Why New Entrepreneurs Should NEVER Work From Home (The Real Reason You Can't Focus)

What I'm about to say is going to feel uncomfortable for a lot of you trying to build something from home. Your home is the worst possible place to start a business. That's just called the facts. I'm telling you, one of the biggest lies online right now is starting a business from home is easy. It isn't. Social media sold people a fantasy. They don't show you the reality. The reality that your environment shapes your behavior more than you think. And if you haven't built the habits of an entrepreneur yet, It's one of the biggest mistakes you can make. You're just making things harder for yourself. You're lowering the chances of success by putting yourself in an environment that is not conducive to focus. So today I'm going to tell you what to do instead. I'm going to give you a game plan so that you can jumpstart your business and be successful as fast as possible. The topic for today's episode comes from a question from Kathy. If you want to submit a question for yourself here on Q&A Wednesday, just go to 100mba.net/q and we'll make sure to pick it up and make it a topic on the show. The honest truth about working from home is that it fails most new entrepreneurs. Many people that are listening right now are going to say, "I can build self-discipline, Omar. Don't worry, I got this." Most people believe that it's just about willpower, more focus, more drive, more determination, and that they can make it happen from home. And then they blame themselves when it doesn't work out. But here is what I want you to understand. Discipline is not something you summon out of thin air. Okay? Discipline is built through your environment, through your habits, through repetition over time, by making sure that the deck is stacked in your favor so that you have no other choice but to do what you got to do. If you're brand new to entrepreneurship, if you have spent your entire career working in an office, at a school, at a hospital, at a place, a building that's other than your home, you can't expect yourself to operate at high efficiency when you're in a place that you're not used to working from. The places you go to work to, these offices, they're actually built by design to keep you focused as much as possible. Unlike your house, where you have a fridge full of food, where you have a TV, where the PlayStation is waiting, calling your name. You got the dog wanting attention. You got the kids yelling out, "Hey, I want this, I want that." and on and on and on. And what happens is that you try to force this. You try to build your business from a bedroom, from a corner in your living room, from the garage, whatever it might be. And you start to crack because of these distractions, these temptations, and you're only human. And humans are wired to respond to their environment. That's just the bottom line. You can't avoid this. So what I'm asking you to do is to consider this. How about you just stop fighting your environment? How about you make things easy on yourself and change the environment? Let me show you what I mean. When I was a teacher building my custom clothing business on the side while I was in my job, I learned this the hard way. I didn't try to work from home after I finished my job at school, at the university. I decided that that is not going to help me succeed. I went to a coworking space instead. Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM, I went to this coworking space on my way home. And then on Saturdays, I did a full 8 hours at the coworking space. That gave me 16 hours a week of solid, dedicated, distraction-free environment and space so that I can build a strong business. This is what I mean by stacking the deck in your favor. I was able to work and focus. I didn't have the TV calling my name or the bed telling me to take a nap or the pets kind of, you know, seeking attention. No, just a desk, a screen, my computer and the business I was trying to build. I created an environment to force myself to focus. Those 16 hours a week were worth more than 40 hours, in my opinion, because I was focused, like I mentioned. And get this, if you're paying attention, I was able to do this not because I was particularly disciplined. It's because I made a decision to build an environment that made the decision for me. Right? Every time I walked into the coworking space, I was now in work mode. I didn't have to switch gears mentally. It was just how it was because everybody around me is working. The forces around me were pushing me towards what I should be doing rather than the opposite. When you're sitting at home where you're fighting the TV and the PlayStation and the bed and the kitchen and the people around you and the funny jokes that you hear in the background and all kinds of stuff. So I'm here to tell you, you are allowed to stop making it hard on yourself. Get out of the house. So we need to outline all the big mistakes so that you can avoid them. Okay. The first and the biggest mistake, like I mentioned, is assuming you can work from home because they want to, just because it's comfortable. Usually the easy thing to do is not the right thing to do. And in your head, you want to make this happen. You want to be able to work from home because you see other people doing it. But if you're new to entrepreneurship, It's not going to be pretty. OK, a new runner doesn't try to force themselves to run a marathon in their first week, right? They ease themselves into it. They get a coach. They do, you know, maybe a 1K run. And the same thing goes for new entrepreneurs. They should not build their first business in the most distracting environment on Earth. You could see a home office as a reward. Once you have a business that's running smoothly, making profit, you've built the skills and the discipline as an entrepreneur. This could be something that is in your future. Here's a practical breakdown of what working from home costs you that you never calculate. Every distraction costs you 15 to 20 minutes of recovery time. Yes, every time you're distracted, it takes you 15 to 20 minutes to get refocused in the actual work that you need to do. I'm not talking about the