MBA1334 Why We Decided Against Renting an Office

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Hey. Oh. Welcome to the $100. Because your business depends on you getting better every single day. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn Renting a physical office. Many people know that Nicole and I run a remote company. Our team is literally spread across four continents and we've been running our business this way for over six years now. And many people have asked us why don't you have an actual hq, a physical office with a door and desks and some key players where you're located. And it's a good question because we've had physical offices in the past. We still have an office presence, but most of my working days are spent in our home office. So in today's lesson I'm going to be explaining why we have consciously chosen not to work out of a physical office outside of our home every day. This is a deliberate choice and a choice that is right for us and our business. And it may be a choice you may want to consider in your business and it has very little to do with finances, with the actual costs of having an office we'll get into the reasons why, the different things we've tried in the past, our experiments with physical office space, and why ultimately it may be a good idea for you not to have an office you commute to every day. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. When it comes to our business, Nicole and I have tried so many different office experiments, right? We've tried coworking spaces with dedicated desks. We've tried a physical office, our own private office with plenty of room for new hires. We tried working out of cafes and of course, working from home. Now, I really recommend going through and experimenting for yourself. We purposely tried all these different office setups because we weren't sure what would be best for our situation. Now, again, our team is remote, so everybody we work with is somewhere else. With a few exceptions, some of our team members are here in our local area. But for the most part, everybody is connecting with us online. So it's really about our own productivity and our own convenience. So I want to first say there are advantages, there are pluses to having an office. Having an office space, going somewhere where you go to work. I'd probably say having a desk at a co working space is really a huge advantage and a huge helper if you're new to entrepreneurship. If you're transitioning from a 9 to 5 job to a entrepreneurship, it gives you some structure. Now Nicole and I have been doing this entrepreneurship thing for some time now, so we're kind of used to our own structure or setting structure for ourselves and don't really require a place to go to feel like we're going to work. Yet we tried it out. Now, having a co working space or having a desk at a co working space is actually quite fun. You meet people, you network, there's events happening all the time, there's pitch nights, there's launch parties, there's all these things going on. And don't get me wrong, it's fun, but it's distracting. To be honest with you, there's a lot going on and you're surrounded with other people doing other things. And if you're easily distracted, if you like to zone in and focus and are easily distracted, then you're going to find it challenging at a co working space to get as much work as possible done. You might get some work done, but you may not be the most productive version of yourself. Why? Because of these distractions? Because you're going to feel obligated to chat with your neighbors because there's things happening all the time. But if you're somebody who knows how to zone in and block all that out, or your co working space is a bit different, it's a bit quieter, then you should be all right. So you might be saying, well, why not a private office with a door so there's no distractions. Yep, we tried that. We had our own private office with our own desks and plenty of room and it was good. It actually was distraction free. And when we were in the office, we did get a lot of work done. But when we compare it to having a home office, we probably got less work done for several reasons. Number one, the commute. The commute takes time, even if it's local to you. For most of us, we're going to have to at least spend 30 minutes getting there and 30 minutes coming back. Unless it's a stroll. It's a walk from your house to your office. So right off the bat, minimum, you're going to be spending an hour a day commuting for some people. More. Number two, there's a level of casualness you can get away with working from home. You can't when you go to work somewhere in an office. When you go out in public, that means getting prepared to go out in the world every morning. This could take some time. And I'm not saying that if you're working from home, you should be a slob, but I'm saying you're going to spend a little bit more time getting ready in the morning when you're going to go out to the world. The ladies, and I'm talking about, it's going to take them a little bit extra time. Number three, we mentioned this before, it is an expense. Having a private office is more expensive than a co working space. It's more expensive than having, you know, a private desk at a co working space. You're paying rent for a piece of real estate. Now we're going to talk about home office and why it's not totally, you know, cost free, but it is more expensive than having a home office in most cases. Third, if your business is growing rapidly, then you're going to have to move office every so often, every six months to a year, because you're just not going to be able to fit the people that are going to be working with you in that office, especially if everybody's local and it's not, you know, you're not in a remote team situation like ours. This is a hassle. Moving is costly. Some coworking spaces have private offices inside the coworking space like we work and they have different sizes so they kind of accommodate for this. But again, you're going to be changing your fixed cost for your rent for your office constantly as you grow. We're going to come back to the coworking space, the office space area in a moment. But let's now get into the home office. Number one, the home office is not all roses, is not all gravy. Okay? You need to put in some work to make it work. Number one, you need a large and separate room for your office, ideally in a separate area of your home that is not close to where you sleep