Kealey Nutt

What Things Would You Consider When Choosing An Office Space?

Hey Ananda

​I've had a bit of experience in coordinating office / work spaces. I've worked in traditional corporate offices, I helped run a successful 'coworking' space in melbourne for a few years, and now - I'm experimenting with setting up an 'office' in my garden!

There are LOADS of different types of office space available for lease:

- Desk space in a traditional office

- Coworking spaces where there is more of a shared 'community' feel, and are often more relaxed and 'quirky' in appearance.

- Serviced offices where you rent a portion of a space amongst other small businesses.

- Home offices.

- Finding a piece of real estate and leasing it yourself privately (can be anything from warehouse space, to an existing office space, or a retail space that you convert, and so on).

- Working from places like public libraries, cafes, or business resource centres.

And probably more options depending on what type of work you do.

There are a couple of obvious questions you need to look at:

- How many people need to fit in the space / how many employees or colleagues will need to be there?

- What utilities do you need? Internet? Power? Water? Phone access? Bathrooms? Meeting rooms? Desks? More relaxed areas like lunch tables, or couches?

- Do you need to be close to facilities like public transport, or bicycle paths, or cafes, shopping centres, etc?

- What is your budget? What type of place can you afford, and what sacrifices or compromises are you willing to make on the basis of price?

- But most importantly - what type of space do you work best in? Where do you feel comfortable and productive?

    ~ Do you like sitting at a desk, or does a more casual seating arrangement work for you?

    ~ Do you like having music play while you work?

    ~ Do you value things like taking breaks for exercise, or coffee, or food, or creative/entertainment breaks?

    ~ Do you like to chat while you work, or do you like your own quiet time?

    ~ What kind of space 'look' do you feel comfortable and productive being in? (For example, I work best with lots of natural light, some plants, colourful decorations, places to scribble ideas on like whiteboards and blackboards etc).

    ~ Have you tried different types of seating, like beanbags or stand up desks, that you can alternate between throughout your workday?

    ~ Is the space child or pet friendly?

... And so on and so forth.

 

In my experience, I'd say looking for what works personally for you in terms of comfort and enjoyment will be far more important than technicalities in the long run. Like - choosing somewhere with natural light, that's easy to get to, and has good food close by, might end up making you and your colleagues more happy and therefore more productive in the long run compared to, say - An office that looks really sleek and professional and has a shiny meeting room, that might be more expensive, filled with artificial light, and might only be accessible by car (or any other comparative example you might come up with).

I believe that experience and enjoyment in a work space is more important than actual facilities, because you can always add facilities based on your needs... if you need more light or faster internet or whatever, you can easily add those, but they might not contribute to how happy you are at work, and therefore how motivated and productive you are.

Check out sites like:

http://desksnear.me

http://www.creativespaces.net.au

http://www.theloop.com.au/creative_spaces/featured

http://www.officespace.com.au

http://aus.instantoffices.com

Or experiment with free spaces, like libraries or cafes to find out what does/doesn't work for you in a work environment.

 

Good luck! 

How can I use discounts or promotions to attract more clients?

Thanks for the reply Steve!
I didn't know about Antmart - checking it out now.

Are you getting value from your email list?

I used to send out a fortnightly "Love Letter" to the audience of my online magazine, Thelma . 
Through doing this, we ended up with loads of brand evangelists who would share the email with their social media audiences, and who would reply and tell us how great they thought the emails were and how much they looked forward to them, and encouraged others to sign up.
The thing was, that we didn't try to sell them anything, or even try to get them to click through to our own product's site. 
We simply shared images, anecdotes, stories etc of things that were relevant and interesting to our audience. And thought we didn't sell anything, we built our own audience and reputation in that field, by building up "credibility" and the vibe that we know all about the kind of content and things that our audience are into and want to know about.
So, I'd say that email campaigns can be hugely successful, in terms of building your brand identity and building a relationship with your audience, and turning them into evangelists for what you do.
But probably less so if you want to use it solely to sell directly.
A company that does a great example of this is Native Digital who do a brilliant weekly email called "Native Insights" that features links to articles and information, and quotes from around the web, that are relative and inspiring to their audience and clients. I'm pretty sure they get a great response rate from these. Sign up to check it out, I love it.

Does anyone know which websites actually accept guest posts?

Are you signed up for Sourcebottle? There are always people looking for contributions and comments in a variety of fields!

