Your Helping Business

First of all where you are and where you operate from.

What service are you delivering? Does it depend on where you are geographically? If it’s a personal service you deliver physically then the constraints of location vary.

Do you travel to clients, or do they come to you? Can you deliver your service over the phone or via Zoom?
It all depends what you do and how you do it.

You’ll need to provide different information and a different marketing message for something that is not geographically constrained than for something which is.

However.

People will check on your business address – because they can.

When they search for you on Google a picture of where you are, or somewhere close by may come up and people can see on Google Maps and Streetview exactly what you ‘look like’.

There’s not a lot you can do about this if you work from home, but if you have business premises, make sure that they ‘look good’ from the outside.

Don’t use a PO Box address as people find these ‘suspicious’ and avoid using a stock registered office address, or the address of your accountant, which is not where you actually operate from.

Potential clients will think you are trying to hide something, and these sorts of addresses are often sold on the basis of keeping your real address private or even ‘secret’.

What type of image is that?

Hey, you’re running a business providing a personal service – you want people to engage with you – to find you – so why hide?

Until you’re well established as a coach or therapist there’s no real advantage to be gained by renting prestige rooms – unless you are already dealing with high end clients. There are plenty of therapy/coaching rooms available in most towns – you just have to find one that will allow you to use the space on an ad-hoc basis.

Which brings me to the vehicle you drive. Usually this will be a car. If you are travelling to clients to deliver your service, there is really only one rule. It doesn’t matter what make it is or how old it is as long as it is regularly serviced and reliable.

All you need to do is to keep it clean, and if for some reason you can’t do that just park it out of sight!

Working from home

If you decide to work from home as most of us do then set aside a room specifically for providing the service you deliver whether that be coaching, therapy or healing (we’ll call it your ‘treatment room’). Make sure it is clean, simple and used only for delivering your service to clients. Don’t be tempted to use it for temporary storage or anything else including as your office. And make sure you leave strict instructions to other members of the household you are not to be disturbed when using it (except in the case of dire emergency!)

Your ‘office’ should be in a separate room, or an area of another room set aside specifically for that purpose. As a coaching or therapy professional you should also have a computer dedicated to your business which no-one else in the household has access to. Apart from anything else you need to do this for compliance purposes.

Think about the ‘route’ to your treatment room. What will clients see on the way? Do your best to keep this clinical and professional.

If you work via Zoom or any other meeting app think about your background and lighting. The best light is natural so it’s good if you are facing the window otherwise you’ll need some lighting in front of you but watch out for distracting reflections if you wear glasses.

If your background isn’t appropriate get a green screen and put that up behind you with a non-distracting background image. Don’t rely on the background your app provides; these can come up with some very distracting ‘effects’ when you move.

Finally avoid using headphones other than the ear-bud type It looks a bit odd to the client if you’re wearing a bulky headset.

Home Office Expenses

If you use a room, or part of a room, in your home as your office or to deliver your service you can charge a ‘Home as Office’ expense. The way this is worked out is based on the number of rooms in the house excluding bathrooms and kitchen.

So if you have three bedrooms, a living room and a dining room and use one of those rooms as your office you can charge 20% of your heating and lighting expenses to your business.

If you use your home broadband and phone for business purposes you can make a charge; so if you spend 8 hours a day at home on business you could charge 50% or more of your broadband costs (assuming you’re asleep for 8 hours a day as well!).

In the case of a mobile phone you might charge 50% or 75% of your mobile bill to the business and the easiest way to do this is via the DL account if you are a Limited Company (see below).

Warning!

Never ever get talked into having a ‘business line’ installed at home. If you really do need a separate landline number for your business, get a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) line. These are much cheaper, and you keep the number wherever you go.

Similarly, don’t make the mistake of switching to a business energy supply. It may appear to be cheaper, but the VAT is charged at 20% instead of 5% and it takes several months to switch it back when you sell your house and, like a business landline, could well impede a sale.

What’s more you will be locked into a multi-year contract by the energy supplier which is impossible to get out of (I know, I have had several clients who have tried) even if you close your business or cease to trade.

Business Premises

If you don’t work from home and need a dedicated business premises there are two options – rent or buy. However, opportunities to buy a property outright are few and far between unless you are actually buying the business it houses as well.

You will only need to do this if clients need to visit you and you decide for any reason not to work from home
The main thing you need to consider after size, is access. Will clients need to visit you? Is there good access and good parking and also you have to consider access for wheelchairs and the like.

(But here’s a tip – if yours is the sort of business where you need to see clients and you don’t have wheelchair access, all you have to do to ‘get round’ the regulations is to offer home visits.)

There are several companies out there offering ’serviced’ office space and there are some things you need to watch out for here – namely, all the ‘extras’. Charges for utilities that are ‘included’ can be much higher than you would pay direct, especially for telecoms, and there are often maintenance and security charges on top of the basic rent.

Certainly, it takes away the necessity to arrange all that yourself but it’s usually much more expensive.
If you do have your own premises or rent where those things aren’t included, you’ll also have to set up your own heating and lighting and telephony supplies.

Business utilities is a very competitive market and not regulated in quite the same way as the domestic market so make sure you shop around for the best deal that’s not going to lock you into a long auto-renewal contract.

Once you sign up for a business energy contract it is, in my experience, impossible to get out of it even if your business closes or moves. Business telephony is not so bad but does have similar problems.

Security

Another issue with business premises is that they are usually left empty at night. So what happens if something goes wrong? And that’s not necessarily criminal activity.

First of all, you’ll need an alarm system and possibly CCTV, but what happens when it goes off in the middle of the night? Well, so that you don’t have to get up and rush out there you need to have a ‘keyholder’. A reputable security company that will send someone out in the middle of the night to check it out and take appropriate action. It’s just another of those things that you need to consider when taking on business premises.