- How a virtual office provides the workspace you need
- How a virtual office helps you build your network
- How a virtual office makes your business more efficient
Q: Do I need a traditional workspace if my business operates remotely?
A: While no two businesses are alike, renting a traditional office for your remote operations is almost always a huge waste of money. With a virtual office, you’re able to forego expensive leases without giving up the functionality of a traditional workspace.
Since the pandemic devastated the nation, forcing millions of Americans into remote work or unemployment, we’ve seen countless individuals decide to continue working remotely.
With a steady stream of workers making the transition each month, it’s guaranteed that remote work isn’t going anywhere.
In addition to employees making the transition, small business owners are realizing that virtual businesses offer far greater returns in this market than traditional business ventures.
Office space for small business is expensive. Traditional offices are prohibitively expensive, keeping these offices stocked is difficult, and the commute wastes time and money.
Unfortunately, operating a business entirely remotely comes with its own set of issues.
Working exclusively from home can quickly lead to burnout, virtual meetings aren’t as personal as traditional meetings, and it can be difficult to differentiate between leisure time and work time when you’re operating exclusively from a home office.
Read more: As telework continues for many U.S. workers, no sign of widespread ‘Zoom fatigue’
So, how can small business owners take cost-efficient advantage of the benefits of traditional office space?
The answer is a high-quality virtual office. Utilizing a virtual office provides business owners with the meeting rooms and the workspace required for any business to operate efficiently.
In this article, we’ll examine how a virtual office can provide you with the workspace necessary, how a virtual office can help your business to expand its network, and how virtual offices help your business operate more efficiently.
If you’ve ever wondered how to find office space for small business, keep reading.
- How a virtual office provides the workspace you need
- How a virtual office helps you build your network
- How a virtual office makes your business more efficient
How a virtual office provides the workspace you need
Before we dig into how a virtual office can provide your business with the workspace you need, let’s look at what a virtual office is.
A closer look at virtual offices
A virtual office combines a company address with an on-demand workspace and mail services. It is typically used by workers to collaborate and complete their work remotely.
That said, not all virtual offices are created equally. Here are a few amenities you’ll need to ensure your virtual office has, especially if you’re hoping to find a virtual office that provides office space for small business and is suitable for registering your LLC.
- Tied to a physical address
- If your virtual office has an address that only exists online or through a PO box, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to use that address to register your business.
- Comes with access to a professional workspace and meeting rooms
- Part of what makes a virtual office so useful is having access to a professional workspace. Without this, you’re still forced to work in busy coffee shops or other public areas when you want to work outside of your home office.
- Onsite staff
- You’re paying for a virtual office, and without a friendly and helpful onsite staff, you’re out of luck if any technical issues arise while you’re in the workspace.
- Other professionals utilizing the space
- This is a great way to determine how professional a virtual office is. If other professionals are utilizing the workspace, you know that you won’t be forced to deal with distractions or other detriments to your business’s success.
- Robust mail forwarding system
- As a business owner, you’ll be receiving important documents often. A robust mail forwarding system ensures that you won’t be dealing with long delays between correspondences, and makes sure that sensitive documents aren’t floating around for longer than necessary.
Your virtual office is the hub for your business’s operations. Don’t settle for address-only plans that neglect to provide you with a professional workspace.
Usable workspaces
Alliance Virtual Offices provides virtual offices in every state. Each of our virtual offices comes fully equipped with access to workspaces and meeting rooms whenever you need them.
A virtual office from Alliance offers all of the benefits of traditional office space. Our virtual office clients have access to clean and professional on-demand workspaces whenever they’d like to use them.
These workspaces are fully prepared to support focus and productivity. Not only are virtual office clients able to utilize the professional and friendly workspaces, they’re also able to reserve private meeting rooms.
A meeting room allows you to host professional meetings, private conferences, or team meetings without being forced to pay for commercial space. Small business owners that don’t have this access are usually forced to host these kinds of meetings in crowded coffee shops or expensive hotels.
In addition to providing meeting rooms and workspaces, you’ll want to make sure that your virtual office provider has well-equipped rooms that meet any of your small business needs.
For example, if you’re hosting a meeting for fifty people, you’ll probably need a bigger space than if you were just hosting a small crowd of potential investors.
Similarly, if you’re hosting a small crowd of potential investors, you’ll probably want to make sure that you have some coffee and other amenities provided to keep them comfortable.
