Lots of people have the idea of working their own business from home, but is it all it's cracked up to be? Let's consider now some of the ups and downs of your own home-based business.

Firstly, let's look at the downside to having your own business based in your house...

1. Working from home means you will have intrusion into all elements of your home and family life; phones ringing, perhaps people calling at the front door, paperwork everyone, hogging computers, etc - whether you like it or not, or even think you can avoid it, you need to recognise right up front that your business and home life will be entwined once you run a business from your home.

2. Your family may not be that sympathetic to the fact you are trying to run a business from home. They won't necessarily give you a quiet area to work - you will have to compete with TVs, people on the phone, toys, computer games, friends over for tea, and more - all this will be going on when you're are trying to make that key sales call!

3. Other family members in the home will get fed and frustrated with you because you're there but not really there. What I mean by this is they will see you around and so think it's fine to ask you to do something, yet you may well be in the middle of a key business proposal or drafting a quote, yet they won't understand that, thinking as you're there why can't you help them.

4. It's sometimes hard to often get the motivation - when it's you on your own working from home, with no work colleagues around you, it can be hard sometimes to find personal motivation to get 'into gear' workwise, and to really get stuck into your work.

5. Many people will simply think because you are 'at home' then its fine just to drop in for a coffee, chat, catch-up on latest news, etc. Being at home doesn't mean your not working, yet that can often be hard to get the 'I'm working' message across to others.

Yet, with all these minor 'downs' to running your business from home, the upside is very positive and hugely rewarding...

- Control of your own time, having time off when it suits you and working when it suits you.

- Highly cost effective, often offsetting many home costs to your home-based business.

- Quality of life is much better, allowing you to spend much more time with those you love.

- Dramatically reduced the time you need to travel to work avoiding long and boring work trips ...you only have to walk across the house to wherever your 'home office' is, taking you minutes rather than hours.

- Greatly reducing stress levels and much better for relationships and overall well being.

I've spent 20+ years helping people start their own businesses working from home, and increase their incomes with their own home-based business - part-time and full time - and I can wholly endorse the huge 'ups' of working from home far outweigh the 'downs'.