Co-working spaces & more: 6 alternatives to running your business from home | Bizzy Lizzy | Xero

This Post: Co-working spaces & more: 6 alternatives to running your business from home | Bizzy Lizzy | Xero

was put together by our team of editors who are Business Review Consultants that give their expert recommendations, on the latest business software & tools that have been launched onto the market.

When we publish the latest money making opportunity or business software review on Running A Business From Home,

 
we will give you our complete analysis on the most popular software product tools. We will expose the most profitable online systems that top internet marketers don't want to share with you.

 

We reveal some of the most Powerful web programs  That have recently been launched onto the market that will help those starting an online enterprise or setting up new revenue streams.
We will test these software apps, to examine every feature of the tool, making sure its delivering results.      

All the videos we post on our constantly updated blog,

just like Co-working spaces & more: 6 alternatives to running your business from home | Bizzy Lizzy | Xero that your about to watch,

will give you the competitive edge in your online business ventures,

that are targeted towards those interested in using the best tools on the market, that will help you start an online enterprise or run a profitable Home Based Business Franchise, using the most powerful web tools.

so today I’ve decided that even though I’m loving my home office these days especially now that we’ve cleaned out the garage which is where I’m working I would try working a few places not from home so first I’m gonna go check out a coffee shop and then I’m gonna spend a few hours working at the library and I also have an appointment to check out a co-working space so see how these go most businesses start from home but there will come a time when home just doesn’t work for running your business it might be that you need to break things up you’re sick of just spending all of your time day in and day out at your house but you may also outgrow your office as the business grows and that’s a good thing and for some people running your business from your house just isn’t an option so in these cases and there’s others too it’s really helpful to know what your alternatives are to working from home and in this video we’re gonna cover six of those two of them are not really permanent options they’re more for when you want to break things up and four of them are more permanent I’ll also throw in a bonus one at the end the classic option is a coffee shop a lot of them have free Wi-Fi there’s you know a healthy buzz in case that’s what you need to get motivated if you’re scheduling work meeting as a coffee shop is a great place to do that even if you don’t want to actually work in the coffee shop and the costs can add up so unless you’re a real jerk you’re probably buying at least one or two beverages or a snack to justify you’re actually taking up space in this small business’s establishment it’s possible that you might end up spending more money at the coffee shop than you would if you were actually investing in dedicated office space so at some point add up all the money that you’re spending at the coffee shop and see if you might be better served investing in one of the other alternatives that I’ll cover later the other good temporary option is the library and there is a library near where I lived in San Francisco that I actually biked an hour out of my way to get to it was so beautiful it was so peaceful again like a coffee shop you still have the challenge of keeping your devices charged unless you get creative with where you’re sitting you don’t have to spend money to be at the library but a problem that’s true here and in the coffee shop actually is that it can be very very annoying to have to pack up all your stuff every time you want to go outside to take a phone call or go to the bathroom and when it’s time for you to find a dedicated office space and by that I mean an office space that’s meant to be an office not a coffee shop or a library that you’re turning into your temporary office space one of the options is a cooperative office in a cooperative office like other forms of co-ops means that you go in on it with other people so one of the requirements for this option is that you actually have other people that want to go in on an office space together but if you can find folks that we want to do that it can really bring down the cost per desk space and you can set it up however you want of course that means that you have to have furniture and plants and shelving to set it up the way you want but once you’ve got it at range you’re set one thing I will say about going in on a cooperative office with other people is that you should not underestimate how much work it is to organize the politics of it so like the actual governance structures you have to set up a policy like what can you do in the office what can’t you do I mean I had this experience working in a co-op office where somebody was cutting hair and we couldn’t really come to an agreement about whether or not she could just leave the hair in a pile after she worked with a client or you know who had to take out the trash I know this sounds petty but I ended up spending more time trying to figure out like how are we gonna run this office then I was working on my actual work another thing you can do is rent desk space in somebody else’s office so if there’s another company or small business it has an extra desk space you could rent that it happens more often than you might realize businesses that are growing rent space that’s far larger than they need right now but they have extra space in the meantime they may even already have the desk there waiting for you so all you have to do is pay a bit of rent and voila you can just show up and sit on down and even have other peers that are working on their stuff and can help you stay motivated so there’s still a couple disadvantages to this plan one is that it can be still really awkward to invite someone to meet you in an office that doesn’t have your business name