Cheap office space far from town costs more than it saves. Mike Andes shows how extra commute time for a 20-person team can add $6,000 to $7,000 in hidden labor costs, yet most business owners fixate on rent instead of the bigger expense.
And like labor is so expensive, but it's so easy to discount 'cause we just get to know each other as people. But when you actually look at the P&L, so like for example, when we got this head, the headquarters building, the office, it was like, okay, this is really expensive. This is like double our rent. And I was like, wait a second, this is cheaper than one engineer. I would hire another engineer like in a flash tomorrow if I saw the need for them. But for rent, it seems like this huge expense. But from a, when you actually compare it to labor, it's so cheap. Somewhat inconsequential. And so I've even seen people where they're like, well, I've got this shop space, I can rent it for $2,000 and it's outside town about 15, 20 minutes from all my customers. Or there's one, you know, very central for 3 or 4 grand, but we don't wanna spend the extra $1,000 or $2,000 a month. But I'm like, look, if you just extrapolate across 20 employees, you're paying probably $6,000 or $7,000 in additional labor, additional labor, windshield time. And so, um, yeah, I, I think it's just, it's so easy to get focused on the loudest problem instead of the biggest problem.