With Alliance Virtual Offices, we take care of it all. Not only does our network have different sizes and styles of meeting rooms, but we also have rooms that come with various amenities to help keep your guests comfortable and provided for.
Professionality
When you’re deciding on office space for small business, you don’t want to select a location that could cause future customers or potential investors to think less of your business.
Many of our competitors have spaces that are tied to physical addresses, but not to professional or legitimate locations.
If you’re hoping to build a successful online business, it’s probably best that you don’t share an address with Staples.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Staples, but you want the people searching for your business to be impressed with your location, not confused.
Occasionally touted as free office space for small business, virtual addresses that don’t provide a workspace may not give the right impression of your business.
In addition, the lack of a space-backed office provides little to no benefit over traditional offices outside of the price.
Alliance’s virtual offices are always staffed with professional, friendly team members that ensure everything is clean and maintained. They are always available to help when you need it.
There’s nothing worse than attempting to host an important meeting only to realize that you’re unable to get your electronics working correctly. With this professional onsite staff, you’ll never have to worry about technical difficulties again.
As you can see, you need a space-backed virtual office that presents itself as professionally as possible.
By using a virtual office space provider with legitimate locations and competent onsite staff, you won’t have to worry about investors or consumers wondering why you’re sharing a location with Arby’s.
All of this makes virtual offices a fantastic option for small business owners. The cost efficiency and ample benefits provide a virtual and physical solution to the problems associated with traditional small business office space.
How a virtual office helps you build your network
Traditional office spaces may leave you and your team in isolation. Because you’re typically leasing a space for a year at minimum, you’re forced to deal with whatever neighbors, or lack thereof, utilize any space close to your small business office.
This can be beneficial if your neighbors are equally as professional and driven as you and your team, but even if this is the case, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever interact with these individuals.
A virtual office negates this isolation by providing a workspace that is used by other professional and serious small business owners.
This distinction contributes to productivity while helping you find new business opportunities.
A key aspect of effective networking is making the most of the chances that are presented to you.
By utilizing a virtual office workspace, you’re putting yourself in an environment with other business owners that will present several networking opportunities.
You’re bound to find people with a direct need for your products or services, and if not, there’s an excellent chance those same people will be willing to refer others to you.
Independently, being surrounded by so many small business owners is outstanding motivation. Nothing gets your entrepreneurial mind working as fast as being surrounded by other successful individuals.
Virtual networking
One of the biggest problems small business owners experience when they’re trying to network from home is an inability to find or make these opportunities.
With the advent of remote work and virtual offices, networking can be done entirely online.
Don’t get us wrong, face-to-face interactions are great for networking, and virtual offices give entrepreneurs the workspace to create these opportunities, but networking online gives you the chance to engage with far more people.
Read more: Into The Metaverse: The Future Of Virtual Interactions
Regardless of whether you’re focusing on virtual networking or traditional networking, a virtual office allows you to connect with many individuals.
Networking is nothing more than building connections, and having a workspace filled with other highly motivated entrepreneurs provides ample opportunities for business owners to discuss products and operations.
Additionally, the cost-effective nature of a virtual office means you can reinvest the money saved by procuring a virtual office into various networking initiatives and marketing strategies.
Overall, a virtual office provides you with an environment in which you’re able to effectively network without sacrificing professionality.
How a virtual office makes your business more efficient
While all of the above would be enough on its own, Alliance’s Virtual Offices excel in helping your business operate as efficiently as possible. Outside of the networking benefits and access to office space for small business, we provide you with even more tools to help your business scale.
Below, we’ve listed various ways to use a virtual office to make your business more efficient. Keep reading to see just how useful virtual office space is.
- Flexibility
- Cost-efficiency
- No wasted money
- Access to countless applicants
- Easier to build business credit
- Privacy
Flexibility
Often associated with remote work in general, the flexibility provided by a virtual office is unparalleled.
Now you don’t have to choose between a home office and a traditional one. You can use your home office as much as you’d like and use the office space for small business activities or if you feel like you’re burning out.
Additionally, when things are going well, and you’d like to expand, you can easily procure another virtual office in the state you’re hoping to break into without breaking the bank.
Cost-efficiency
The cost-efficiency of a virtual office can’t be beaten. The difference between procuring a virtual office and a traditional one is night and day.
The sizable savings seen through the use of a virtual office can then be put to work by simplifying other parts of your operations. Rather than dealing with prohibitively expensive office space for rent for small business, you can use the money to strengthen your supply chain, better train your employees, and focus on expansion.
