We Need an Office

We Need an Office

- Lessons Learned, Episode 28

I need to preface this post with an important point: As a rule, you should delay getting an office outside the home for as long as possible. Most IT consultants will never need one for business reasons ever. I say "for business reasons" because you may need one simply to get work done without distractions.

Having said that, when you need an office, you need an office. In our case, we had grown to having one fulltime and on part-time tech, a part-time administrative assistant, and myself. Meeting at my home office was not ever part of the plan. The techs and I often met at a coffee shop and planned our day from there. 

But it was obvious that we needed a place for equipment and supplies to live, and that I need to move paperwork-related things to an area we all had access to.

Luckily, I was started what would become the local IT consultant's group, so I knew people. A friend ran a programming business. They had an office that was barely used, and it had a conference room. It was actually the perfect example of what we *didn't* need: It was nice and pricey, and had amenities we didn't need.

But they had a spare office with a locking door within their office space. So I rented that. It was a few hundred dollars a month with no internet or phone lines included. That's okay. We could set up a network as needed, and we'd already figured out how to get by with cell phones and an automated attendant.

We had that space for less than a year when we grew to the point that we needed a real office of our own. The one settled on was exactly what we did need: It was warehousey, off the beaten path, with four walls and pretty much nothing else. 

It did have a small lockable office. I gave that to the admin, and promoted her to office manager. A locked file cabinet in that locked room held personnel files, client contracts, and whatever else we had that needed to be under lock and key. 

Eventually, we'd add a locking storage closet that we built and the landlord puttied and painted. And we built a small server room in the back with a through-the-wall air conditioner and a bunch of dedicated 30-amp circuits. We'll return to this room in a future post.

The new office was very large and very open. As I was getting into the book publishing business, we used book shelves to create a "wall" separating that business from the tech business. About 200 square feet was dedicated to Great Little Book. About 1,000 was for KPEnterprises (my IT company).

One of our clients offered us some office dividers if we hauled them away, so we happily did that. These created our tech bullpen with great long bench and desks for several technicians. My desk was shared with a large table we got somewhere. I just had a space near the front of our warehouse-like office. The

All in all, it was a very comfy, usable space. No two chairs or desks matched. But they all worked fine. Eventually, we did buy good ergonomic chairs for everyone.

The rent was cheap and the landlord loved us. We had that office for more than eight years. I think the rent was $1,100/month when we moved out. It took up about 1/3 of the first floor of a two-story building. The second story was all artist studios and one photographer.

Much of the history of my first IT company is tied to that building and that office. Today, it's owned by a cider mill, run by the guy who had a first-floor space on the opposite end of the building from us, back in the day.

Over the years, we've only had a few offices. We definitely needed an office when we were growing like crazy. We even considered finding additional space, at one point. But people and circumstances lead us in another direction. That's a story for another day.

Would I Change Anything?

I started by saying that you should delay getting an office for as long as possible. I still think that's true for most people. It just makes sense financially. It was the right decision for us.

If I could roll back the clock, I would do exactly what we did. Our office was never intended for clients to visit. We sat around the big table a lot, but no client ever did. I think we had one client visit one time ever. Our business model was based on going to their business, not having them come to ours.

By any measure, this office was inexpensive. If there's one thing I'd change, it would be this: I would have *kept* that office when I sold the business, and rented part of it to my old company. Instead, Mike moved us to a much smaller office for a little less money. Oh well.

Our office was definitely humble and not a marble showcase. And it definitely got the job done.

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All comments welcome.

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Episode 28

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/p/lessons-learned-blog-series.html

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