Starting a new business is, without question, one of the most exciting things you’ll ever do in your life. I rank it alongside getting married and the birth of your children because, let’s face it, for most entrepreneurs, our companies are an extension of ourselves.
But this enthusiasm and excitement can often blind entrepreneurs to some fairly extensive, and expensive, issues surrounding work spaces.
Once you’re past the home office/shed/garage stage, you’re probably looking at serviced offices or co-working spaces. These are a great option but make sure you, or your legal counsel, read the leases carefully. Some contain clauses that punish you severely if you decide to leave before the term you agreed to has expired. I once had to fork out seven months’ rent as a penalty because our termination notice wasn’t in the right format!
While you’re small though these places are fantastic and the collegiality and the coffee can make for an energising work environment.
As your success grows, so does your need for space. The private offices in your co-working space look attractive but once you get up to around 10 staff or more and at around 4 sqm per person, you’re effectively paying between $2500 and $3000 per sqm. That’s gotta be some great coffee!
So now it’s time to look at your own offices. Your first step has to be defining your requirements. Every real estate agent in town will flock around you like seagulls around a chip as soon as they know you’re looking. But without clearly defining your needs, you may spend literally days traipsing around properties that are just wrong for you.
Do you have a growth plan?
You’ve got your Series A funding and blue skies ahead of you but the reality is that predicting staff expansion is hard to get right. The fundamental approach here is that you can always get more space. It’s hard to get less. A start up I worked with once leased 600 sqm of great office space. However, for the first two years their growth rate kept the staff levels at less than 12 people.
If you have one, your Property Advisor will be able to work with you on determining how much space you really need.
Where and what?
There’s a bunch of really great places to have an office. Some have amazing views, some are in great neighbourhoods and some are really close to the CEO’s home. But there’s more to consider than just the “wow” factor.
Will you have visitors? Will they need to be impressed? Where are your staff journeying from each day? Do they need End of Trip facilities? Do you need to be close to public transport or do you need loads of car spaces? Does your industry sector congregate in a certain part of town? Will being there help recruitment?
All of these questions, and many more, will impact your costs. But they can also impact your revenue and your company culture. As much as you can, try and sort these questions out before you start looking at premises. If your brief to the market matches your needs well, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and effort when it comes to space selection.
Upfront costs
Your co-working space has most costs bundled into one rate – which is good. However, when it’s time to spread your wings there are a range of costs that you’ll need to take into account.
Aside from the rent itself, there’ll be a security deposit of up to nine months’ rent, legal fees to review the lease as well as the potential cost of the fitout required to make your new space your very own baby Googleplex.
You’ll also need phones, IT cabling, printers as well as the right insurances and WH&S setups. There’s a lot to process and frankly, if you haven’t gone through this process at least half a dozen times already, seek professional advice!
There are many commercial property people who can help within their particular sphere. A real estate agent, for example, will be able to help you look at range of properties but they’re still fundamentally driven by the substantial fees paid by landlords once you’re all signed up.
Similarly, designers and fit-out specialists can help with creating an environment that reflects your future corporate culture in pleasing ways but they’re not necessarily best placed to advise you on HoA or how best to break your lease early if you need to.
What you need is someone knows the entire process intimately and has helped guide others through it hundreds of times.
Ideally, appoint an independent tenant advisor who will guide you through all nine major stages of the commercial leasing process. Their fee (and you should make sure they’re charging you one – it ensures their independence) should represent a fraction of the savings you’ll make both now and in the future.

​Wading though reams of resumes can be soul destroying once you see how awful some of them can be. One, however, stood out.

We advertised for a new receptionist last Friday and had 140 resumes by Monday morning. (Compare this to the paltry 20 we received for a sales job a week earlier)
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Overall, I was stunned by how little care and attention was paid by most applicants to such fundamentals as spelling, lack of cover letters and details such as noting the correct job title in their applications.

But one applicant, who was looking to return to the workforce, had a terrific work description as part of her CV:
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• Full time Carer and Household Manager: 2008 – 2013
• Develop and maintain a safe, nurturing environment for children
• Provide stimulating activities for children between the age 0 and 6
• Sound understanding and in depth knowledge of child development, health and nutrition
• Demonstrated appropriate behaviour management techniques such as behaviour charts
• Ability to communicate with children to process feelings, areas of growth and goals for improvement
• Appropriate behaviour modelling to enhance essential life skills
• Develop, implement and facilitate routines and progress/goal charts
• Facilitate routine management with procedures of supervision in basic life such as shower and hygiene, laundry, dining antiquate, chores and homework
• Facilitate homework assistance and education
• Provide first aid response
• Prepare appropriate meals according to food safety standards
• Facilitate travel to and from school
• Manage household budget and expenditures
• Network and liaise with like-minded mothers and fathers to form social groups
• Develop and facilitate group activities such as birthday parties and community outings
• Housekeeping duties such as cleaning and sanitising living and bathing areas
• Lawn and garden maintenance
• Managing bills and finances

With an attitude like this, I'm sure she'll do well!

