Tips On Getting A Small Office For Your Business

I’ve recently moved into an office and no longer have the luxury of rolling out of bed and into my office chair.

It now requires me to roll out of bed, get ready, roll into my car and drive on down to my office about 10 minutes away.

Eventually every small business will have to, if not already have done so, move into an office space, to enhance productivity, teamwork and give your clients some place they can come meet you at (your living room doesn’t count as a meeting room).

As I’ve learned, finding someplace right for yourself and your colleagues/ staff is not as easy as it seems.

Hopefully with these tips for getting a small office, you’ll be able to avoid some of the problems I faced when looking for my own one.

Get In Your Car And Drive Around

Most people turn to online portals or the newspapers to find an office to rent, but this may not necessarily yield the best deals.

People who are advertising in newspapers have probably just started looking for a tenant and may still have the patience and the money to leave it empty until the right deal comes along.

Try driving to a neighbourhood where you’d like an office and look around for signs hung/ stuck onto office windows with a real estate agent’s name and phone number.

These places have the best chance of having been empty for a long time – leaving the owner desperate for a tenant and open to lower than market rate prices.

The Higher You Go, The Lower The Cost

My office is located on the very top floor of a block of shop lots and hence has the lowest rent in our block.

Typically, the higher you go, the cheaper the rent becomes because people like convenience and even with a lift, the longer it takes to get to an office, the less people will want to pay for it.

That’s human nature, we’re lazy people at heart.

The Importance Of A Lift

My office has no lift.

As I said earlier, the higher you go, the cheaper your rental becomes.

When we saw that there was no lift, we told ourselves, walking shouldn’t be a problem, it’s good for our health too.

There are a few inherent problems with this statement.

1. Your clients probably don’t want to walk up many flights of stairs
2. When carrying up anything even moderately heavy (like a laptop on your back), it becomes more than a chore – it becomes exercise.
3. Upon reaching the top of your office block, you are sweating as the office air conditioners haven’t been switched on yet.
4. Repeat points 1 – 3 for when you leave the office.

But on the positive side, in this area, offices with no lift access can be as much as 50% cheaper in rent than offices with lifts.

If it’s money you are trying to save, then suck it up, climb the stairs and get buns of steel.

Evaluate Your Landlord And Real Estate Agent Carefully

When trying to get a tenant, a landlord and real estate agent will smile, meet and greet you at your beck and call to try and get you to sign the lease.

Our landlord and agent were like that – it took a total of 3 months to receive our tenancy agreement (which should have taken less than 2 weeks), there were hidden charges and amendments had to be made as he was trying to put legal terms in the agreement to make it harder for us to get out of the contract.

So try this test – make your landlord and agent show you the office a total of 3 to 5 times.

If they answer your calls, are welcoming to bring you to see the office all the time, then you know what levels of commitment and professionalism they have.

If they don’t answer your calls or call you back, keep telling you that other people are interested, are just plain rude – then that tells you a lot about how they will probably be down the line.

Get A Lawyer To Look Through The Tenancy Agreement

Most of us (myself included) is no expert in law and the use of words to form legal structures and contracts.

If you have to pay a bit to have a lawyer go through your tenancy agreement, or you have a friend who is a lawyer who can look at it, then do it.

When a lawyer went through my tenancy agreement, by the subjective nature of the use of words, he found that certain sections can be open to interpretation – not in our favour.

A few tweaks, added sentences and discussions with our landlord, we ended up with a fair agreement that both parties can be happy with.

You don’t want to give your 3 months notice only to find that your agreement says that your security deposit would not be given back to you.

When Looking For Furniture, Try Second Hand Stuff

All our furniture is second hand furniture.

It’s not as bad as you think, it’s clean, comfortable and most importantly, it’s cheap.

You’re trying to keep costs down, so why not get second hand furniture and hire a professional cleaner to come and steam clean everything?

The cleaning may be quite expensive, but overall you would be spending much less than if you had bought everything new.

There are of course many more things you have to take into account, but these few will help you on your way to getting a small office for your business.

Engadget Has Been Redesigned

It is always interesting to see the redesign of famous blogs, and this time it is Engadget’s turn. The old design was really cramped and narrow, so it was about time.

The new design is more minimalistic, with a simple header featuring navigation links, a big column for the content, and a sidebar with ads and links to featured articles.

I like minimalistic concepts, but the opinions regarding this new design are divide. If you check the comments (over 130 of them) you will see that many people did not like it. Some were even calling April Fools….

A couple of points that caught my attention: it’s a semi-fluid design, meaning that the design adapts to the screen resolution, up to a certain threshold where it becomes fixed in width.

Secondly, they did not incorporate any social bookmarking icons or links (not like they need to get more Diggs, I know).

