OK, so you're thinking of taking the step, or maybe you've already taken the step to start your own business working from home, what are the things you need to consider?

Well right from the start, if you haven't yet started your own business from home but it attracts you, I think it's only fair that I give you some 'working from home' insights I've picked up from spending the best part of my last 20 years working from home. Even if you have already started to work from home, you might get some value from some of the things I've learned.

With this in mind, here are some of the not-so glamorous elements of trying to run a business from home...

Firstly, not everyone in your home will understand you're trying to be professional and run a business from your house. You will get family members chatting away at the wrong time right when your thoughts are bang in the middle of your work; you will get friends 'dropping by' just because you were 'at home'; you will get dogs barking just as you make that key 'phone call, and the love of your life will ask you about "the right colour for the kitchen" just as you started to do something really important on one of your work projects - yep, be prepared, not everyone will appreciate you are running a business from home.

Secondly, be prepared the 'business' will intrude on ALL elements of your life - with paperwork possibly everywhere, phones ringing with business calls whilst everyone's watching telly, children and their friends filling up the lounge just when you needed to spread out some work - the separation between your home environment and your business environment is not a clear one, and the way they intrude on each other will definitely frustrate you at times.

Thirdly, do you have a couple of cars or do you live off one 'family car'? If you do just have one car, you might need to re-think that because that may have been fine when you had other modes of transport to get to your work when you worked away from home, but now you're working from home there will come a time when you will need your own transport specifically for work. Many people make the mistake of thinking that because they work from home, they won't need any transport of their own. That may well be the case for you and you may be right that you don't, but you need to give it some thought - do you need to make any deliveries, post mail, meet suppliers or potential customers, attend trainings, if so, trying to cope with just the one 'family car' will end up being very frustrating because just when you go to grab the car keys, you can guarantee someone else in the family beat you to it and to car's no-where to be found.

There are a lot of valuable benefits to working from home, which make running your own business from your house so worthwhile, none more so than the ability it offers to give you a much stronger and valuable quality of life with those you care about most. But people don't always hear about the 'other side' of running a home-based business - hope these insights now have helped give you a more rounded perspective.