Your opinion on sites like Wix, Square Space, BigCommerce

I've seen 'Wix' come up in my Facebook feed about 4 times a day for a month or two now. They really are putting a heavy push on marketing.
My first ever website in 2007 was built using 'Weebly' which is similar to Wix. And in about 2008 I used 'Carbonmade' for a more professional look.
The thing is, I've never seen a site made with one of those tools that looks amazing. I'm pretty fussy, though.
For me, the templates of sites like these seem a little restrictive. I notice the inflexibility of having elements dragged and dropped to the spots on the page that the template allowed. 
For the cost of the fees, I woud recommend to anyone that they either find a free Wordpress theme that they like, and play around with that, as they're often more customisable. Or find a developer that can work within their budget.
That being said, I totally recommend using existing e-commerce sites like Shopify, Big Cartel, etc - you can customise the URL to be branched from your own personal domain, so that they fit in as part of your site. But they help minimise the fuss of having your own e-commerce platform set up in your site, and messing around with the payments process etc. It's all done for you. Handy.

How much do bloggers charge for a sponsored post?

As William mentioned, it can really vary. Usually somewhere between a couple of hundred dollars. It depends a lot on their audience and reach.
Some of them will even do it in exchange for products or services.
As far as getting posts out there for SEO, a more cost effective alternative might be to post your own articles on websites related to your client's industry - like this one, or the many others out there who are looking for contributors! Then they can include their links in the posts/articles and gain some reputation as an expert in their field. 
You might also consider signing up for appropriate forums and discussion boards for the same purposes.

What is a great business a teenage kid can start this summer?

If they're into art or craft, they could make their own art, or photo prints, or handmade things and put them up on an Etsy store.
Or they could put up signs or flyers around their neighbourhood and offer tutorials to older people on how to perform basic tasks on their computers, like email, and searching on the internet, or even showing people how to use their mobile phones and set top boxes. Stuff that is natural to kids, but that some middle aged and elderly people may not have caught up with yet.
Or the traditional gardening help, flyer dropping, and so forth.
There are also a lot of sites popping up where you can register to do tasks, like O-Desk, Fiverr, Sidekicker, Airtasker, and so forth. People post odd jobs, admin tasks, and web projects for a certain fee, for people to complete.
Depends on how creative and enterprising the kid is. Sky's the limit. They could learn to code, and build the next big app!

How do I get my own domain name?

I use DNSimple. Because, well, they provide a really SIMPLE straight forward service.

What is a reasonable price for a small business website?

Just as everyone before me has mentioned, the price can really vary on the scope of work:

- Do you have the content and photos ready to go?

- Do you know what pages/sections of your website you want?

- Does the price include domain registration, hosting, and set up of services like email at your own custom domain, and built in SEO stuff?

- Is it a basic design, or does it need some graphic design work?

- Do you need any online stores, etc set up?

I develop Wordpress websites at my business, after working with the best web developers in Melbourne who charge a minimum of $10000 for their work - I realised there was a gap in the market for sleek, but simple, uncomplicated websites for people running small businesses, and who know what that want to get out of having their website online.

I  now do jobs that range between $500 - $5000 depending on the scope of the work.

Happy to chat via email if you would like a hand brainstorming the kind of thing you're looking for, and the types of questions you should ask when getting quotes (or what the quotes even mean!!).

Here's my business' info page on Website Design: http://www.elevenandtwelve.com/website-development/ 
You can email me at kealey@elevenandtwelve.com if you'd like to chat  :)

Does anyone use Pinterest for business?

I've signed up some of my clients to Pinterest, though they work in floristry, and interior design. So the platform works well for them as a visual tool. 

I know that Sam Bell at Runway Digital uses it really well to promote her agency's services, and to share resources with her clients and followers. You can see her page here: http://pinterest.com/samanthabell/ 

Do you know an Australian business that buys second-hand jewellery?

If it's designer or valuable jewelery I know places like Paris 99 (http://paris99.net) in Melbourne purchase, then re-sale high end pieces. And a friend of mine, Lara McPherson is about to launch 'Wardrobe Wonderland' which I think may end up doing similar, or some version of re-selling/hiring pieces to people. Though both of these tend to deal in vintage and couture.
Otherwise, Etsy has lots of designer stuff for re-sale, and because of the close-knit community on their site, I think counterfeiters and dodgy merchants are pretty quickly dealt with. The stores seem to have a more 'human' and legitimate reputation than those on eBay.