distraction itself. The distraction could take maybe a minute. It's the time it takes your brain to get back into deep focus after a distraction. This is scientifically proven. You can't fight science. So if you get interrupted and distracted 6 times a day, which is conservative as an estimate in a home environment, you lost between 90 minutes to 2 hours of productivity every single day. That's 10 to 14 hours a week. Yikes. Mistake number 2: not having a professional address. This one is actually pretty practical, but it catches people off guard. If you are sending marketing emails and newsletters or any kind of bulk email communication, you are legally required to include a physical address, not a website, not a social media handle. You need a physical address and your home address is not the right answer. I know an entrepreneur that did this where they put their home address on their newsletter and they started to grow and they started to become popular and they started to get all this mail and junk and even people showing up to his door knowing his home address because it's on every newsletter. It's a real private risk and a credibility problem. So you might be thinking, "Okay, I'll get a PO box or a registered business address." Here's the interesting thing about that. And I've done this, I've tried this, and I've seen that it's actually not worth it. Why? 'Cause a PO box or registered address is gonna cost you $30, $50 a month, sometimes even more in major cities, like $100 a month. Many coworking hot desk spaces in many cities start at $100 to $150 a month For the difference you get with a professional address and a place that you actually can work, which is included with the hot desk, you can get your mail sent and you can have your registered address for your company at the coworking space. You get both problems solved. One decision. Pretty good value. Mistake number 3, trying to wear two hats at once. This one nobody really talks about, and it affects certain people far more than others. When you're at home, You're not just a business owner. You are also a parent. You're a partner. You're a housemate. You're a dog owner. You're a lot of things. And the people and the animals in your home do not know and cannot feel the difference between you sitting on the couch and sitting at your desk building something. To them, you're just home. You're available. You're here. And so the requests come, the questions come, the interruptions come. And it's not because the people in your life are unsupportive. It's because they're human. And that you're present. And if you're anything like me, I don't like being abrupt or rude or a little bit aggressive or assertive with the people I love. So again, I make it easy myself and remove myself from the situation and not work from home because I don't want to have to once a day, twice a day, 5 times a day say, "I'm working, I'm focusing, I'm sorry." And then I get frustrated and they get frustrated because like, why are you being so mean about it? So instead, do not put yourself in a situation where it causes you more heartache. And for the women who are listening right now, I have a tremendous amount of empathy for you when it comes to this topic. Women traditionally, unfortunately, still are the ones that feel responsible and have to manage a household. The mental load of being a mom, being a wife, being a household manager, being an entrepreneur simultaneously in the same space is enormous. We should not expect ourselves to have to do that. It's genuinely unfair to expect yourself to compartmentalize all the roles in one environment. Okay? This is just not good for you. This is why I recommend everybody that's starting out, especially to get out of the house, go to a coworking space and make sure that you're able to build an environment for yourself to do what you gotta do. Nothing's competing with you. And your other identities. Hey, if this episode is making you rethink your setup, I want you to subscribe to the show. Why? Because I have an upcoming episode I think you're going to absolutely love. It's all about how I built a software business again in just 30 hours in a weekend. By the way, you need zero coding skills to do this. So if you want to see step by step how to build your own software business in a weekend, subscribe because it's coming up in the feed. I can't wait to share with you, so hit subscribe so you don't miss it. So let me be practical about the options. Coworking space. Yep. That's my top recommendation because it's going to be a good environment for work. You get a professional address, you get a dedicated workspace, or even just a hot desk, a place so that you can put your laptop down and charge and you get the Wi-Fi and all that. By the way, you're also in an environment of other people building up their businesses and following their dreams. And it's a great place to network and meet people. That are doing interesting things. Many coworking spaces are pretty inexpensive. On average, $150, $200, $300 a month. Even if it's $400 or $500 a month, it's well worth it. But if you are on a tight budget, and I've been there, okay, and you can't afford a coworking space, you could do what I did. I went to the public library. At a time of my life when I was living in New York City, I was cutting costs, okay? So I went to the public library. It was free. It was quiet. No one's going to ask you what's for dinner, right? For someone who's genuinely bootstrapping their business and cannot justify a coworking membership yet, maybe they just don't have the budget for it, the library is super underrated and it's a completely viable option. All libraries now have Wi-Fi, super fast in my experience, uh, and it's conducive to focus and to work. And the great thing about a library is that you're not really supposed to be talking or making any kind of loud noises. So it's super distraction-free. Another option is a café. Now a lot of people enjoy working from a café because They like the hum of some white background noise. It helps them focus. It creates just enough ambient stimulus to keep the brain engaged without, you know, being distracted by a conversation. The cost of a coffee or two per session is really not that much. We're talking about, what, $8, $10? The key is consistency here. Pick the same café, go at the same time, build a relationship with the people that work there or the owner if they're there, and explain your situation. Hey, I'm building my business here in the café. Hope you're all good with that. I'll be ordering a couple of coffees every time I come in. They'll appreciate it. They appreciate the fact that you're creating some foot traffic and you're, you know, being a patron of their business. