Moving Your Start-up Out of Your Home Office

A lot of start-ups will start off in a home office. This might be the spare bedroom, and outbuilding such as a summer house or, if you're really stuck for space, a desk in the corner of your living room. Whatever the case, this can be a really useful way to get your business off the ground at minimal cost and inconvenience.

This is fine when your start-up first starts up, but what about when it starts to gather pace and get up to speed? It might be that when things get off the ground and your start-up begins establishing itself, confining yourself to a home office starts to hold your business back. Just as a goldfish only grows as big as its bowl will allow, you may find that your business needs more space if it is to keep growing.

There are some definite advantages to moving your start-up out of the spare bedroom and into a real office. However, there are also some definite disadvantages, and it is important to consider both of these and balance them carefully. Properly weighing up the advantages and disadvantages can help you work out whether it is time to leave the home office behind and set your business up in a home of its own, or whether it is better for it to live with you until it is truly ready to move out into the "real world" of business.

The Advantages of a Real Office:

One of the main advantages of moving your business out of your home and into a real office is that it gives you more space for growth and expansion. In your own home, you are very limited for space indeed. This is a big problem if you want to take on employees to support growth and handle increased amounts of work. Most people would only have room for a couple of employees in their home office at most – if any – and taking on a business complete with employees within your own home may not seem particularly desirable even if you do have some room. Moving into a proper office will give you the room to take on employees and a situation in which doing so is much more desirable. This allows your business room for significant growth, as hiring employees will allow you to take on more business than you could have handled single-handed .

Moving into a proper office instead of a home office can also help you to take a more professional and effective approach to your business. Anybody who has worked from home will be familiar with the challenges it brings. Your home is full of distractions, especially if you have your office all to yourself and can manage your own time.

Televisions, music, books and any paraphernalia associated with hobbies will be readily on-hand to make your mind wander. Even if you have plenty of willpower to resist the urge, being in your own home surrounded by distractions can make it hard to get into the working mindset and to properly focus at 100% efficiency. Moving out of your home office and away from these distractions can help you to be more focussed and to work more efficiently.

Lastly, moving into a real office instead of the spare bedroom of the garage will look a lot more professional. An office address in a commercial area will look better on business cards and on the contact section of your website, and will help reassure potential customers and clients that you are an established, professional and reliable business. If you ever receive visits to your office from customers, clients, or businesses you work with then it will look far more professional (and probably be more desirable for you) to welcome them into a purpose-built office than into your own home.

The Disadvantages of Leaving Your Home Office:

Leaving your home office behind for a purpose-built one may have many advantages, but these don't come without a catch or two. As great as moving into a real office has the potential to be, if it isn't right for your business at this time then it can turn out to be a terrible decision instead of a great one. It is important to properly consider the disadvantages and to come to a decision only after careful thought.

For starters, there will be no more thirty-second morning commute into your spare bedroom and working in your pyjamas on those days you just can't be bothered to get dressed right away. Leaving your home office means rejoining the daily routine of getting up in the morning, getting dressed while still bleary-eyed, and heading out to the office in rush hour.

However, the biggest disadvantage to moving out into a real office is undoubtedly the costs associated. You will have the cost of buying or (much more likely) renting the office in the first place. Then, there will be utility costs to pay. These are all ongoing costs that you will need to not only pay initially but be able to meet on an ongoing basis. You should therefore be very confident that you can meet these costs comfortably in your business' current state of health. To make the move worthwhile you should also be confident that the potential for revenue growth from expanding in a real office will outweigh the costs.

There will most likely also be significant initial set-up costs associated with moving into your new office. At the very least, this is likely to involve the cost of fitting out your office with appropriate and good-quality furniture such as office chairs, desks and so on. There may also be equipment costs involved if you intend to take on employees and will therefore need to supply them with appropriate equipment such as computers. These costs are a one-off but potentially large financial commitment for your business. If it's the right time to move out, they will be offset over time by business growth, but if your timing is not good then they could just be a way to lose money.