Want to know the pros and cons of working at home vs. an office? Hang out with us as we have a discussion about it here, as we’ve done it (and do it) both ways. And check out our other episodes here.
Transcript
0:00
Hey guys, I’m Brooks and I Mandee. So we’re husband and wife, entrepreneurs. And we believe that life and business are a giant adventure and we want to live it with you guys. So let’s get
0:11
To it.
0:24
Mandee, what’s going on? Welcome back. How are you doing? I’m great. How are you? I’m pretty grantee. I’m pretty grantee. Alright, today, let’s get straight to it. We’re gonna talk about working from home versus the office. Wow, what a topic Yeah, or outside of the home. So that could be an office space. It could be a shared space and a co working space could be a coffee shop. But so working home from the office. I thought since we’ve done a lot of both, I mean, I thought it would be useful for us to if you know for people that are maybe looking at it They’re looking into it, or maybe they’ve done one or the other, to see what the pros and cons are of each and kinda and kind of share that with folks. So I think we should start with the house, like, we work from both our home as well as and have worked at right like coffee shops, and we also work out of the CO working space one days a week, here locally in mobile. And so what are your suit, you know, from the house? Well, actually, let me ask you this. I which one do you prefer? Oh, we didn’t talk about this overall, like, what do you think is the best Oh, for you?
1:39
Overall? I like the house. Okay. But I also like, it depends. I like working for certain things. And I don’t know, I’m a I’ve been working from home 13 years, so it’s kind of hard to break that habit. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a long time. It is a long
2:01
I, um, you know, I have a similar have a similar kind of thought process. I like changing up things and adjusting my environment. And so that could mean going from a home office work area to a coffee shop or to a co working space. And if I weren’t there for a long period of time, it could be changing from that back to home, right? Yeah, but they all have their own pros and cons. And so that’s what we’re going to kind of chat about and discuss a little bit today. Some of those some of those pros and cons of all of those. So, the home I know one of the things that you love, that’s a definite Pro is that it can be quiet, it can be peaceful.
2:46
Right? Right. Right. And for years, I actually couldn’t stand the quiet and would have to have the TV on just to have you hear a music guy and you want music on all the time but like for me, but I see that as the same thing. Quiet it’s just having a little something in the background so you’re not like completely feeling like you’re alone but
3:05
I feel like though when I say quiet it’s even beyond that like it’s a and this is on our list further down but it’s there’s no when I say quiet so I’m saying no people like people can be the biggest kind of distraction I guess can be a big piece of that and so yeah and so it can it you can kind of control your environment at home, right for the most part unless our dog barks which we’re recording this podcast from a home area right now and our dog might get a little rougher Yeah, whatever. But um, but beyond that, another one too that I think is really cool is the fact you don’t have to travel Oh, yes. If you’re working from home like travel and Oh, we don’t live in a huge city. It’s a couple hundred thousand people and we complain we have to drive like three miles.
3:52
Our office 1.9 miles from our
3:57
Co-working space. Yeah. Is it Yes, two miles Ah, I don’t know if he’ll be able to make it out today. I don’t know if I can get out and get over there. It’s like, it was like 10 minutes. Yeah, but the fact is, is that time is time, right? Whether you’re traveling an hour commuting an hour for work to an office, or whether you’re having to, you know, go 10 to 15 minutes down the road, you still have to kind of grab your stuff, get together, have everything together that you need, right and leave travel, get down there. Well, if you’re, if you’re at home base one you don’t have to do that travel. So that’s more time to do whatever whether it’s whether it’s work or relaxing or connecting with someone, whatever, it doesn’t matter, you have that time but you also have everything that you need. You can’t forget anything if you’re at home, right so that’s actually an excellent point. Yeah, you can’t forget anything if you’re home but if you travel to the office you can very easily forget something that you need like our son forgot is apparently has a workbook that he needs at school today and I don’t know if he’s gonna get it or not. We’re gonna see but so for offline Yeah, if he had school at home, I guess he he’d have that or whatever. But um, another benefit is that there’s we don’t you don’t have an additional office costs right? I mean for tax purposes you can actually yes you can deduct a portion we don’t do that. But if you have a dedicated office space at your hand and we have some spaces but it’s not like closed off and not used for other activities, but if you do you can like you know, write off a portion of your utilities and in that type of stuff, obviously contact at a tax professional to figure that out. In my opinion, that’s always like a red flag to the IRS and I’m like, you know what, we use the space for both business and kind of personal use and so we’ve never written off a portion of our home for taxes
5:44
And I believe for those situations. You had to have an additional entryway like that has an entryway Yeah, I’ve looked into it. So I don’t know the answer there. I
5:53
Don’t know the answer there. But it is beautiful that there’s no added cost. If you are going to work from home, you’re not paying a lease right? So yeah, maybe you don’t write off anything in taxes or whatever, but you’re not yet paying that additional cost. So I kind of had a joke and this is mine is that like, you have all the food available to you that you want. It’s like an all you can eat buffet. Yeah, that’s your house, right? So if you’re at your house, you have all the lunch you want. I mean, as long as your pantry has some food in your fridge has some stock, then you’re good to go. You can literally make it you want
6:27
To like stop and like go somewhere. Go. Yeah, you don’t have to do any of that. It’s right there.
