Home Alone: 'People Don't Stroll By Looking For Life Coaches'

Pretty and quaint two-story ranch, bungalow and arts-and-crafts houses line a wide road at the southwest corner of Minneapolis. The house are set behind tall retaining walls, like lines of quiet, reserved doormen trying to create a respectful distance between pedestrian and inhabitant.

It’s a fitting enough metaphor for the challenges of running a business from your home, like Liz Loney does from her house on the 4500 block of Xerxes Ave. South.

“People don’t say ‘Oh there’s a life coach in there!’ when they walk by my house,” she said. “People don’t stroll by looking for life coaches.”

That’s why, in large part, Loney decided late last year to launch a new business association called Lake Harriet Professionals. Their mission is to exclusively serve home-based businesses in and around Linden Hills. Loney said the group hopes to leverage the "buy local" movement.

"If I want to put my money where my nieghborohood is, why don’t I put it where my neighbors actually are?" Loney said.

The network, she explained, will function partly as a referral service for its members and fulfill some of the same marketing functions as a brick-and-mortar business association. It can also remedy another pitfall of being your own boss and your only employee—lack of community.

“It may get lonesome,” Loney said. “It’s easy to get lackadaisical, too. You can end up saying ‘Oh, maybe I won’t focus on the marketing today.’”

Members of Lake Harriet Professionals have to commit to showing up at the group’s monthly meetings, she said, in part to encourage each other not to despair at a slow month.

For some of Southwest’s home-based businesses, though, their operations take them out of the home and into the store.

Card maker Sarah Rubinett launched her business as an outgrowth of her career shift towards graphic design and a return to school. Under the moniker The Paper Social, the Fulton resident started selling her cards at The Paper Hat and at local craft fairs.

“When I got to a point where I thought my cards had selling potential, I thought I’d put them out there and see if someone would want to buy,” she said.

Rubinett set up an Etsy shop recently to sell her cards year-round (she made her first sale last week). Rubinett also continues to sell her wares in local shops and craft fairs, and she’s planning on attending many throughout the Twin Cities in 2012.

“It’s an interesting challenge to turn a hobby into a business and being realistic about how much is going to sell,” she said. “It is hard—yeah you’re putting it out there in the world. Is it getting picked up by someone else?”