If you're not satisfied with your performance, there are really only two options available to you:

•  Do more of what you're already doing, or
• Do something different

The problem you face, however, is which solution is the right one?

Measuring your performance isn’t just the final score. It’s all of the componentry that makes up a successful effort.
​
A handy acronym to use is CAPS:

•  Calls
• Appointments
• Presentations
• Sales

By looking at the ratios or percentages between each stage, and comparing that to an industry benchmark, you can get the answer as to whether you need to do more of what you’re already doing (i.e. by increasing your calls) or by doing something differently, such as changing your scripts, improving your presentations, and so on.
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It’s often said that sales is a numbers game but there’s more than just one number to work on. Now you just have to figure out which number's which!

​One of the biggest issues facing property management departments is rate discounting. There’s always an owner coming to you claiming that so-and-so down the street is only charging 3% and, therefore, you need to match them or else!
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The question that arises is, “When did this become a question of price instead of value?” The easy answer is when value stopped being part of the property management package.
You see, the poor fool down the road figures that his 3% is the bare minimum he can charge for a bare minimum service. You, on the other hand, are – or should be – offering a quality service that includes value-added components that intelligent owners expect and demand.
Working with some of our client agencies, we’ve developed some ideas that might help build value in your agency’s rent roll.
 
Increase rents fairly, equitably and regularly
The fastest and most-effective way to increase income for your landlords and for your agency is to make sure you regularly review your rents and make sure your increases are fair and equitable. This is a big part of why you make such a difference because setting increases correctly is an art as well as a science. Just remember that a change in tenancy incurs costs for your landlord that need to be recovered by an equivalent, or greater, increase in rent.
 
Become a full service agency
Offer more! There are a wide range of services your owners would appreciate. You may already know what these are relevant to your socio-economic and geographic peculiarities but feel as though you don’t have the resources to offer them. If you’re to get the best possible rates for your agency, you’re going to have to find a way to provide them. There’s a lot of new technology out there and companies that can support you. Find out what can work for your agency!
 
Create opportunities for growth
What are your landlords’ property ownership goals? Find out. Do they want to grow their portfolio? How can you help them do that? Do they have other properties that you don’t manage? How can you help them consolidate their portfolio into your agency? One Sydney agency estimated that 40% of their owners had other properties that the agency didn’t manage. How many properties would that add to your portfolio?
 
Increase your fees
In automotive terms, it’s called “badge engineering”. Look at an Audi A4, a Skoda Octavia and a VW Passat. Same engine, gearbox, size and many of the same appointments but the price range from the cheapest to the dearest is huge. The Audi’s price is 70% higher than the Skoda’s. Why do so many people buy the Audi? They perceive it to be better value. So why do other people buy the Skoda instead? They perceive the Skoda to be better value! Value is purely a matter of perception. If your landlords perceive you to be offering a high value service, then you will be worth the extra fees. If they don’t feel you offer a high value service, you won’t.
 
Stop pinching pennies
A real gripe for many owners is the many line items that start appearing on their statements – including a fee for sending them the statement itself! With more and more owners happy to accept PDF statements via email, charging a fee for what was once aimed at recovering the cost of paper, envelopes and postage is really redundant. You can understand why they’re not as accepting as they once were to let you charge these fees. Try this exercise: Calculate your management fee on your average rent. Then add the annual income you would receive from all of your additional monthly fees.  The total is what you’re currently making. Now try the exercise again but with your new all-inclusive rate of 1% higher than now.
 
Ultimately, don’t sell yourself short. If you didn’t care about your role in Property Management, you wouldn’t have reached this paragraph. You and your team represent the value that is added to property management for your landlords. Growing your rent roll and increasing your agency’s profits is the reward.

Many of the posts below (pre 2003) were part of an old section on a past version of Zenimagination.com called "The Ideas Book"

They were a bunch of musings, some dating back to last century, that I had jotted down in a hard copy booklet and then transferred to the website later.

In 2003, I updated the site and added comments. The original musing is in bold and the comments are in regular text.

