 Brett Chittum here with Lawrence Systems and I'm here with Tom and this is coffee with Tom and Brett. Good morning You know, we're here to talk about Does your tech business need a physical location and when you? Over the last couple years. Let's look at 2020. Yeah It's showing many businesses that you can work remotely and actually be Successful and grow your business having your employees work remotely But yet there's still this controversy of should you have a physical location? Should you not have a physical location? What are your thoughts Tom? Well, and it's interesting companies that weathered 2020 really well and I'll use Hunter's example because I know them very well they've expanded greatly and They started long before the incidents that brought us to the 2020 Can you work remotely because they were designed remote first and there's always been and including Brett's wife works remotely. There's a lot of companies have designed remote first So one we absolutely know it's possible. Well, let's bring it back to the question of should you? Because some roles seem to work really well remotely and some do need some physical space and interaction with people and It seems like we're a mix and a split here at Lawrence Systems because we have some employees that are remote We have some employees that are here and it seems to work really well in the tech hardware side that those employees Hey, we like the camaraderie. We like the office feeling we get from all being together And I have a mix of friends that used to work in an office and I'll work remotely that kind of just Hanging out in the office, but it seems like the people who are really focused in like developers want to just go leave me alone I plan to write code for the next X hours with being, you know, uninterrupted So figure out the different types and personalities of whether or not you need it But what about having a physical address and you do need some type of Probably not just your home address and we'll throw someone out there like Riley who I've interviewed on here from hostify He does have a co-working type of address list because he didn't want to just list his house as where he works Even though he works from home and he's he's built a remote team and it works really well They've built a credible product with hostify and that is where you can build it remotely So one I did say you do need some type of physical address. I Agree, you know having that physical address to get packages In and do you want people coming to your house when I was doing my consulting business? It was the same I had my physical address and I wish I had Yeah, because somehow it showed up on Google as children consulting at my home address Not a good thing in in in that aspect So yeah having having a physical location is important. You can do certain things like a PO box. Yep, right? We talked before this about Detroit has a number of places that are co-working Spaces you can rent a small little office and you get in that small office an actual physical location You get a conference room you get a place to receive your packages when you're not there It's it's a it's a great option for companies that are trying to really Build their presence maybe in a certain location, right? Yeah, and I bring up the offices like Detroit because if you take a company We're talking a big company that was local here like duo duo prior to their purchase from Cisco. They had their Co-working space. Yes duo the company It was bought for like a billion dollars at a co-working space at bamboo Detroit Which I know some of the people that runs that but wherever you're at There's definitely some local spaces available There's some national places like the UPS stores an example of where you can not get office space But just get a physical address a place to get your packages because not everywhere They're gonna be a few things that go they want a little more than a PO box to kind of legitimize you and this is where that Address on there now even for us. We're migrating back to just for all of our invoices we want those going to a PO box, but you know, we do have a physical building address and There's some things you may want to have split that way if you ever move and you know Hey, we are looking for buildings if you know one for sale Yeah, if you know one for sale, that's kind of why we're talking about this topic right time because we're yeah We're going through this process ourselves and and we're finding that there We have some people working here that do not want to work from home They don't right and we have some people that love working from home and we have a hybrid mix So we are kind of a hybrid option here So when we're actually looking for spaces hint hint if you know one available, we'd love to see it is that We're trying to look at still being that hybrid option because we do tech work inside this office There are things that need to happen here that we have a whole lab set up So that we can actually test things prior to them going into real production, right? Yeah So these are things that we need to lab things out and of course the studio space So we're maybe a little bit of an exception But I do know a lot of other people in the IT MSP space that have just sold their office But you still need to keep it's it is a little bit of a legitimacy to say alright Here's an address now the UPS store. I threw it out there It's probably the least expensive way to get started You probably want to look at something a little bit if you look at like Professional offices that do this type of service on the nice thing about them If you look up the address for UPS store You'll find lots of businesses there if you look at the other one other professional service offices that are around and they're in Every major city you'll find ones that offer you really small spaces that you can have Just so you have that physical address So you may still work from home and maybe you just have a like 200 square feet a little singular office there It's important to have some type of solid address to kind of legitimize it to also put that on your website Just so we know what region you're in. This is a weird thing I run into and I just want to know I look at people's website and I want to know at least what region they service Even if they're remotely servicing a lot of things, you know, where are their physical offices? Where roughly are they located? Are they all in Florida on as hurricane season a issue for you? I don't just curious Yeah, time zone you're that's another one to what times you're in the end Of course, then again, there's people who have offices out of state It's not to think about but I do want to just give you that takeaway It is important that you have physical address It is fine to split it to even we're going back to splitting it to where we have a PO box just so all of our invoices go somewhere because there's some convenience that for Processing all the invoices and everything else We still have our physical address for people who send things to us and where we get the Servership to or any of the equipment that builds our lab, you know We have that publicly facing on our website so people know where we're at But yeah, we just want to talk about that. It's not a hundred percent one way or the other Even you look at I mentioned Huntress. They have a physical Building where they can have people at but right It's not big enough for the size at which they've grown. So it's something to think about that Yes, you can build your entire company remotely and 2020 You know, let's say sort it out the skeptics who thought you couldn't Certainly did didn't it? Yeah, and as you go through this process You're gonna figure out your own way because your business is your business, right? We do things a certain way everybody else in the in the tech space does things their own way It's got to work for you and like Fred said earlier. Don't use your home address Do not well. Yeah, if your business gets really big next, you know, people are like, hey, that's where they live or even worse When you don't live there anymore or there becomes a different level of confusion when Invoices show up to whoever does live there and that could be an issue too as you still have all the state forms to fill out Federal forms all your tax forms here in the US. They do need addresses where to put that and if you Looking a lot and will not allow for a P. O box for those So that that's why you kind of have to figure out some of these because that'll be the content questions matter of fact some accounting firms even offer it as a full-service accounting if people were to bother to dig up some of our Tax information that is publicly available You'll actually found my accountants address because that's where we have our tax form set Yep, very split that we don't publicly this because it's only for state use But for people have wondered are you over at this address and I'm like, no That's my accountant's just because well, they're they we often they have full service County We send all of our paperwork there for that. I don't exactly I I just give it to them and ask of what it means. 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