or where you relax. So that requires you being in a space that has a free room, a free bedroom or something like that in your home. Again, remember I said it's not cost free completely. That means if you're in a one bedroom apartment, that's fine for living if you're a single person or married, but you're going to need a two bedroom at least if you're going to have a home office. This does not work. I'm telling you, it does not work. Out of experience if you don't have a separate space. If you're working where you're eating, where you're sleeping and where you're, you know, relaxing like your living room, this is not good for your sanity, for your work life balance for you feeling like this is not work, this is now relaxing. You need a barrier. You need an actual physical barrier. So you have separation. We have a totally separate room that is only the office. We only work there. We don't do anything else. We only get work done when we leave that room. Everything else happens. Lunch, we go have lunch in the kitchen, we maybe go out for lunch. We have our own living space for, you know, watching Netflix and relaxing in the evening. Bedrooms are separate. You get the point. So this requires you to have a separate room for your office. Now of course, you can expense a portion of your rent or your mortgage or whatever it is as a business expense because it is a home office and you are working out of your home. And you need to speak to your accountant about how to do that. Exactly. But it is an option and something that you can do. Number two, everything that comes with an office is going to be an expense at home. Meaning you need a fast Internet connection. Most offices or most co working spaces have lightning speed Internet speeds. So you're going to need the best of the best Internet you can get at your home. You have to pay for that premium. Of course, if you're working from home, you're going to be spending more on your electric bill, on all the other facilities to run your office, whether that's phone lines or whatever it is, you need to factor that in. Lastly, this is the most important factor of working from home is you need to focus and discipline. You need to be able to have a routine where you wake up, you have breakfast, and then you pop into your office as if you're going to a real office and you get to work. You have office hours just like you normally would. And instead of commuting on the bus or in your car back home, you take a few steps out of your office. If you don't have the discipline and the routine and the focus to do this, this can get messy and could be unproductive. Luckily, Nicole and I both have that discipline, have built that discipline over time, and it works. And we save time and money on our commute. And for us, it's okay. We enjoy it. It works for us, and we know it works for us because we've tried everything else. And this is what we found that allows us to be the most productive, the most efficient, and the most sane and enjoyable experience for us every day. Now, a lot of work has been done to to make our home office an actual real office. If you had walked into our office, you would think it's a company and that you're not in somebody's house. Whether it's the desks and the setups and our tech, our walls, what we put up on the walls, it's set up for work and not for both work and living. Now, do we only have our home office? Is that the only space of work we have? No. We actually have decided with our home office, we would like a co working space membership. So we have an office in the city. We work. It allows us to have a business address where we receive our physical mail for our business there. It also allows us to have some office space, some conference room access so we can meet clients or meet other colleagues there when they're coming into town. It also gives us the option to go in and work from a co working space if we want to change things up one day the week, one day in a month. And it's a nice little piece of convenience and flexibility, giving us an actual business office and access to the facilities that we would need once in a while.

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Guys, to wrap up today's lesson, we only decided to not have an actual physical office outside of our home. After a lot of experimentation, a lot of trial and error and really experiencing and finding out for ourselves what works for us, you need to do the same. This lesson gives you our experiences so you can anchor them, so you can kind of refer to them. As you're going through your own experiences, you might find having a desk space in a co working space that's lively and fun really motivates you to get things done. That's you. For me, that's a distraction. It's noisy. I don't want to hear it. That's just who I am as a worker, as a, you know, that's how I get productive. And it's not going to cost you much to kind of understand who you are. You don't even need to rent a separate office that experiment because you'll know once you start going to the coworking space or having a small office within the coworking space. If you want to try that, if the commute is okay for you, if it's something that you can live with, if going to an office is something that you enjoy and find helpful for you and that would rule out the home office idea. I also want to iterate that you know, having a home office is not cost free. If you want to do it right, if you want to make sure it works, you can't have the place where you live, where you work. Trust me, we've done it. It doesn't work. It's just not healthy. Guys, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did leave us an itunes rating and review, we'd love to hear what you think of the show. It's also a for other people to hear what you think about our podcast so they can hit subscribe too and join in. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Your environment where you work, your space has a huge impact on your results, on your productivity, on your mood when you work. Every place is conducive to certain actions, right? I can't take a nap at a rock concert, nor is it a good idea to exercise at the library, right? Every space is is built for some reason. So you got to be mindful of your space and how it's built and how it helps or hurts you and your business. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's Episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the courseroom to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Eduardo.