kat ramirez

Jan 12, 202032 min read

Ep 15 - Are You Planning on Leasing an Office Soon?

Updated: May 5, 2021

By Kat Ramirez

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Looking for office space and not sure what to look for or how to plan for your growth. Did you know that a tenant advisor works for you and advocates for your best interest and doesn't even add any additional cost to you? Learn what a tenant advisor can do to help you get the right space for your business. Tune into this week's episode of stand out and grow to learn more.

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I'm Kat Ramirez, your host of stand out and grow. I want to help your business stand out, survive, succeed and grow. building your business is really really hard. And knowing what marketing and advertising tools you need to help you become successful is extremely confusing. After 30 years of working with thousands of

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businesses. I am here to help you make good business decisions. I want to help you understand the programs that are available to you so that you can stand out, survive, succeed and grow. So let's get started. This is Episode 15 of stand out and grow. Bang. My guest today is a tenant advisor who works with business owners and chief operations officers to advocate for them when you are searching for office space. He works with all kinds of businesses for a variety of needed office space. The cool thing about a tenant advisor is there is no additional costs on your end when you hire one. hear about how working with a tenant advisor protects you and any undue expenses you might incur.

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In the long run, please join me in welcoming rocky Hofstetter, Vice President at tenet advisors Inc. Welcome Rocky. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks, God. Happy to be here. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so for those of you who are tuning in, Rocky is here. He's going to be talking to us about leasing an office for your business, whether you're small, you're big. You know if you're a corporate right any size right? Absolutely. And that could include a purchase to we go through the whole due diligence, excuse me behind that. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Thanks for clarifying that. Yeah. And so the reason I have rocky here is because when I'm and I'm just going to give a little background about my situation, Rocky, just let you know, you can interject as I give this because when I first became an entrepreneur and I worked out of my home

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And I discovered that didn't work. It didn't work and I had to get an office to get away. Okay. And so when I did my research, I wanted a particular place. And so I just did my own personal research. I didn't know what to do. I looked on Craigslist, I did the stupid crap that everybody else does. Okay, sure. And then I found an office in the downtown Third Ward. Okay, so here are the things that I ran into that I didn't think of because I don't know any better. And if I had hired someone like you, and you can explain your services later, sure. I probably wouldn't run into any of this stuff. Okay, so first off, I was in the Third Ward. Okay, so the price was right. herkie was a bitch. I did not find any parking and it cost me an arm and a leg to get parking for my employees. Oh, yeah. huge issue. Secondly, when I got into the office space, I didn't understand me investigate

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Internet Wi Fi, all of the and I my business is all online, I depend on it. And I made the assumption that this business this office space could accommodate my business and it didn't. And we had regular like home, home wife or whatever you want to call it service internet service. It always was disrupting It was so weak. And I called so many places to try to get a tier one. And nobody could do it because the building was old. And I was like, Oh my god, so I screwed. So basically, those were like the biggest things for me. And I was stuck because I signed a year lease. Right? So do you want to talk about some of those things that I run into? Sure, Catalina I don't know where to start. You know, I love you but you did about 1020 things wrong that I could pick out just in that scenario and then probably start with someone should hire you should Yeah, sure. The obvious the obvious thing you know, and you mentioned just going online at

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Finding a space like we always say, finding actual space is not rocket science, anybody can do that. On the commercial real estate side, we use something called co star, which is it's kind of like the MLS of residential for for commercial real estate.

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But as you mentioned, there's online services. You know, there's numerous sites at this point to go and find some spaces and kind of do some searching yourself. It just always comes back for the entrepreneur, at what point is it more effective for your business and you're trying to run a business and do a million things to not only find a space, you mentioned five or six points that just to run the business properly. So

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is that worth your, you know, a best use of your time or hiring somebody to help you go through the process and then create a process

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that you know is going to lead to success and, you know, clarity in you know, what you're signing up for, right? And so, so, just for anybody who's listening and doesn't understand your business model

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what it's called, what is the official title? And you know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah. So explain the grant of that. Sure. So 10 advisors, we, you know, we are real estate brokers, we're licensed brokers.

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But we always say we're kind of hybrid consultants as well. But but primarily what we are is something called a tenant representative. And so in the real estate industry,

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you know, there's buyers and sellers, right. And so, we concentrate our our business solely is focused on the tenants

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looking for space, right, looking for office, commercial space, or to purchase right. You would ask next question, Why Why does that matter? Why does that why would I need that? What's the difference, right?

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In the real estate world, there's a lot of big firms you've seen in town. I'm definitely not going to mention them on this, you know, on this on the air, but you see the signs right? If you call those signs, those are, you know, great companies. They represent those buildings.

