Yellowknife (Nov 01/04) - Elizabeth Sipos stirs her homemade soup a couple of times before settling back at her desk and returning a few business calls.

"The nice thing about working from home is that you are master of your own time," said Sipos, who has been running the North Star Gallery, which sells Inuit carvings, from her Yellowknife home for the past year.

"I can be as busy as I want to be," she said.

She likes the freedom but admits there are challenges.

"It can be a little isolating," she said. "There's the whole Internet world out there that I can tap into but it's not the same."

She tries to deal with that by getting together with friends to bounce ideas around.

Jean Wallace agrees that networking is very important for people who run small businesses from their homes.

She and her husband, Bernard Hogan, have run Northern Research and Development out of their home for three years.

They research and write social policy proposals, design and evaluate programs and do socio-economic impact analyses.

"This town is still small compared to towns down south and so personal contact and word of mouth is really important," she said.

She suggested anyone thinking of starting their own home business should talk to others who are already doing it.

Sipos said one of the biggest challenges is finding clients on the Internet.

"There's no customer to walk through the door," she said.

"Of all the galleries out there, what's going to make someone go to my site and buy something?"

She is still searching for answers to that question.

Wallace said one of the advantages is that owners can take a break from working if they're not in peak form.

"We're only working when we're running at 110 per cent," she said. "When we're tired, we can go off and do something else."

In the long run, clients also benefit in terms of better customer service and fewer errors.

But that same flexibility is also a challenge for the owners since they have to play a lot of roles.

"You are a bookkeeper. You're the marketing and communications person. You're doing the actual research and evaluation work. You have to keep on top of government administration requirements," said Wallace.

Still, Sipos and Wallace agree that the freedom they get by working from home is worth it.

"It's very hard to make time after work to pursue any creative ideas," said Sipos, a former full-time teacher.

"If you think (having a home-based business) is a good idea, go with it."