew’s bride sewn in the workroom of a home-based business, anything seems possible.