6:32
Yeah, you’re like, oh, man, I forgot my lunch today. I’m supposed to bring a I was supposed to bring him brown sack and I totally forgot it. No, man. If you’re at your house, you’re good to go just right. Pop open the pantry and you’re good. And the last one the most important one is the fact that you can work in your jams from them. Absolutely. And in the technically we’re both fully dressed the moment I mean like in in kind of business clothes, whatever right now. Well, I am I guess you’re not I don’t know you’re wearing whatever. Yeah, you’re really wearing jams or you’re in your way when I will work out. My athleisure
7:01
Wear athleisure wear
7:03
Yeah, it whatever. Yeah, sure isn’t shirt in the top. So, but yeah, there’s no dress code when you’re working at home.
7:10
If you’re not meeting anyone, then what’s the point? You know, I mean, like I know for, you know, just getting up and having a daily routine of getting a shower before you get to work, but sometimes it’s easier to just drop the kids off at school and open your laptop and get started.
7:24
Absolutely. No, I totally agree. Okay, now let’s hit some of the some of the cons. So what are some of the cons of working at home in your opinion,
7:32
It is a way comfortable, like so comfortable that like, you know, it’s like, three o’clock in the afternoon, you’re a little tired. Maybe you can take a nap for you wouldn’t be able to get point at a co working space. Yeah,
7:46
If you’re at a space you’re with other people or you have a boss staring at you or whatever. Yeah, you just can’t you can’t make the ultimate decisions if you’re not at your house. And that’s a good point. And that kind of goes right along with it. Some of the distractions that are at your house, right so things are just shouting Issue, there’s dirty dishes that are, there’s dirty clothes. Yeah, man, just wash me, right. And you may have a lot of things to do. But you know that at some point, you also have to do those things, right. And so those can kind of beg for your time or pull you away from something that you’re working on. That could be very important. And I can go along with, you know, like cute dogs that are at your house that you love on or also, when you’re, you know, children get home from school, that would be a distraction, although it’s great to be around the family and spouses. Like as you mean, even when I’m here, or we’re working here together. Sometimes we can distract each other. Right? You know, we’re just like shouting each other. It’s kind of working at the office where someone’s just like, hey, hey, hey, what time is that? Thing? Or like, hey, did you send that over? Did you send that file to Jason, you know, or whatever. We just kind of yelled each other. Yeah, that’s I think what happens in offices sometimes. Yeah. Which is exactly why I would not want to work in an office or don’t do very well hit that. Right. But then there’s also there’s not that social interaction. I think they may Yeah that you get from working at an office even. So like even a coffee shop can give you that you can just be around people, even if you’re not talking with people and have your earbuds in and be kind of hunkered down doing your thing, but just being physically around other humans has this like element of beauty to it that I think, as humans, we’re supposed to be connected to other humans. And a co working space can give you that as well. Right? So, and obviously, if you if you work at an office, yourself or you or your small business and you lease an office, you may or may not get that part of, you know, the social interaction. I mean, obviously, you will, if you have employees and whatnot, and everyone is the team is meeting there. So, but yeah, but so, yeah, those are some of the cons of working at home. So you got the pros and cons and there’s really a I’m kind of 5050 on it, which is why I think we partly work out of the house and we partly don’t because we’re there. Those pros are so great. But then those cons are so negative I like I love that we have the flexibility to be able to do that when it makes sense and not do it when it doesn’t make sense.
10:11
Absolutely. And I think I was the one who, you know, we have been working for home from home for so long I was the one who I was like, Okay, let’s go find some space. Let’s go look around. Let’s go check this out. Like I need to be around people. I had got kind of gotten to a breaking point earlier in the year I just was like, Okay, I want to try this. I want to give it my best shot. And then we have we have ended up where we’re doing it 5050 I was thinking I would go every day it would be part of my routine. And yeah, it just hasn’t happened that way.
