Lessons from a New Office

So about 4 months ago, I was looking for office space, not because I needed it as much as I saw the immense potential in having dedicated office space.

I'm up in the Windsor, Colorado area every day (if one more person complains about a 15-minute drive, so help me...) for meetings and different events.

Now, my home office is where my giant whiteboard, 3 monitors, and Matthew all are... productivity happens there, not in a coffee shop... but that's a whole 30-minute drive one-way from the networking and sales.

Well, I was making that drive 1-3 times per day (not joking) and if you do the math, the dead time in the middle of the day was excruciating.

So problem #1, too much distance between sales activities and operational activities.

The next thing was the location of prospect and client meetings.

I really don't like meeting a prospect at a coffee shop and then telling them about our premium services... that's like, no.

Or the endless amount of Google Meetings that end up not working out because not all of our ideal customers actually know how, or even like, to use technology... can someone say "tech support"

So, for the local and regional clients, I wanted to invite them into a space where we could relax, whiteboard, and brainstorm through their problems and creating lasting, profitable solutions.

That was problem #2; location of the actual meetings.

The next thing was trustworthiness.

In the disaster of an industry such as tech (let's just expand that to actually be all of A.I., Automation [physical, digital, general process], SMB Software, Marketing, Consulting, and other pro services sold online), there is virtually no way to determine who's the real deal and who's just hiding behind a keyboard.

If you're selling online, you get it, half the battle is just proving you're real.

So, to me, the increase in overhead was worth it just to have a physical location to literally say "hey, drop in anytime to see we're actually working and totally real people solving client problems everyday".

Problem #3, trustworthiness; improved, if not solved.

The final thing (at least for this email) was awareness.

There are three phases to marketing; awareness, engagement, conversion.

If you don't have awareness, you'll never have the other two.

Period.

So I realized that getting my brand name out there, even just visually, was crucial to leveling up.

Sure, we could run PPC (ads) or SEO (makes Google happy) but again, there's so much garbage out there and so many people selling something they just aren't, that the potential impact was significantly greater by just going somewhere specifically that no one else in our competitive market was ... right in front of the locals in the real world.

Problem #4, not enough awareness in the real world, now could be solved.

The major problem was ... no office spaces I found were in high visibility areas, nor were they cost effective for a small startup like ours (this is exactly why everyone works from home lol)

But I was praying for something to come up before July 1, and R kept me on track in praying for that every week.

Here were it gets good.

June 5th I was getting a haircut, telling my barber (who knows everyone) how I was looking for a place.

Ok wait, quick note.

If you don't share your goals with people, no one can help you achieve them.

Now, don't beg for handouts ... gosh don't do that.

Earn everything. Work for it. Don't beg or expect.

You don't deserve a thing. ;)

But do share your goals so that the right people can partner with you and help you achieve greatness.

Make sure they get maximum value out of it though. Trust me, it matters. :)

Ok, so back to the barbershop chair.......

He said "bro, next door is moving out this week, landlord is about to raise the rent to $x, but even then, it's 1/2 of any other space here on main street".

That's right, on MAIN STREET in Windsor. Talk about visibility.

After the haircut, we walked next door to look in the window and get a feel for if the space could work ... I could already envision the new office.

As we turned around, the landlord walked up, I was introduced, and he asked if I would like a tour of the mostly moved out space.

OF COURSE I WOULD!!

We walked it, I could see in my mind the humble space being turned into a bright, thriving office with 4 hot desks out front, a small private office for Matthew and myself, a conference room with a white board and high-res monitor for demos, and small kitchenette because coffee is KEY to hospitality.

He connected me with his niece who handles the books and lease, I followed up 3 times, we walked it the following Saturday with the family, they replaced the floors and painted the walls, and I set to work preparing for rain.

Prepare for Rain; Before I knew if we would be awarded the lease, I knew I had to move forward like I was.

So off to FB marketplace I went, buying up everything we would need that I could think of; desks, monitors, whiteboards, chairs, lights, coffee machine, etc.

If you're praying for rain, you should carry an umbrella. Not doing so is doubt, disbelief in your prayers.

By the end of June, before July 1, I was informed that the lease was ours and that we could move in by July 15.

Boom! Talk about an answer to prayer.

Now, the only thing I had to figure out was how to create some redundancy for the high lease we had to cover (jumping from remote work to main street actually is kind of a jump haha)

That's when, credit to the Lord, I had an idea to convert our window display (huge window on main street) into an advertising display.

The amount of people that walk and drive by that window is INSANE.

In fact, the impression estimate I gave my initial customers was WAY too low... they are getting MASSIVE visibility.

With this, we could help offset our overhead, provide awareness to companies NOT on main street (man I wish I had this a year ago), and also give us a way to connect with the local business community and give back.

I was on cloud nine.

So, Matthew helped me build ad.dovito.com and we completely automated every part of the process, except one manual approval step (to make sure only quality content is displayed in our community).

That was both a great way to increase revenue, AND display what we can do as a company (build super custom tools for businesses).

The real work, however, started when we showed up and realized the walls were painted yellow, not white.

Sounds trivial, but my gosh it was not.

So, thanks to the help of the most incredible friends, we got it re-painted in two days and spent the rest of the week moving in.

Other than some cold I picked up in the process, we enjoyed Sunday to mostly rest and then back to it Monday for the first full week in our new office space.

There were plenty of other adventures; 2 feet of water in the basement (nail in the pipe from the flooring guys), missing parts, late deliveries, etc.

But all-in-all, great stories and bonding happened, just missed R for sure (long distance is tough haha).

Overall, the lessons learned are really

Share your goals, allow others to partner with you (Tyrone is getting a free site out of this)

Know your WHY

Don't give up on your goals

Never stop solving problems

Enjoy the process

Trust the Lord

Give all the credit to the Lord, He's the one doing it all

I'm tired, but enjoy being on this side of a crazy 80 hour week.

Don't give up, just keep preparing for rain.