My last post was about moving houses so today I’m going corporate – Moving Offices. I have always worked from home. I am what you would call a “mobile broker” – I come to you. A home office has its benefits – no drive time to the office, fully stocked kitchen at your disposal, and the biggest plus – no rent. Downsides of a home office – little girls banging on your door, friends dropping by while you are working and it can be hard to switch off from work.
Emma has been working for me for a while now and we had a good set up in Lennox with the spare room as the office. Since we moved to Alstonville the home office was not ideal (it was in our bedroom). Then we employed Susan so an office was no longer a ‘want’ it was a need’ a very essential need.
The search for an office took longer then I imagined. Why was I being so picky? It had to be perfect! Perfect location, perfect size, and of course perfect price. Just when it was looking like we would have to settle for something not-so perfect I found the office we are now in.
Is moving office harder then moving house? YES! The thing about moving offices is that there is no clock you can press to pause the world for 2-3 days. Work, life emails and deadlines keep on coming. When you move house you can live in a half set up house for weeks (I have even seen on many occasions boxes still packed in garages from a previous move). You can’t do this with the office. What I needed was for everything from the old office to be in the new office and working within 24 hours – year right (1 month later and it’s still not all set up how I want it).
Moving offices requires lots of organisation to make sure that there is little or no down time. The hard part is that to set up the new office correctly the first time, you need all of the furniture in there to tell if the design in your mind will convert to the office “please note there is a mobile app Magic plan that can help”. I like to call myself a perfectionist, my wife on the other hand prefers to call me OCD. Everything has a place and should stay there. The only problem with this is that in a new office everything has to find it place and it can take some moving and switching to find this place.
Tips to help make the process easier.
- Make sure you buy all of the items you need at once for a new office
- As soon as you mark a file that it is not important and put somewhere that is not right at your fingertips that file is going to be needed. EVERY file is as important as the next
- If friends are helping you move make sure that you empty out all of the draws in the desk before they arrive. This will avoid the desk being moved and placed upside down before you get a chance to remove the items
- Always carry plastic bags and tape. When taking items apart tape the screws/bits in the plastic bag to the item. This will avoid them getting lost or confused with lots of other bags of screws. (very annoying)
- Don’t ever listen to the internet provider especially one starting with a T. They will not get the internet set up on time and have an excuse book to buy them more time. Each excuse buys them a longer time period from day to days to weeks. Buy a copy of this book online before the process to anticipate their move and figure out a counter argument. At the very least buy a new second hand set of plates to throw against a wall after every painfully long conversation.
Related Tag: Construction Home Loan
After studying business and finance at university, Zain initially expected to pursue a career in finance. However, his passion for property and the experience of buying his own home led him to mortgage broking. He began his mortgage brokering career in 2009 and founded ZEP Finance in 2010.