on the wall or on the door when they come in the other fairly obvious risk is that once this company grows and needs the space that you’re in you’re gonna get kicked out there are online desk space marketplaces like share desk and liquid space you know they’re advertising to be the Airbnb of desk space but a lot of those are focused just on urban areas and from my experience they also tend to only list co-working spaces not actually companies that have extra space that they are willing to rent out to small business owners which leads me to the next option co-working spaces and I’m actually talking to you right now from a co-working space this is biz dojo Parnell and biz dojo is a network of co-working spaces they’re very very cool I mean they’re really designed to help not only people but businesses grow and I know that sounds cheesy but spend enough time in a co-working space and you’ll see that this sort of thing is really true and especially here they’re really into the Copart of co-working so collaboration community connection and it’s entirely possible that you’ll be sitting next to a designer that can help you do your website or help you design the poster for your next event or maybe there’s a developer who’s working on something that will totally feed into the business that you’re working on I mean this sort of opportunity is way more common than if you were in some random coffee shop and biz dojo like many co-working spaces has an entire crew on the ground to help take care of some of the annoying logistical things that you’d probably not want to be doing when you’re focusing on running your own business and that includes things like a cleaning crew or shopping for the furniture making the place look nice it also includes things like a receptionist and if you don’t want to give out your home address as your working address you can often use the co-working spaces address to receive mail and depending on your budget or how you want to use the space most co-working spaces have options so the hot desk option means that you basically get a pass to come you know maybe you get a 10 pass or a certain number of passes per month and then you can come and sit at any number of empty desks that are there and waiting for you they’ve got all kinds of electrical outlets you know everything that you might need to just plunk down your laptop and go but if you’re the kind of person that wants to totally kit out your space and you’ve got your fancy ergonomic keyboard and your external monitor and things you want to leave at the desk so pictures of your family and your favorite plant then you should go for the dedicated desk option that means that you pay a little bit more but that desk is yours you can leave all your stuff there especially if your team is growing you can also get dedicated desk space for everybody on your team and you’re all sitting together and then of course there’s the option to rent your own office space and this is great if you’re a super control freak or if you just want to have your place exactly the way you want it you can keep it as messy or as clean as you want it to be and you can make as much noise or keep it as quiet as you want it to be I mean I’m saying that but I actually had an office my own office was above a saloon and so sometimes that got a little noisy especially if I was working late and of course this will depend on what is available in your area but I actually found an office space that was my own office and it was pretty big I could have had easily to other desks in addition to mine it cost less than what it would have cost me to have a dedicated desk or even a hot desk for five days a week at a co-working space so don’t assume that renting your own office is going to be the most expensive option so one important consideration when you’re renting your own office space is the term of the lease so how long are you going to be renting it for and this is important if you think you’re going to be growing quickly you might not want to sign a long-term lease but if you are fairly certain that the number of employees and the space you’re going to need is it’s pretty stable for the next few sign a long-term lease and then you can feel justified in investing in things like you know installing that kitchen that you want or moving in the desks that you need or installing the fancy air conditioning but again you wouldn’t want to do that kind of long-term investment if you only add a short term lease and of course the flip side of being your own boss is that you are the one who the buck stops with it should anything go wrong so you’re the one that’s gonna have to be negotiating with the landlord you’re the one that’s gonna have to be dealing with a leak in the roof I mean those such things are your responsibilities so again if that’s not the kind of thing you want to be focusing your time on or if you’re not gonna be hiring an office manager or a facilities person to take care of that stuff for you consider one of those other options instead and then the bonus option that I could not help but throw in because I’ve actually done this is that you can run your business out of your car and I don’t mean like actually running the business constantly from physically sitting in your car but I mean like while you’re driving around the country the whole digital Nomad thing is huge right now and so these are people that are using some combination of the things I mentioned before they’re working out of coffee shops they’re working out of libraries they’re working out of co-working spaces I mean really you can work out of any place that has an internet connection provided that you’re using the right technology so those are six alternatives to running your business from your house so please let us know in the comments what kind of experiences you’ve had with these and also let us know if you’ve tried other options and please check out our next video on how your office location can affect your work-life balance because I did try all six of these alternatives and had really interesting experience with those and also you can check out our most recent video here so thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time