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. When can you work from home? OK, I want to be honest about this because I want you to succeed. In my experience, because I worked from home for years and ran remote companies and remote businesses, we now have a studio office in Sydney, so we work from the studio most of the time. So I found in order for this to be viable, two conditions have to be met. Condition number 1, the business has to be a well-oiled machine. You have to be running a profitable business for a long enough time that the habits are ingrained in you. You know how to focus and you know how to get things done. You know what your day looks like. You have systems, you have a team that's taking care of things. Okay? You don't need external environments to enforce focus because you've built an internal focus through your practice, through your team, through your routines. Condition number 2, you genuinely have a distraction-free zone at home, not a corner in your living room that's open to the elements that surround you. Not a desk in the bedroom. A dedicated space with a door that closes. A room that exists for one purpose and the one purpose only is to work. When you walk in, your brain knows what happens here. When you walk out, work is over. This could be a spare bedroom. This could be a basement. But again, both conditions have to be met. You have the systems, your business is running. You're not just starting out. I highly recommend you only do this when you have condition 1 met first. The physical boundary recreates a separation that the coworking space provides in the early days. If you can't create both of these conditions, you are not ready to work from home. I'm telling you right now, you're making it hard on yourself if you do it and you're setting yourself up for failure. Now, I want to give you a gift for those who have made it to this point of the episode. This is actually the most important thing you can do right now. If you take one thing at all, let it be this. Before you sit down at your kitchen table and try to build a business, have the conversation with everyone that lives with you, your partner, your kids, if they're old enough to understand, okay? Your housemates, your parents, if you live with your parents, everyone. And here's what this conversation sounds like. I'm building something important. When I am working and I'm in work mode, whether it's at the coworking space, at the library, or at the desk in my house, I cannot be interrupted. I cannot be interrupted for questions, not for big things, not for small things, not for anything unless it's an absolute emergency and somebody's in danger. The best way you can paint this picture is that I am going into surgery. I am a doctor that's going to perform surgery on somebody. Would you interrupt the surgery? For whatever you're asking me. If it's not an absolute emergency and I need to leave the operating room, then you should not interrupt me. Whether it's with a phone call, whether it's knocking on my door if we're in the same, you know, house, whether it's a text message or WhatsApp, it doesn't matter. I need you to understand this, and I need your support, because the honest truth is that you cannot do it without your, your support from the loved ones around you. You need that buffer, that safety zone, that, that group around you that understands what you're trying to do. Because here's what I honestly know from 20 years of building businesses. You cannot build something real with forces working against you around you. You just can't. You need the people closest to you to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. They don't need just to tolerate it. They need to actively support it. When your life partner understands that 4 hours of you in the coworking space on Saturday mornings are required and you can't change that, that's how it is. They understand that you're making an investment in your future. They're on board. They actually are going to encourage you. Hey, you're going to be late. You're supposed to be there at that time. Let's get going. Let's pack your lunch. Let's go. The mistake people make when starting a business from home is not really about the business. It's about the environment. It's about the distraction that they're putting themselves into. It's a distraction zone. You're going to ask to do things and respond to things that have nothing to do with building your business. OK, so remove yourself from that equation. Remove that struggle away from you. Right. You can take away at least that. And therefore, you can just face the struggles or the challenges you're going to face building your business. Go work in the coworking space or the library or the café or wherever it might be. And come back when your session is done and be present at home and have fun with your loved ones and enjoy your downtime. If this episode hit you close to home, and I mean that literally, then there's another episode I think you'd really enjoy. We just recently published it. It's called How to Run Your Business in 4 Hours a Day. I've worked really hard to get to this point where I can only, you know, basically put in 4 hours a day and everything's fine. The business continues to grow because everything we talked about today the environment, the focus of sessions, the separation of work and life. That episode shows you what it looks like when you've built that machine properly and what you actually focus on in those 4 hours. Go check it out. If you got a question you want to ask, don't forget you can go to 100mba.net/q to submit your question so that we can cover it here on the show. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.