This is a continuing series based on my recent e-book, How to set up an office at home, published and available from Bookboon.com.
Marie Kondo, author of the book, Joy at work: Organizing your professional life, in an interview during the COVID-90 crisis, said that, while confined to our homes, we should re-evaluate how to balance our personal life. With time to reflect, she suggested writing down what we want to achieve both professionally and personally. During this crisis, her book tour was cancelled, forcing her to move to Zoom video conferencing for interviews. The situation forces people to explore new ways of communicating.
Others also adapted quickly to communications and sales via the Internet. You should ask yourself some questions. Can I adapt my product or services to allow online sales? Should I have a website that can accommodate e-commerce? Could this lead to an expansion of my product line? And so on.
Every crisis motivates creativity, and the pandemic has seen restaurants focusing on takeout and delivery, car dealerships selling online, educational and training firms promoting courses and seminars through video and audio conferencing, churches delivering sermons on YouTube, and so on.
One thing is obvious. You do not need a high-rent office or storefront to start a business at home. In some businesses you need little more than a laptop and a printer and a lot of creativity.
Stimulated by government measures implemented because of the COVID-19 pandemic, is a realization of cost savings for those working from home. An article in our local Telegraph-Journal on April 16, 2020 announced that some insurers have cut auto premiums, and it is estimated that the reduction in premiums could result in $600 million in savings in Canada. And with less driving, there is a reduction in greenhouse gases as well as fewer accidents. By working from home, the time savings globally, by not having to commute, would be phenomenal.
An important lesson learned by many people during the Coronavirus lockdown was how to handle stress. Normally, home-based workers have the advantage of more control over their stress levels since they can more easily take a break or change tasks when the work gets stressful. But this was not the case during the pandemic, and people had to be resourceful when it came to reducing stress. Everything that the more successful people did involved being active in some way, whether that was in taking up a new hobby, posting a video on YouTube, or writing a poem about the situation. If you have a tendency to get stressed out at times, you might refer to my e-book, Making stress work for you, published by Bookboon.com.
I predict that more start-ups will enter the business world through home-based businesses, reducing the failure rate in turn. And larger companies will be more open to telecommuters working from an office in their home, bringing advantages to both the company and the employees.
With most crises also come opportunities.

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