Remote Business Series: Businesses You Can Build at Home

Have you been thinking about building a business remotely so you can live in a location you love? Here are 3 business ideas you can run at home. We will stick to an overview for this post, but let me know if you want more in-depth information or interviews with industry experts to learn more about one or more of these home business ideas.

Why Build a Remote Business?

Maybe you've been wanting to leave the day job to spend more time with family. Maybe you want to move to a remote location for the nature (we love Lake Michigan beach towns for this) but need to BYOJob. Below are three different types of businesses that work particularly well done remote. You don't have to take these ideas too literally. I'm going to present a few different types of business models so that you can modify this for your situation.

Marketing / Media Agency

Why It Works Remotely: Most marketing can be done remotely these days, which means you can save businesses money by offering services on a monthly retainer or per project basis rather than being employed full time.

How It's Done Best: Offer your services as a fractional CMO to startups, or hire remote freelancers to do copywriting and ad buying for a type of business where you have experience.

Your Competitive Advantage: The best way to get your foot in the door with a remote agency is to start with in-person work to build your network. However, if you worked in a particular type of business for years and have an in-person network, try doing some customer discovery calls to ask about your colleagues' needs and see if you can come up with a better offer that

a) saves them money or time b) gives them more business-critical services than they can afford elsewhere

Just remember you don't want to race to the bottom competing with ChatGPT. Use tools as needed to boost efficiency, but stick with a niche where you have experience and a competitive advantage, meaning you understand the best ways to market the type of business you specialize in. ChatGPT can help a business figure out where to advertise or focus their marketing to some limited degree, but this process -- particularly anything needing branding alignment or where you need to know which questions to ask and what type of marketing program to build -- needs to be supervised by an experienced human.

Agritourism Farm / Winery

Why It Works Remotely: If you can find or already own a piece of land where farming is allowed in your zoning code, consider starting a u-pick flower or fruit farm or an agrotourism business like a flower farm or winery that also hosts weddings and nature fieldtrips. The reason this works is that you might live on the property and can run it weekends or evenings.

How It's Done Best: One thing to keep in mind with this business model is that it's a lot easier to make money hosting groups of people on a piece of land than farming it directly. If you do farm a property, look into the highest profit cash crops, which currently include cut flowers for weddings and events or a crop that can be made on site into a personal care product such as lavender farming turned to storefront candles and lotions.

Your Competitive Advantage: Before you make plans for this type of business, make sure you ask around not only about zoning but about business, health inspections, and other permits and insurance. You will definitely want liability insurance if you plan to have guests on the property as opposed to picking up a CSA share from a farm. This type of business works if you are either a people person building a community through events like neighborhood pizza parties in your wood-fired ovens outside or wedding venue. Offer full packages including local flower designers or event planners to host, and you can rent out the venue without having to do everything yourself or make the guests set up or take down. Make it easy, beautiful, and relaxing as much as possible.

Also, no matter what someone says who loves this type of business, it's a lot of work. Make sure you love it, and don't plan on it being a passive income. Anything you run from a piece of land like an agrotourism farm where people pick their own vegetables or help weed gardens, or where guests come for events, needs to be thought out in terms of facilities (bathrooms, heat, water, seating, kitchen on site for prep or bring food?) and noise ordinances. Even if there is no ordinance, these types of businesses tend to annoy their neighbors and cause some local zoning disputes. Plan accordingly and have a way to include and bless your neighbors with your presence such as offering discounts for neighbors' parties. Also plan on traffic, parking space off the street, year-round restroom/changing facilities, and how to host guests in all seasons for your local climate. A lot of these businesses are seasonal, which makes income seasonal as well.

Teaching / Tutoring / Digital Classes + Consulting

Why It Works Remotely: With the rise of online tutoring and digital education platforms, there are many new options for running a remote business as a tutor, teacher, or business consultant.

How It's Done Best: Some amazingly successful teachers and public speakers have come out of the online teaching space. You might take your business in the direction of paid speaking once you drill up demand, but first the name of the game is visibility. Keep in mind that you still need to drive your own marketing to your class, so it doesn't give you free business development support to have an online portal.

Your Competitive Advantage: Your best advantage is expertise, but also think about timing for a remote business like tutoring or online classes. Here is one clear advantage of remote class offerings: Instead of running yourself ragged with a side gig, you could try setting up remote asyncronous classes on a platform such as Udemy, and building your platform over time by driving clients there via Youtube videos. That way you decouple your income from your time. Pick a topic that isn't time sensitive and allows you the flexibility to add content as you have time for a cumulative momentum, otherwise it's a bit of a grind to keep up with constant content creation and marketing.

Consider Taking Remote on the Road: If you speak a second language, get certified to teach that language or maybe to teach English as a second language to people from the culture whose language you also speak. This is an opportunity for travel, as well. Unlike a farm or agrotourism business, this one goes on the road if you like van life or traveling to other countries to teach in local schools.

What do you think of these 3 business ideas for remote lifestyle? Let me know if you want more details and we will explore them further. Happy remote living, business owners of the digital future. Next up, how to get these businesses started re paperwork/legal considerations.