Mike Andes advises small-business owners on how to choose a shop space by mapping a service area and prioritizing central location even at higher rent if it reduces cumulative travel time costs. He gives a numeric example showing that paying more for a centrally located shop can save thousands in employee 'windshield time,' and suggests renting open commercial land as a low-cost alternative when commercial buildings are unavailable.
So if your neighbors are mad at you because you're running your business out of your garage, you're gonna need a shop space. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm say, okay, this is my service area. And ideally, I'm trying to get a shop space somewhere in the middle. For example, if this shop price is $500 per month and it's out on the edge of my service area, but then this one here in the very center of my service area is $1,000, I can make sense of spending the extra 500. So simply due to the fact that every single day, across all 10 of my employees, I'm saving an extra five or 10 minutes over the course of a month, that leads to thousands of dollars spent on just windshield time. And if you're like, well, there's no commercial spaces to rent in the middle of my service area, I'd be looking at farmers. Anyone with open commercial land, you're like, hey, I'll just rent the land. I don't need a shop space. I don't need an office. I don't need a barn. I just need a place to park my trucks so my crew can get there in the morning and be close to my target market.