Friendships are a funny old thing aren't they? No matter how old some friendships are, they're still often plagued with doubt or misgivings from one party or the other.

I have, I believe, been blessed with some truly beautiful friends - many of whom I have known for almost twenty years or more. But even then, through the ebbs and flows of our histories together, there always tends to appear some grit in the shell that either wears the friendship away or turns it into a pearl.

And the deciding factor is rarely the actual events  - there'll be plenty of those on both sides of the ledger - but how they're remembered. How do you remember your friends? Are they predominantly happy memories or do you tend to recall the hiccoughs, the niggles and the bad times? Does the fact that a friendship carry its own "ups and downs" stick in your mind or do you accept that all friendships travel the same choppy seas? Or do you have none but "fair weather" friends?

Why have I pondered on this? Well, my friends, it's a cold, wet night here in Sydney and what better sound is there to accompany deep thought but the incessant drumming of a hard Sydney rain on the corrugated plastic roof outside my office? Other than maybe a pounding surf but, let's face it, if there was a pounding surf to be heard in Ryde, we'd all be in a mess of trouble!

So, just some food for thought on a quiet, wet Sunday night. If you value your friends, particularly those who have stayed with you through the bad times, who have fought with you, disappointed you occasionally but are always there when you need them most - remember them well because one day, as we all grow inexorably older, a memory may be all that you have left of them.

Protest movements are the domain of the young. They ask for our structures, be they physical or not, to be torn down and replaced by new, instant replacements of the protestors' design.

What they don't allow for, however, is the fact that those existing structures were built by the previous generations when they were young. Fixing things always takes more effort than destroying them and replacing them but repairs give us continuity.

The old story about a farmer's 50 year old axe (it's had 5 handles and 3 heads but it's still the same axe) is the same as our 103 year old nation. It isn't anything like the original because over the years we've replaced worn out axioms and repaired damaged beliefs.

But those repairs have required effort. Unlike a child's desires, we cannot make it happen just because we say so and hope someone does it for us. We have to put the effort in to learn the skills we need and then the patience and determination to implement the changes we desire.

And when it comes to changing the society in which we live, these skills don't stop at learning how to vote. That's a basic that is sadly lacking in most of our community but on top of that you have to add how to lobby your local politicians or even how to become one yourself.

If you do get that involved, the skill need then increases to cover advancement to a position where you can actually achieve the broad changes you desire as well as selling them to an electorate that's as cynical and weary of politicians like you as you once were of politicians today.

So, rather than whining about how poorly we are served by the people we've voted for, think about doing something about it yourself. Yes, it'll be hard work and a long road ahead, but until you do something yourself, you'll be limited to the politician you elected.

27AUG2002 - If you believe that we are all here for a reason, how do you think we are all expected to behave?

28APR2002 - Do we get more conservative as we get older because we see people of our own age in politics and other positions of power?

11JUN2001 - We've got to stop fighting against things and fight for things instead.

01DEC2000 - The most important things in life are often the simplest.

15OCT2000 - Does light ever slow down? Surely it must or does it just reach it's range and then just stop?

15OCT2000 - Is the secret of the sitcom "Cheers" that the characters represented a different part of one personality?

14AUG2000 - What are the statistics on the first three favourites in a horse race coming in in order of odds.

14AUG2000 - A good education is the only defence we have against the rich totally ruling our lives.

09APR2000 - Love is when the joy of another's love brings greater joy than the joy you receive from loving them.

08APR2000 - Is there a transfer of DNA with blood transfusions?

26FEB2000 - A blessing - "May the joy in your life match the peace in your heart".

15NOV1999 - Has it ever been estimated what effect has the vast quantity of shipping that has sunk had on sea levels?

24OCT1999 - Dinosaurs were God's prototypes.

23OCT1999 - A curse - "May you suffer sorrow in proportion to the evil in your heart".

Should religion, like politics, have its funding scrutinised? And should funding be restricted to local funding only? What about the tax-free status? Isn't it about time it should be reviewed?

I don't know what spurred this thought. Maybe the ongoing saga of the Scientologists in Germany. Perhaps just the thought that given the irreligious nature of much of Australian society it's time to re-evaluate our approach?

What we need is a "Meet the Candidate" night where people who want to be a candidate but need to get the requisite 50 votes, can all be met and interviewed by the public on the one night at the same venue. Needs to be sponsored by, perhaps, Councils, Community Groups, etc.

How can this be developed so that it works across all electorates and is easily put into place?

Yeah, good question. How CAN we do it? Any thoughts? E-mail me.