Dawn Sheffield and Steve Rose are 30 somethings! (One is a bit more something than the other!) Their daughter is 12, going on 25! They are based near Matlock in Derbyshire. Dawn talked to us about working at home.

Q  What do you do?  A  Between us we cover just about everything to do with promoting a business. We provide Public Relations, Business Writing, Design Services and Marketing Help. As a musician, Steve even provides original music compositions too! We have been working from home for just over three years now and it’s got better and better.  Q  What was the deciding factor to help you to decide to work from home?  A  The driving force was a move out of London. We’d found our ideal house and were determined that we would make the rest of it work somehow. I intended to work freelance but was offered a job and decided to take it to familiarise myself with the local business community. Steve meanwhile was commuting from Derbyshire to Hertfordshire. Just over two years later, Steve obtained a contract locally and became self employed, based at home and working with companies on design issues. Soon after, I realised that although I had originally intended to work freelance, three years down the line I was still working for someone else. Therefore, with a request to manage a national conference in my pocket, I left the company and with the two of us now self-employed, ROMAN VIII was born.  Q  Where do you work at home?  A  One of us works in a spare ‘bedroom’ and one works in a spare ‘lounge’ although come 4 o’clock there is usually a bit of vying for space with our daughter who is either keen to play the piano or do her homework. Come to think of it, all day long there is a bit of vying for space with four large cats eager to soak up the heat from the desk lamp or to chase the computer mouse.  Q  Do you manage to keep your work and home life separate?  A  Yes, pretty much. Work papers only come out of the ‘offices’ in emergencies and despite some late night working, generally once the doors are shut that’s it for the day. Having said that there is still the verbal unwinding that takes place – sometimes over dinner – much to the annoyance of our daughter who now tells us that “this is family time so stop talking about work!”  Q  What is the best thing about working from home?  A  Several things really, definitely the fact that you can work in clothes that are comfortable and in an environment that is not stuffy and noisy. Also the flexibility to manage your own time without someone breathing down your neck. And of course the fact that we have beautiful views from our windows of hills, sheep, cows and the comings and goings in the village.  Q  What are the negative points about working at home?  A  At first it was the fact that because people knew we were at home, they often dropped in for a chat or a cup of tea. You don’t want to be rude but you do need to get on, so we had to be firm and things are much better now. In fact there are quite a few people working from home here so sometimes we have a communal coffee break.  Q  How do you manage your time?  A  Any principles of time management that I have picked up over the years are used now although I do tend to rush around a lot at times, which is probably not good for the energy levels. I think the main thing about working from home is to have a disciplined and organised approach to work. Email is a boon and saves a lot of time that would be spent on the phone although it’s no substitute for talking to people face to face. I do tend to work late more than I should but there’s usually someone here to stop that or to open a bottle of wine - which is guaranteed to get me out of the ‘office’. Steve’s approach to time management is equally organised and he’s a lot better at giving himself time to wind down than I am.  Q  How do you cope with distractions at home?  A  Distractions at home come mainly in the form of the four furry office cats. Quite often they have to be removed from the workspace before they spread papers across the desk. Steve has even taken to barricading his door as one particularly crafty cat has figured out how to open it. The other distractions tend to be a person coming to read the electricity meter or one of those rare hot summer days that just begs you to go into the garden and enjoy it. Meter readers are not a problem - they can usually be dispatched fairly quickly and hot summers days don’t happen often enough to be a real threat! Other than that I can’t think of anything else, there are actually fewer distractions here than in any office I’ve worked in.  Q  Does your homeworking pay the bills?  A  Absolutely, if it didn’t we wouldn’t still be doing it. This is the real world and you have to look at things with a business hat on. Everyone wants something different out of life and I think it’s a case of defining what you want and aiming for it. We could be earning a lot more in London but we have gained so much more in other ways by coming here. We know how much we have to earn each month to maintain the lifestyle that we want and we regularly review our performance and future plans.  Q  How did you manage financially when you first started working at home?  A  I had been planning to work from home for several months and had a definite project in the pipeline. Once people knew I was going freelance, other work began to come in. Steve also had a contract for a set number of days a month so this provided a good base from which to build the business. Our demands for office equipment were not excessive and we already had most of what we needed. Therefore we didn’t borrow any money to get started.  Q  What sort of work did you do before you worked at home?  A  I have worked in a marketing environment for over 12 years, and the job I was doing immediately before working from home was that of Marketing & PR Manager for a large organisation. Steve is not only a professional musician but worked for an international company for 16 years on product design.  Q  How do you cope with the isolation of working at home?  A  I find that working at home is much more productive than in a hectic office. Although Steve and I don’t work in the same room, we are often both here so there is always someone whose brains you can pick. Also, I started up a local business network for other small rural similar businesses and we all know that we can pick up the phone at any time and have a moan or ask for some help on something. Steve and I also go out a lot to see clients and there’s always someone around in the village to talk to if you really are going stir crazy.  Q  What two pieces of advice would you suggest to someone considering working from home?  A  Each day you need to get in the right frame of mind to ‘go to the office’ and keep this space separate if at all possible. Enjoy it – if you don’t, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.

Thank you Dawn for sharing!
Visit Roman VIII on their company website www.romanviii.co.uk