10:40
Good point and now we’re like you know, we’re struggling to be there two days a week. Yeah. Which is which is good. It’s kind of like what we need to what we need to do you know, the rest of time it’s either here or you’re out and about like, you know, we have some meetings or other appointments and such but like a couple of days. A week is pretty solid for us to be at the at the CO working space. Absolutely. I would say Are we so we can switch to the office space shared space and talk about a couple of those pros. It’s kind of funny the first one we’re saying, hey, there’s plenty of coffee that tends to be obviously at an office there’s typically a coffee pot, you can drink coffee or whatever. And specifically at our co working space there actually is there’s actually coffee it’s like part of what’s included with our with our plan there. So but there is that human interaction that we talked about that you don’t that you don’t get from the house, right? Yeah. So there’s that um, I think it’s a space that’s set up for work and so that helps with that mentality of what we’re talking about not being in that super comfortable stage like even though it’s a cool you know, an office can be a cool vibe and be comfortable and be neat. It’s still set up for business like people. People are there to do work right. So right you know, so that’s what it’s all about. And plus this is one that your home I feel like just can never really Give you except for a small percentage of businesses. And that’s like, that’s professionalism in, in that sense of when someone says, oh, cool, where’s your office? Or like, hey, can I drop this by your office? Right? Or like, Hey, what’s your office address? Or, hey, let’s meet at your office. Any of those sound really funny when you’re like, yeah, I work out of my house, or like, yeah, let’s just meet at Starbucks or some local coffee shop, or which don’t get me wrong. I love meeting at a coffee shop. But the point being is that you have, you’ll have an answer for that if you if you have a, if you work out of a co working space, or you lease an office space, you’ll have that you’ll have that professionalism. Now, at the end of the day, it’s I don’t think it’s worth doing it for other people. Like I really don’t, I don’t think you should do it just for that reason, but it is a definite added benefit.
12:52
I think you should do it for the professionalism for your business. I think it’s one of those things. I think that was one of the things that really kind of propelled me into going for the CO working space. And having that is because yeah, there were those times where there were those meetings that they wanted to meet me at my office, and I didn’t have one. And it was kind of those things that that definitely propelled me to, to talk to you more about it. So
13:18
Gotcha. Got you. So basically, so basically, what you’re saying is any any, probably any business that is a customer centric, or even b2b, where you like you’re meeting your end customers in person, it could be a definite benefit,
13:33
Right? And there’s always just the perception of how professional and how
13:39
organized your brand is, if you don’t have an office and you aren’t just working out of your home, I mean that now that perception is everything, but you know, that can kind of give if you have a client that you’re trying to, to win or those kinds of things, it can kind of make it questionable if you don’t have a dedicated office space.
13:57
That’s a good point. That’s a very good point. And so the cons for office Not very, not very large. I mean, one for sure is a cost, right, there’s an added cost to leasing or paying for an office space. And another con, I guess, would be probably again, the downside of the interaction distractions of the people, right? Again, the people at your home, you can control that at an office space environment, you can’t necessarily control the interactions that you’re going to have with people and people are so it’s so great to connect with them. But also, if you have a list, it’s a mile long that you need to get done that day and someone stops you to have a coffee pot chat for 30 minutes about something. You know, you want to be a great human in person and listen and build a relationship, but it may not be the right time. Right, right. Oh, you know, I guess Hey, I guess it’s a good place to practice your control of professionally dodging a person or something, you know, I don’t know just that that’s not the right time for you to have that chat and conversation or whatever. So
14:58
there’s always a chatty Cathy Every office there just is and you just can’t avoid it and so yeah, you’re right just having especially when you leave the quietness of your house to go to the office to get things done and then that happens. Why am I here? Just go back home. But um, but ya know, it’s so good to be around people as well. So
15:19
I agree. I agree. So yeah, so as you guys can see, we are we’re kind of torn right? We’re torn between these pros and cons list of a of these items of home versus an office recovering space. And so you know, you guys decide what’s best for you. You can just kind of learn through our experience of what you know what we’ve experienced, and we hope that you make the best decision for you. So
15:44
I would say try it. If you’re if you’re working from home, try a co working space or Tron office space and see how you like it. You can our situation is a month to month situation. So if you if you love it, you can stay if you dislike it, you don’t have to go
15:58
Great point.
16:00
Alright guys, we enjoyed it, and we’ll see you next time.
16:15
Hey guys, thanks for hanging out with us. We’d love for you to share it maybe with a friend review it and don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello. You can connect with us and see the resources that we talked about destroyed the box with.us that’s www.destroytheboxwith.ca
