MySquareFeet Blog

Office Suites, A Sweet Alternative

For Valentine's Day, I thought I would examine a "suite" alternative to leasing conventional office space for small businesses.  They go by many names, Office Suites, Executive Centers, Business Centers, Virtual Offices, or Executive Offices, and offer many different service packages and levels, from basic to gold plated opulence, but they all do one basic thing - provide an immediate plug-and-play office for your business.

I had never actually visited one of these services, so I called upon Tom Jamison of Connecticut Business Centers to give me a personal tour and behind the scenes look at his operation.  It was an interesting visit and I now think about the benefits these services can offer a small tenant in a different light.  To quote Tom, "If you tell me you want an office today, you can be in business with a T-1 connection here tomorrow." 

Going Green in the Office

Everyone is talking about saving energy, resources and living green. Here are some tips for making your business greener from MySquareFeet, the small business Internet resource for your commercial real estate needs.

Save Trees! Here are some easy steps to use less paper in your office- and while you are saving the planet, you can save some money too, using less paper and ink.

Stop! Don't print it! - How many times have you seen an article or a webpage you want to read later and printed it? Try not to succumb to the temptation to print. If you can't read it right away, book-mark the page. In our office, when we want to click the "print this article" button, we select a pdf printer, save it to our desktop and read it later. We installed an inexpensive $17 program from NowPDF that allows us to print to a virtual printer that captures a snapshot of the page for later viewing. Not only does it save on printing in the office, we send pdf files of letters and documents attached to email messages. Then, if it needs to be printed on the other end, we are assured that the formatting is exactly as we sent it...and we saved an envelope and postage too!

How a bad lease can bankrupt your small business!

A friend of mine was recently hired as the CFO for a struggling young technology business.  After about a week on the job he called me for some advice.  He knew I had a lot of experience in commercial real estate..20 years to be exact...and he feared he had a big problem with the company's office space lease.

I picked up a copy of the lease, and by page two, I knew this was no small problem.  This start-up company had unwittingly made about every mistake a small business can make when leasing space for a new business...and now, it could bankrupt them.

It all started when the business founders were happily funded by a venture capital company.  They needed space in a hurry, and one of the founders knew of a great building close to his home. They called the broker on the "for lease" sign (who always exclusively represents the owner) and began negotiations on the space.  It was a tight market, they needed space in a hurry, they were really smart computer programmers, they negotiated a lower base rent, then signed the lease. 

When the first rent bill came in, they were stunned.