你适合在家里创业吗?

Like many cash-strapped entrepreneurs, Sergio Moutela started his business from home. But what he saved in office rent, he lost in productivity, thanks to a neighbor's incessantly barking dog and nearby construction work.

'It was pretty distracting,' says Mr. Moutela, who was laid off from a logistics company before he launched Thruport International, a customs-brokerage firm, last year. 'I can imagine how it sounded on the other line when I was making cold calls.'

Home is where the office is for more than half of U.S. entrepreneurs, according to the Small Business Administration. The arrangement is particularly popular among those just starting out since leasing a commercial space, outfitting it with furniture and keeping it clean can be costly.

Still, starting a business from home isn't ideal -- or even possible -- for every entrepreneur. In addition to neighborhood noises, some would have to put up with chatty roommates, unwanted visitors or attention-seeking children or pets. Others may need to regularly meet with clients in person or hire several employees from the start. And some municipalities restrict certain types of businesses from being run out of a home, such as food manufacturers.

'There's no one-size-fits-all setting,' says Kristie Arslan, executive director of the National Association for the Self-Employed, a noNPRofit trade group in Washington. An entrepreneur's finances, work style and business goals will usually dictate what kind of environment he or she will want to start out in, she says.

Ada Vaughan initially began building CuteyBaby, a cloth-diaper manufacturer, from the basement of her Chicago home in 2008. But she soon found herself working more on household chores than her business. 'It was too easy to do a load of laundry,' she says. 'Some folks have the personality where they can really detach. Not me.'

Ms. Vaughan, who started her business in anticipation of a pink slip from an advertising agency, says she was afraid to spend money on a commercial space because she wasn't sure her business would succeed. So she cleaned out a cluttered attic above her garage and made that her workplace. When she landed two large retail clients less than a year later, she says she finally felt comfortable investing in office space.

Mr. Moutela can now afford to operate out of an office building in Union, N.J. Though he says he's more productive in his new environment than he was at home, he doesn't regret his humble beginnings. 'If I got an office space from day one, I would've been eating a lot of pasta and crackers,' he says. 'My cash flow would've been out of the window and I wouldn't have been able to survive.'

Other entrepreneurs consider having an office outside the home critical from the get-go for meetings with clients. The problem is signing a commercial lease can be nerve-racking for those with limited start-up capital because property owners typically require at least a year-long commitment.

One alternative may be to suggest getting together with clients at their offices or a nearby coffee shop. Alex Membrillo and Stephen Popov did this when they started Cardinal Web Solutions, a search-engine-marketing business, in March 2009. The entrepreneurs both had just lost jobs at the same auto-auction company and were working out of their small apartments in Lilburn, Ga.

Mr. Membrillo says he and Mr. Popov would encourage prospective clients to pick a place that was 'more convenient' for them. Sometimes this resulted in conducting meetings at a crowded Starbucks. But when the partners started getting more business than they could handle alone and needed to hire employees to help out, they decided to rent office space.

'All those trials and tribulations we went through in the beginning only made us stronger,' says Mr. Membrillo. He projects the company's 2010 earnings to be about $650,000.

Another option may be to rent office space by the hour on an as-needed basis. Companies like Regus, Premier Business Centers and Office Suites Plus provide temporary private offices and meeting rooms complete with furniture, computers, Internet access, phone lines and other resources.

Hakan Nizam uses this strategy whenever he meets with clients from out of town for NetFoliage, an e-commerce consulting business he launched soon after getting laid off from a publishing company in 2007. 'You go there, have your meeting and get out,' says Mr. Nizam, who mainly works out of his one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y.

If you're building a business at home full- or part-time, there are ways to stay motivated and establish a professional image, says Mary Mihaly, author of 'The 250 Questions Every Self-Employed Person Should Ask.'

Set a schedule, add a business phone line and secure a post-office address.

Tell family, friends and neighbors to avoid interrupting you while you're on the clock.

Make time to meet with other entrepreneurs and professionals in your industry. Look for events hosted by trade associations, chambers of commerce and local business groups.

Get fully dressed before starting the day. While wearing business attire isn't necessary, Ms. Mihaly says, 'you won't feel like you're at work if you're paddling around in fuzzy slippers and jammies.'