Working From Home How To Get People To Respect Your Time
Today we are going to talk about working from home and how to get people to respect your time and your space. One of the biggest challenges that you are going to face as you build your online business, is people not respecting your work time and them not accepting that you are actually running a business, that’s because they think you are being lazy and perhaps you should get out there and find a job.
The thing with an online business, people will not take you seriously until you start bringing in big money, and as we know like any other business, online business will require a bit of time before you start bringing the big dollar. So you will find people just dropping by your house unannounced, because to them you have no better things to do than entertain them.
People are very funny sometimes, if you are working for a big company and Let’s say, you have some days when you can work from home, people will respect that and they will call to see if you are working or they can drop by, but if you are working for yourself and running your own online business, they don’t take it seriously and you will have to keep reminding them that you are actually working.
So when working from home how can you get people to respect your time?
If you are working full time at home, One thing you need to do is to make it very clear that you do take your business very seriously and you need to tell them how many hours a day you are working, for example you can tell them well, from 8 in the morning, I am working, then I take a lunch break at 1 and then I get back to work at 2 and work until 4.
If you are working part-time at home, you have to make it very clear about your working hours, and actually it’s not just friends, family members also could make it very frustrating to work on your website, for example, I get very angry when I have made it very clear that I will be working on my website from a certain time to a certain time.
Then you find that’s when things are coming up that I have to take care of, and as you know when you start working on an article, you really don’t want to be interrupted because then you lose the momentum. So if you are starting your own online business, you need to let the family know that, this is something that you take seriously and your working hours are not to be interrupted 
Another thing I find disturbing is when people are always finding you things to do because they think you have nothing to do, like you could tell someone that you are working on your website, then they start coming up with things to keep you busy like, joining a cooking class or applying for a job or volunteering to coach the local soccer team, or volunteering to walk the neighbor’s dog.
Some will even want you to babysit their children. The thing is, if people knew what it takes to write and publish an article on a website, then they would know that you have a lot of work to do, I have found just recently that if you tell people exactly how many words you have to write, it helps to give them a clear picture of what exactly we are doing online.
I think if you tell someone, well, I have just finished doing my research for my next article and it’s gonna be about 2500 words, that helps give them an idea, I remember I told someone just recently that I could not do what they were asking me to do because I really didn’t have time, because I was behind on my writing and I needed to do a 2000 words article and that made them understand what I was talking about.
If it’s your spouse, let them know what you are researching about and let them know that it’s gonna take you a lot of uninterrupted time to finish your writing. Also, it’s very important to set goals for yourself that way you will not be distracted, also setting goals helps in telling them how behind with your work you are.
For example, I got swept away with other work just recently and I could see that I was behind by two articles based on the goals I had set for myself and so when something else came up, I told my husband I cannot do it because I am way behind with my website work. And I just sat in front of my computer and I didn’t get up until those two articles were done.
The only way to have a successful online business is to take it seriously and don’t treat it as a hobby even if you are working part-time, you need to treat your online business like any other business, imagine if you had a shop, would you open some days and close some days? it’s the same with your online business, you need to stay focused.
There are reviews to be done so your readers can order their favorite products and you can make your commission, links to be put in articles, and of course, lots of research to be done, and a lot of posts to do on social media to promote your website. So yes when people say that you need to find a job, you need to tell them that you do have a job.
By the way, did you know that as your website grows, there will be so much work to be done that you will have to hire someone to help you? That’s right, as your business grows, you will find that there is so much to be done, and you don’t have enough time to do it by yourself, even if you work full time online, you will find, that it’s too much, companies wanting you to review their products, videos to be done, emails to be answered. I think you get the picture, so yeah this is a real job.
Working from home can be challenging some times but if you take it seriously, others will too
So as you are starting out, it’s very important to get people to respect your time and your business, besides, if you were working at a company, would they be dropping by or bringing their kids for you to babysit? the answer is no, so why are they dropping by at your company and disrespecting your working hours? And more importantly, why are you letting them?
Before I started my online ventures, I used to respect people’s time, but now I respect people’s time even more because I understand just how valuable time is. I remember once I was so tired after a long day’s work and I really needed to finish a post that I was working on, so I pushed myself until I finished it, and after I posted it, I received a comment on the post and I was so happy because I felt like what I had done was appreciated. So sacrificing those couple of hours of sleep was worth it.
From that moment on I knew that most people who are running websites, they are probably sacrificing a lot of sleep to create and publish content, and that’s why I always end my posts with thank you for your time because I know even taking the time to read and comment on my content, is a big deal. My point is, try to let people understand just how valuable your time is.
People will respect your time and your online business if you show them that you are serious about what you are doing
Another way to get people to respect your time is by being firm but not rude, for example, if someone shows up at your house during the day unannounced, just tell them you are very sorry but you really don’t have time to spend with them because you are in the middle of a very important conversation with a client and you can even throw a number like I will lose hundreds of dollars. And that won’t be a lie because your readers are your clients.
They keep your website going thus promoting your rankings with the search engines which interprets to more sales. So if someone brings their kids to your house because they think you got nothing better to do other than babysit their kids, tell them you are very busy and that you would rather share the babysitting bill with them if they find someone else because you really can’t afford to lose the opportunity to do the review that you are working on with a client.
I hope you have found some ideas that you can use to help in people respecting your business, I also hope that you will be firm and not let people mistreat your business, after all, it’s true what they say, time is money, so when you waste time, you are wasting money. Imagine someone taking two or three hours of your time, that’s enough to do A review of maybe 5 products on Amazon and put links and start earning money.
Well, I hope you have enjoyed reading my article and I hope you will take time to leave me a comment because it gives me the courage to see people commenting, I also love interacting with my readers and exchanging business ideas so please feel free to drop me a few lines on the comment area.
Thank you so much for your time
Rose
