Part Time Office Leasing- Is This the Company of the Future?

I have been reading a lot lately about a new trend in small business management that I found very interesting. It seem that many small business have started renting a portion of an office building in order to give their home/internet based business a brick and mortar address. Typically, the types of businesses that find this sort of arrangement useful are ones that have a CEO who works with maybe one other employee out of a central location (generally the CEO's home office). The company is made up of a small group of employees who either work from home online or telecommute.

This type of non-traditional business has always been held back by their lack of an actual address in an office building and of course, the lack of a secretarial staff for answering business phone calls. The problem is compounded when the company needs to have a meeting with potential clients and doesn't want to reveal that their office is the company owner's living room. Before now, the owner was forced to meet clients either at their office or take them out for dinner to discuss business.

But now, with the real estate market in a downturn, many office buildings have started renting out portions of the office space hourly. An article in the New York Times talked about a woman who owns a communications consulting company from her home in Idaho. While she is perfectly capable of taking care of her client's needs from her home office, it lacked the impressive quality needed for her to land contracts with Fortune 500 clients. Her solution was to rent an office share in Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Her office in New York is beautifully furnished and is located at a very prestigious New York city address. Along with the part time lease on the office building, she also gets to rent the secretary by the hour. The secretary answers any calls to her business and routes them to her home office in Idaho. When she needs to meet with clients, she simply takes a trip to New York City and meets with them in her office. In addition to the secretary and the occasional use of an office and conference room, she also has the added benefit of having a prestigious Rockefeller Center address on her business card and she is included in the Rockefeller Center Business Directory. By leasing her office space part time, she can cut down on her business's overhead which allows her to have a much more impressive space when meeting with clients. When prospective clients meet with her in her Manhattan office, they are impressed and feel comfortable with their assessment of her as a serious, professional woman who owns a thriving business. The Rockefeller Center address lends a certain degree of comfort to her clients who want to think that they have hired the best company to handle their business. And, for the most part that is all true. Just, it isn't her office all the time.

I think that the idea of part time office space leasing is extremely clever. For people who have a mostly home based business and want to present a positive image, this is clearly the most cost effective way to go about it. If you only meet with clients once a month or so, it doesn't make sense to pay for a full time office space. According to some accounts, a part time lease in a very nice office building runs between $300-$500 a month, and then a small hourly rental fee for the time that the secretary spends answering your incoming calls. With the price of office space increasing astronomically, I think that this sort of arrangement could be the solution to many small start up business's problems.

I love it when people find non-traditional way to run their companies. With the ease of internet access, you really can run your company from anywhere.

Have you ever used a part time office space lease? Would you consider doing it if you were running a home or internet based company? Let me know in the comments.

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