No wasted money
In a similar vein, virtual offices allow you to eliminate the money sinks associated with traditional office space.
Eliminating your daily commute saves you money on gas, is better for your vehicle, and saves you a colossal amount of time in the long run.
Additionally, because you’re only using the virtual office space whenever it’s necessary, you will never find yourself paying for space that isn’t in use. With traditional offices, your lease payment doesn’t ever change depending on how many days you were in the office.
If you signed a year-long lease, you’ll pay that year-long lease, even if you go the entire year without ever stepping foot in the office on the weekends. Virtual offices prevent this.
Read more: How to Reduce Operating Expenses in Business
Access to countless applicants
One of the nicest aspects of running a virtual business is easy to access to applicants all over the world.
In the past, you’d have needed to incentivize out-of-state applicants to move closer to your base of operations. Now, with a virtual office, you can hire anyone, anywhere, regardless of whether or not they’re comfortable with moving across the country.
This wide applicant pool is also beneficial when it comes time to expand. Rather than being forced to find employees willing to help with the expansion, you’re able to simply make new hires in the areas you’re hoping to break into.
Easier to build business credit
Building business credit can be a daunting task. Without prior credit, it can be difficult to secure loans and lines of credit.
By using one of Alliance’s Virtual Offices, you’re already looking better to lenders than if you were to use a virtual office without a legitimate address. Lenders look favorably at businesses that are using commercially recognized addresses.
If you’re trying to build business credit and you’re using an address that is widely familiar and legitimate, you’ll have much better luck than if you tried to build credit with a home address or a PO box.
Privacy
The privacy associated with a virtual office means you won’t have to compromise your personal security by registering your business with your home address.
Once you register your business, whatever address you’ve decided to use becomes a part of the public domain. Once your address is in the public domain, that means it’s available to anyone who feels motivated to look.
If investors can see your home address, there is a chance they’ll make assumptions about your business before ever meeting with you. On the flip side, any disgruntled customers or ex-employees can see exactly where you live if they feel so inclined.
Alliance’s Virtual Offices negate this possibility.
By using a virtual office, you’re setting your business up for success and guaranteeing yourself access to a professional workspace anytime you need it.
With over 90% positive ratings on Trustpilot, our track record speaks for itself. Ensure that you have access to office space for small business without being forced to spend the exorbitant sums associated with traditional office space.
A modern solution to a modern problem
The best office space for the modern entrepreneur needs to be equally modern.
A virtual office provides all of the benefits of a traditional office for far less. Best of all, a virtual office makes you more flexible, allowing you to save time and money and reinvest it to prepare for the future.
With Alliance’s virtual offices, you get the best of both worlds.
A central hub for your remote operations that saves money, boosts productivity, widens the applicant pool, and provides access to a professional workspace that can be used for training sessions, investor meetings, and an escape from your daily routine.
Office space for small business is important, but there’s no point in paying for the space when you aren’t using it. Take advantage of the office space ideas for small businesses we’ve presented, and take your remote operations to the next step.
Further Reading:
- Remote Work Is Here To Stay And Will Increase Into 2023, Experts Say
- As telework continues for many U.S. workers, no sign of widespread ‘Zoom fatigue’
- Into The Metaverse: The Future Of Virtual Interactions
- How to Reduce Operating Expenses in Business
Alliance Virtual Offices provides entrepreneurs with several remote work solutions to help scaling businesses and increase productivity.
Our Virtual Offices come with on-demand access to workspaces and meeting rooms that can be used for any of your small business needs.
When burnout is creeping up on you, breaking your routine and working in your Virtual Office’s workspace will help you recalibrate. In addition, working in the space allows you to skip trying to complete a day’s work inside of a crowded coffee shop with unsafe Wi-Fi.
It doesn’t matter if you’re growing your business or just starting out, utilizing a Virtual Office from Alliance is a fantastic way to prepare your business to scale while presenting a professional and legitimate address for potential investors and consumers.
Office space for small business has a place in your virtual operations, but paying for it when you aren’t even using the workspace is a quick way to break the bank and put your business in a tough financial position.
Alliance Virtual Offices is ready to provide you with the best of both worlds, traditional and virtual.
Contact us today to see how a virtual office can provide your business with the office space it needs to thrive – without being forced to pay exorbitant leases for traditional offices you don’t often need!
