Defending my turf

I’ve had a professional home office for decades. For years I have endured the demeaning comments and snide remarks, from both clients and peers, that working from home is somehow less professional. I even had a fellow colleague say, who knew I worked from home, that his business was never legitimate until he moved into a commercial space.

I guess I never realized that for some narrow-minded people, making a profit, employing others, and developing a solid reputation for good work in the community isn’t considered legitimate.

Years ago, I started working with a prestigious client, the CEO of a big company, who was shopping for an extensive kitchen remodel. Even though he was very conservative, he wanted every bell and whistle. I got the feeling he was finally loosening the purse strings.

During the sales process, we went over the budget for each of the specific items with relative ease. I was expecting more resistance, but the guy was very understanding of the cost and process, until we came to the slab stonework. There’s something I’ve noticed about most people engaged in a major remodel. There is typically one aspect regarding a trade, fixture or color, for example, that has some extra special meaning to them. Oftentimes they don’t even care about the most expensive or important aspects of a job, but it’s that one pet detail that means the world to them. And for this client, it was the natural stone component.

When we began to discuss the hard surfaces, the world seemed to stop as the client took over the conversation with poetic passion for the merits and characteristics of stone. The way it could look both hard and soft, the supple softness the fingers experienced, and even how the rock cold surface temperature made his blood flow. I was both stunned and impressed with his knowledge of not only the material itself but the specific details of how it should be handled, fabricated and installed. I was so carried away with his words I kind of forgot where and even who I was. It wasn’t until he uttered one sentence that I was immediately transported back to earth from my comfortable perch at the dining room table.

“We really need to find the right stone guy to fabricate these surfaces for the house. After all, he could be building them in his garage. And the last thing I’ll have in this house is sub-par workmanship,” he said.

In that moment I felt my ideals for creating a professional business were being put to the test. If I ignored, or even worse, dissed the idea of a product being produced at the stone guy’s house, I would be nothing short of hypocritical. If I defended the fabricator’s home shop, I risked not only losing the job, but most certainly my own credibility as a contractor/craftsman.

So I blurted out, “Well, if you hire me, your cabinetry will be built in my home shop.” I had to hold back the joy that was released once I openly denied his ignorant supposition. Afterall, allowing a foothold like this is unacceptable. The very notion that someone believes you can’t be the best just because you work from home is absurd and I was not going to have any part of that kind of ignorant thinking. Surprised by my candor and confidence in telling him the truth, without another word spoken, the client flipped to the last page of the contract and asked for a pen to sign the agreement.

I think about this encounter every time I have or hear a conversation about working from home. It taught me a valuable lesson about how the world is relentless in its attempt to force the square peg of your ideals into the round hole of a politically correct compliance. But when you know who you are, your limitations and strengths, and have the confidence to run a business wherever you are, you don’t have to conform to a set of rules designed to direct the masses. I’m not saying running a business from home is better. And in the ying-yang of the same breath, it’s certainly not worse either. If you reach a growth stage that requires commercial zoning and space, then by all means move. Apple moved when it outgrew its garage, but it also didn’t bury the fact that it began in one. Great things typically start small.

Working during the eye of the Covid storm, I dealt with a lot of clients that were working from home. Many of those who chose not to lost their jobs. After a solid year of sitting at the desk in their pajamas every morning, some people, and even the companies they worked for, saw the advantage of working from home. It’s funny how small companies can work from home successfully for years and still be considered unprofessional, but once the big corporations deem it viable it becomes a new revelation of how to achieve goals. Whatever. Those of us who have found a niche puttering in our home workshop already know that those benefits are the real deal. We didn’t need a pandemic to show us, and we certainly weren’t forced into a corner to do it either. In fact, the very thing they thought was unprofessional and complete torture became their saving grace from Covid bankruptcy.

This article was originally published in the April 2023 issue.