Decide where your business will be based

Starting a consulting business presents you with lots of choices and challenges. One of these is all about where you business will be based.

• How will you make your choice?
• How will you know which is the right choice for you?

Consider your options before you begin trading.

Start a home-based business

Many consultants run their businesses from their homes. Their business’s base is their home office, but they meet their customers elsewhere. They often work at their customers’ premises, conducting investigations, delivering training, running group sessions etc.

They do all the behind-the-scenes work in their home office.

This is a relatively inexpensive way of starting any sort of business. Overheads are low and a home office is very easy to set up.

If this is your choice you are considering, you will need to think about the impression your choice creates in your marketplace.

You’ll also need to think about some of the practical issues, including your insurance needs.

If you are a tenant, or if you have a mortgage on your property, you’ll also need to check in there are any restrictions on how you use your home. You may find that properties in certain areas may not be used for business.

You’ll need to check all of these things before you start trading, and take professional advice where necessary.

Start a home-based business but hire meeting rooms

Some consultants opt for a home office but also need to provide working space in which to meet clients and others.

There are plenty of reasons why you can’t always conduct meetings at a customer’s premises.

Recruitment consultants, for example, may need office space to interview candidates and to administer tests when they are going through a short-listing process.

Executive coaches may need office space, or meeting room space, to work with clients they are coaching.  Since much of the work can be confidential there are good reasons why meetings need to take place away from the workplace of the person who is being coached.

Hiring rooms for the hour, the half day or the day is relatively straightforward. There are plenty of suppliers of this type of space. At such locations you can conduct your business professionally in a professional setting.

Start a consulting business with your own premises

Some consultants need business premises from the very earliest days of their business.

Perhaps they need a lot of equipment to enable them to deliver their services. Perhaps they need to demonstrate aspects of their service and cannot take the demonstrations to their customers. IT consultants and designers, for example, often find they need premises very early in the life of their businesses.

Sometimes it is the expectations of the industry that dictate whether you have premises or not. People expect to meet a lawyer in an office, not in a hotel, for example. Imagine making your will or discussing probate issues in a coffee shop and you’ll see why.

Making your choice of base for your business

In the end you will need to decide on the best place for your business to be based.

Cost will figure in that decision, as will the expectations of customers and the norms of the industry in which you work.

Choose your base wisely. Your success could depend on it.

This is the ninth tip in a series of one hundred tips for people starting a consulting business or professional services business.

How did you decide where to base your business?

Did you make the right decision?

Let me know in the comments.

See also:

Decide what you legal status is going to be.