Commercial Lease
The Hidden Costs of Executive Suites
Many new business owners who provide professional services and have children, dogs, get door to door salesmen and/or have busy households (or just prefer to have a separate place to work) opt for Executive Suites. They sound as though they are reasonable priced. When I started WIN Opportunities in an executive suite, my rent, I was told, would be just $800 a month. My first bill was well over $2k. I was charged for use of the Internet, conference rooms, kitchen service fees, cleaning fees (4 of them actually - because even though I was the only one occupying my office, I was told that it had the capacity to seat 4, I later learned); The only line item I couldn’t find on the invoice was toilet paper (which I’m sure was part of the administrative fee).
Executive suites are designed to nickel and dime (or should I say hundred and thousand dollar) businesses out of business! That is why 95% of small businesses FAIL. That is not acceptable! Today’s businesses are bootstrapping. They are self funded and struggling to make ever penny count. They need a better option and WIN Opportunities (WINopp.com) has that. No long term contracts, flat fees w/no hidden costs. Reimburse only your direct costs (long distance and copies). Work together with other smart professionals cooperatively. Turn your rent cost into a revenue center whether you are looking for an executive office, a virtual office, conference center, or day use offices – WIN is the solution. Give us a call at 949.502.4200 to find out how.
Virginia Lorimor, CPA*
Chief Excellence Officer
Business Acceleration
In this lingering down economy, the standard “business incubation model” is no longer proving to be effective. I was startled to see that recent statistics in an article entitled “Boon or Boondoggle” by Amezcua at the Syracuse University show the following:
| INCUBATED FIRM | NON-INCUBATED FIRM | |
| First Year Sales | $637K | $437K |
| Rate of Sales Decline per Year | -1.2% | -3% |
| Employees | 4.43 | 3.45 |
| Employee Growth Rate per Year | +3% | +0.74% |
| Age | 42% close by age 3.63 Yrs | 50% fail in 2.5 years |
| Spends avg. of 4.5 yrs in incubator | ||
| 944 business incubators operated in 1,121 locations, about 18,000 firms, founding year = 2000 | ||
Graduation rate from incubator was only about 4%; among the 18,426 incubated firms in the study, 7,543 of them closed while in incubation, 193 of them closed after incubation, 464 of the graduates remain in operations, and the remainder, 10,226, continue operating in the incubator.
Some of the author’s conclusions:
- Incubation does not reduce chance of going out of business sooner than a non-incubated firm
- Incubated firms fail 10% sooner after leaving incubator
- Incubated firms increase employment, but only by 3.5% compared to non-incubated firm
- Incubated firms increase employment growth rate by 6.7%
- Sales growth rate increase by 2.15% when entering incubator, 5.1% when leaving incubator
- Based on employment and sales performance, incubation generally has a positive economic effect but it does not contribute to net economic gains since overall there are net losses in employment and sales for the incubated group
- Claims that incubators are highly successful and serve a significant number of businesses are overstated; also, incubated firms outperform non-incubated firms in terms of employment and sales growth but fail sooner
Small businesses need more in today’s incredibly challenging business market. They need flexibility and guidance. A center that offers the infrastructure and benefits once only available to large businesses, at a price those small businesses can afford. Moreover, the flexibility to grow with those businesses only as those businesses need to grow into additional services (absolutely a-la-carte, never – “You want fries with that.”) No hidden fees. No long term contracts. Where each of the companies works cooperatively. Does this seem unthinkable?
WIN is a business accelerator with a proprietary model that offers those benefits. WIN is leveraging many small businesses together to gain economies of scale and to allow start ups to appear instantly larger than they are. I would be interested to hear if others have come across other business accelerators that have a legal structure that (in the United States) allow companies to join together to obtain liability, workman’s compensation, errors & omissions coverages; a lawyer on call, HR administration, CPA ownership with payroll discounts, business connectivity and advisory services, and low cost bookkeeping and administrative assistance.
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