When Life Interferes With Your Design Business Running a home-based design business is the best thing any designer could do. At least that’s my opinion, but I could be biased since I’ve been doing it for over 13 years now and I love what I do. But running a home-based design business does have its drawbacks. Such as when life interferes with your plans. Running a home-based design business is great. You can set your hours and work as much or as little as you want. You decide how much you want to charge and if you wish to charge by the hour or by the job. You also get to choose what clients you want to work with or not. Meaning you have the option of turning down any jobs that don't interest you. Plus, you have nobody to answer to since you work from home all by yourself. OK, you have to answer to your clients. But at least you don’t have a boss breathing down your neck to get the job out, or else. Yup, being a home-based designer is great. However, there is one major drawback to running a home-based design business. And that’s when life interferes. Life has a way of messing with you in unexpected ways. Some days are good, some are bad, and some can send you into a panic. I'm talking about the latter one. When life throws something in your path that grinds your design business to a halt. I'm talking about sickness, accidents, family emergencies, even death. There are also grand scale emergencies like natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes or earthquakes. And don't forget uncontrolled events such as power outages or having your equipment stolen. All of these can have a negative impact on your design business. Don’t get me wrong, not everything that affects your business is a bad thing. Marriages, births, vacations, etc. also affect your business. Life interferes, and the status quo of your business changes. So what can you do when life interferes with your design business? Prepare for expected breaks In some cases, such as vacations, marriages, births (to some extent) and even things like surgeries can all be scheduled. Advanced knowledge of these events gives you an opportunity to prepare for the time your business is affected. In some cases, your business may be shut down for a few days, but it could also be affected for several weeks or months. When you know a break is coming, you should warn your clients well in advance of these shutdowns. To help ease the pressure, you can try to get things done before your time off. Or you can tell your clients you cannot work on their project until after a specific date. I never start any new projects during the two weeks leading up to a break. This buffer could cause problems for some clients, but you'll have to live with your choice. Yes, you may lose some work because of it. But that’s life. Prepare for unexpected breaks What do you do when life interferes with your business in unexpected ways? First things first, when life interferes in an unexpected way, notify your clients. They will understand. No client will respond with  “sorry about the death in your family, but I have this job I need you to finish by Thursday, can you handle it?”. Your clients knew you were a home-based designer when they hired you. They knew the benefits of working with you also came with some risks. One of those risks is the possibility of you needing unexpected time off. There may be deadlines, and yes, you may feel bad about missing them, but you might be surprised how many deadlines you can miss without any ill effects. Unless there’s a firm date in place, such as for scheduled events most deadlines have flexibility built into them. Once you’ve notified your clients, try to figure out if there’s anything you can do. Maybe it’s providing a list of compatible designers your clients can use in your absence. In cases of natural disasters or equipment failure, you could try and find ways to get back up and running while trying to minimise your time away. Even if it’s merely so you can get the most pressin