Working from home

[larpaborgow]

Hi

Can anyone give me any advice on setting up a massage business at home? I have completed and passed the ITEC holistic massage course but during the course our tutor barely touched on the business side, and now I feelcompletely overwhelmed!

I am in the process of getting insurance and I know about keeping books etc, it's other things such as using my home as a business premise, health and safety and how my home insurance will be affected that is bothering me. I am keen to make sure I get everything right and I feel quite frustrated that we weren't able to discuss thie more with our tutor. If anyone can offer any help or advice I would really, reallyappreciate it!

 

[Leila L]

Try checking out the Business Development and Effective Marketing forum - lots of advice on there....
[link=http://www.healthypages.net/forum/tt.asp?forumid=25]http://www.healthypages.net/forum/tt.asp?forumid=25[/link]

 

[NefSpipse]

It may also be worth reading the earlier thread [link=http://www.healthypages.net/forum/tm.asp?m=290929]Massages at home to earn money - please help![/link]

And there are some warnings about over-enthusiastic advertising on the thread [link=http://www.healthypages.net/forum/tm.asp?m=255093]Attracting new clients[/link]

Alan

 

[ftsbyjgf]

Hi congratulations! I work from home. In terms of insurance, I told my house insurance about what I was doing, advising them that it would only ever be one person at a time and that the only place that they would be going to would be the bathroom and my therapy room. They were totally fine about it and said that I should advise them when I was averaging more than three or four a week. However, I know that a friend of mine's insurance have said that she can't practise at all at home and would have to take out a separate policy irrespective of that fact that she may only get one client a month.

There was another posting about this somewhere whereby somebody had taken out an insurance policy with Balens insurance (for work and house). I am in the process of looking into this. I also noticed that there was an advert in this month's FHT magazine for insurance for those working from home. Can't remember who with. If you are interested send me a PM and I will look it up for you.

I find working from home absolutely fine. I think it depends on where you live. I live in a relatively close community and so far haven't had any trouble at all with strange people coming for anything "extra". I haven't had any horrible phone calls either and that is over a two year period.

The other thing is the council. I had very vague answers from my council and basically I gave up with them as they had no clear policy in place. However, there have been some other threads about having to get a license for practising at home. This seems to be in the London area so you may need to look in to this further. Hope that helps.

 

[Suki]

Thanks Bexx. Unfortunately I do live in London and so I am in the midst of trying to sort out a licence. Fortunately they're being really helpful but it's worrying laying this money out when I'm not sure how many clients I'll manage to get.

I read about Balens so I will speak to them about insurence. Hopefully that won't be as complicated as dealing with environmental health!