Finally, they are using both tags and categories to file articles. I don’t think that is an efficient structure. Personally I like to use either categories or tags, so you don’t end up confusing the reader on the easier way to find the information he is looking for.

The Fonts Paradise: dafont.com

So the other day I was talking with my designer about a logo, and he recommended me to go to dafont.com, choose one font, and report back to him. Believe it or not I had never came across this site before.

It is nothing less than the fonts paradise. They have over 7,000 fonts available for download, most in PC and MAC versions. You can search for fonts based on style (e.g., fancy, techno, gothic, basic) or even browse among the Top 100 fonts on their database.

Overall it is a very useful website for anyway that needs to write on computers (which translates to all of us, I guess).

Are You Familiar with HTML and CSS? Six Reasons Why You Should Invest the Time to Learn

I had been involved with web design for a few years before I ever started blogging. In my opinion, being able to work with the code of a blog is a huge advantage that many bloggers choose not to pursue.

Aside form the design aspect of creating an attractive blog, being able to work with the coding will allow you to make changes and adjustments to your blog any time you want, rather than relying on a professional to do it for you, or rather than just limiting yourself to what’s available with the theme you have chosen.

Most blogs need a bit of customization from time-to-time, and for someone who has no experience with HTML or CSS this be a bit intimidating. However, if you’re working with WordPress you really only need a basic knowledge in order to make many of the customizations that you would like, and you don’t even need to know PHP in most cases (those who aren’t comfortable with PHP just need to be able to recognize it and avoid it when making changes to the HTML).

In my opinion, more bloggers should pursue a basic understanding of HTML and CSS, two coding languages that are relatively easy to learn. Here are just some of the reasons for you to make the time to learn more about HTML and CSS.

1 - Saves you money

If you are paying someone else to make changes to your blog or to design your theme, you could save some money if you learn how to do these things yourself. Even after gaining some knowledge you may still want to pay for a professional theme or for some more advanced work, but many of the common changes made by bloggers can be achieved pretty easily without requiring a lot of skill and experience.

2 - Opens up new opportunities

If you’re relying on others to do the work for you, or for other themes to include the elements that you want, you’ll never be able to take advantage of all of the ideas that you would like to be able to implement at your blog. By being able to work with the code you can put your ideas into practice quickly with little investment.

3 - Upgrading WordPress

If you’ve been using WordPress for a while you have probably had to go through the process of upgrading, or else you have been putting it off out of fear of potential complications. While upgrading shouldn’t cause any trouble, you’ll probably have much more confidence if you are comfortable with the files involved and not so afraid of a minor issue arising. If you’re avoiding upgrading for a long-period of time (a lot of bloggers choose not to upgrade immediately due to stability issues) you are probably taking serious security risks.

4 - Working with plugins

One of the great benefits to using WordPress is the huge number of great plugins that are available. However, not all of them are simple to install and put into action. Some plugins will require you to make some minor changes to one or more of the files, which can be a tall task if you’re not comfortable with the files in the first place. In addition to installing plugins, you may run into bugs from time-to-time with different plugins, and again, knowing a bit about the code can really help to get these problems fixed quickly.

5 - Changes to sidebar

Whether you want to change you entire theme or not, you will most likely want to make some minor changes to your sidebar every now and then. Widgetized themes make some modifications possible without editing the code, but you’re not completely able to do whatever you want with widgets. Sidebar changes can make a big difference to the usability and effectiveness of your blog, so you may want to experiment and test with some different choices. By making some changes in the sidebar files you can quickly and easily make sizable improvements to your blog.

6 - Get creative

Most bloggers get stuck in the rut of just publishing posts. If you’re able and willing to get involved with the code there is really no limit to what you can do with your blog. Just about anything is possible if you’re willing to take the time to learn.

Recommended Resources for Learning:

If you’re already familiar with basic HTML and CSS and you’re interested in learning more about how WordPress works, the codex is filled with useful information. Some articles that you may want to check out include Using WordPress Themes, Theme Development, CSS for WordPress, and a collection of articles on Lessons on Customizing Template Files.

Fortunately, there are plenty of places to learn about HTML and CSS online. One of the most popular tutorial and learning sites is W3 Schools, which has a number of different tutorials. HTML Dog is another useful resource that is very much worth your time. And About.com also has a decent section on HTML and CSS.

If you are more interested in books, the Visual Quickstart Guide: HTML, XHTML and CSS is a good place to start. Two of my favorite books on CSS are CSS Mastery and Bulletproof Web Design, although both assume a basic knowledge of CSS. Blog Design Solutions is another good choice for WordPress users, although parts of the book are dedicated to other blogging platforms.