Starting home-based busines?

Starting home-based business after layoff means making some personal adjustments
Joyce M. Rosenberg, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 30, 2009
NEW YORK - First, they had to deal with being laid off. Then the challenge became figuring out how to run a business from a spare bedroom while the kids are fighting and the dog is barking.
Many members of the latest generation of entrepreneurs are people who lost their jobs and decided to start businesses in their homes. It's safe to say that practically all these new owners face a shakeout period as they learn to juggle a business and their personal lives.
Parents who become entrepreneurs and their children have some of the hardest transitions.
Suzanne Kantra, who was laid off from an editing job in October, is running an online publication called Techlicious.com out of the three-bedroom apartment in Manhattan she shares with her husband and three children ages one to seven. When she's working in her bedroom, the door is closed. For her older children, "knowing I'm home but not available has been an adjustment for them," she said.
Sometimes the kids forget what that closed door means, and Kantra is interrupted anyway. One way Kantra tries to help them with the enforced separation is not to do any work around the time they come home from school. That way, she can give them all her attention as they tell her about their day.
Learning to live with a home business can be a challenge for older kids, too.
Diane Shader Smith was laid off from a big public-relations firm right before Christmas, and started her own Beverly Hills, Calif.-based company under her name. She had to set limits for family members and, along the way, cope with some guilty feelings.
Shader Smith's son would show up with several of his fraternity brothers, looking for something to eat. "I have established a 'you must call first' rule," she said. And she put a sign on her office door that says "working" to deter family members from interrupting conference calls.
Shader Smith felt bad when her parents would drop by with groceries and she just didn't have time to talk.
"They don't really mind that I don't talk to them," said Shader Smith, who said she's learned to "just say no" to all kinds of distractions, including the refrigerator and the laundry.