Extra Space in Your Community

Some Denver businesses have found a way to ride out the economic downturn without going out of business — they have managed to reduce overhead by downsizing. The biggest overhead expense for many businesses, especially service businesses, is rent. There are three ways to reduce rent expenses, if you are a business: move to a less expensive location, move to a smaller location, or run your business out of your home. Increasingly, many entrepreneurs are choosing to do the latter. Working from home works well for:

• professionals whose clients do not need much face-to-face time in an office, or who can meet clients in the client’s office, such as lawyers, accountants, writers, editors, and consultants
• people who run service businesses where they see only one client at a time, such as massage therapists, health care practitioners, veterinarians, tutors, pet groomers and petsitters, private investigators
• people who run businesses in which the essential work of the business goes on off-site in response to a call, such as plumbers, air conditioning/heating repairworkers, construction work contractors and subcontractors, and information technology specialists
• people who run businesses that are Internet-based
• people who run businesses that don’t depend on customers who wander in off the street on impulse while shopping
• people who run retail businesses with sales that are based on home parties or personal connections, like Tupperware, Usborne Books, or Young Living Essential Oils

It isn’t necessary to have a lot of extra space in your home to shift your business to your home. You need to have enough room for your day-to-day work, of course. But inventory and supplies can be stored off-site, in a nearby self-storage unit. At Extra Space, we have professionals who use self-storage to hold the files they need to archive, retailers who use our units to hold inventory, salespeople who use our space to hold samples, and repairmen who use self-storage to hold tools that they need but do not use daily. It can be a big relief to stop writing a monthly check for office rent in addition to the rent or mortgage payment check that you write for housing. For some small business owners, self-storage is the creative solution that saved their businesses. Think about it.