Last week, I shared a little about what it was like running my beauty brand from home. This week, I wanted to talk about something founders ask all the time:

How do you know when it's time to get your business out of your house and into its own space?

I ran Erin's Faces out of my tiny apartment in Queens for five years.

When my husband and I bought our first house in New Jersey, one of the reasons we chose it was because it had a 225-square-foot addition that felt perfect for the business. At the time, it felt luxurious. More space than I'd ever had.

For about six months, it was. Then the business kept growing.

Over the next year and a half, Erin's Faces slowly took over the entire first floor of our home. Products were being made on my kitchen counters (see this post for proof 😅). Orders were packed on my dining room table. My basement was filled with backstock inventory.

By the time Black Friday rolled around, folding tables had taken over so much of the first floor that it was difficult to move around easily. I remember looking around and feeling claustrophobic.

People had always asked me, "How do you handle having your business in your house?"

The truth is, for a long time, I loved it. I wasn't paying rent on a separate space. I could walk downstairs and be at work. It was incredibly cost-effective, and for years it was exactly the right solution for the stage of business I was in.

But that Black Friday, I knew we'd outgrown it.

A few months later, we moved into our first commercial space.

Looking back, my advice is simple:

Stay home as long as you can.

Not because it's glamorous. Not because it's what successful businesses are "supposed" to do. But because it saves you an enormous amount of money.

The moment you move into a commercial space, your expenses jump dramatically. There's rent, of course, but there's also insurance, deposits, utilities, moving costs, and a long list of expenses that didn't exist before. If your sales aren't strong enough to comfortably support those costs, the move can create a lot of financial pressure.

At the same time, don't stay longer than you should.

When your business is taking over your living space, creating stress, impacting your quality of life, or, for me most importantly, making it harder to operate efficiently because you've run out of room, it's probably time.

So my advice is this:

Stay home as long as you can. Then get out as soon as it's clear you need to.

That's what I did, and for me, it was exactly the right timing.

If you want support from someone who has navigated the realities of building, scaling, and eventually selling a product-based business, you can learn more about coaching here.