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For owners, right? And so those representatives are representing the owners. Yeah, you can imagine the best interest of owners. Yeah. They'll probably be happy to represent you. But are you getting, you know, in real estate, the full what we call the fiduciary, you know, value that we can give and we argue you can unless you're only playing one side of the fence. And there's all kinds of bad things that happen when you get a broker representative playing both sides of the fence, right? And actually most brokerage industries. What we call dual representation is a lot actually in I think eight or nine, I can't remember how many states now eight or nine states in the US it's actually outlawed. And there's a lot of regulations around it even when you can't and so the I guess the bottom line is, it's not in your best interest. You know, having somebody that's really fighting for your best interest is really pretty obvious in that regard. Okay, so in my situation, you would have done an analysis or met with me

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To find my nuances that I needed, right, so that when you're researching and searching the best ideal space for me, I wouldn't look back and think, Oh shit, I gotta pay. I mean, I was paid. I was probably paying equal to what I was paying in rent in parking fees. Oh, gosh. Yeah, I mean, like, and I didn't know that. So this is definitely something we like to talk about up front. We do, uh, you know, part of our value add or value proposition is really a consultative service. And upfront talking about the business, the business needs, and really being an advocates consultant first, right? Then understanding what kind of space you're going to need and looking at space. And I, you see that a lot of business owners or tenants do the opposite. They start looking for space, and they're backtracking to understand what their headcount is going to be things like that, functionally, how they're going to grow over the next year, year 234. Do they have a budget over the next several years, how does that

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align to headcount and in

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those kind of questions. So helping through that. And then I think getting to the business needs specifically you talked about like parking and Internet, what you know those those things we, you know, when we go through our process, there's discovery there's a certain point where we do discovery that to talk like a lawyer, but you know, flushing those things out and getting that, you know, before you get to really and even an ally. Yeah, so the big thing we always preach it, sorry, good. You just said an acronym young.

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People understand that.

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I'm sorry, I was gonna try not to do that today. And I did it. I hate that when people do that, right. So Li sorry, letter of intent. Okay. And if we have more time today I go through our full process. But really the idea is kind of upfront. What we do is a needs analysis talking to you with clients to understand right their needs and from that helping do some basic space planning to understand what they need and then you know, going out looking for options then we put together an article

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which is a request for proposal, another acronym Sorry, just so

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you know, and from that we would get pricing and some of the things you asked about that's kind of the discovery phase. And from that we would kind of nail down business terms. Okay, understanding those business terms in what we call an alibi, our letter of intent. Yes, before you get the lease in hand. And I think the only reason I'm bringing this up is another No no, in the process is that we see

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tenants run to get that lease in hand, or their existing business. They're in the existing location, and they're really going to negotiate so they get their lease and they have a couple weeks left, and now I'm really going to negotiate with my landlord. They already know you can't leave you don't have time. You didn't start the process early enough, which is again, if I'm going to preach anything today is starting early starting the process early. Well, that was a lot to load in on that one. No, I think that's great, because I think you bring up a very, very valid, like processes structure because it may

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Someone think about their business like the next couple of years. And nobody really thinks that especially a new entrepreneur, good first time going into an office, they're not thinking that they're thinking I need to get an office because I can't get the hell out of my house, you know? Absolutely. Or if they've grown really, really fast, they're like, I gotta get out of here. We're busting at the seams. Yes, we got to get out, you know. So they're, they're not really thinking the long term they're thinking immediate need immediate thing, immediate solution? Absolutely. And I think so we can talk through kind of those clients that we work with that are in that situation, but we try to help structure deals and help clients think about today and tomorrow, right? So things like okay, our headcount is x today, but we think over the next couple years, it could double or maybe we're, you know, doing a shorter term, a two to three year deal and, you know, option option to expand at that point instead of oversizing. It they want. Yeah, there's all kinds of nuances to that but trying to help

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Through that strategy with a client is, we think very valuable, okay. And you're basically you're holding their hand and walking them through the process. And that's a great analogy cat, because we'd like to say it's a white glove service. So the day so our process we would like to say,

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you know, is a similar process that the, the, the big anchor tenants that you see downtown, the big the big big guys would go through and we're doing that for kind of mid market tenants, right. So not only that some of the consultative

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input and approach that we go by go through with clients

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can be helpful, not only kind of real early stage right in their business so as and a lot of times we might meet and go through the process and they're not quite really ready for our service and maybe we direct them to, you know, some of the

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some short term type reaches of the world Ward for here, more

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Aki you might have heard we works in Chicago, those type places

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can be great places for companies that aren't quite ready to have their own full time space multi year.

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leases, right? So because you work with so many business, you'll have a better perspective on is this a situation that needs an office? That I'll give you a good example. And I think we kind of chatted about this before I have a client, they the brand new entrepreneur, a brand new brand new and had a business coach, and I'm not sure where they business coach fella play or played in with her business. Because I think at some point, you're not that but you're something else that adds to the mix, right? Yeah, and and so she got into a nice huge studio nice in New York. And I'm not gonna say who the client is, but I'm very nice huge studio and no client business.

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Dude, I mean, like, yo, nothing. And so now that she's in there with, you know, this big lease right month, a month, a month, and she's got to generate the client base that she did not have. And she, you know, and so, you know, I'm curious to know your feedback, but like, at the end of the day, here's what happened. She was in there, not even a year, she has to move out because she can't, she can't swallow that right lease amount every month. That's too bad. And so you know, so that's why I think talking to someone like you that it's in the best interest of the person, you're not in it to make money you're in it to help them so that they don't waste money and their business doesn't fail because they're dying, drowning and rent. Yeah, that's really huge costs obviously. And yeah, that early on, if it's a one or two person firm, or you know, we typically would say hey, you're probably best you know, best option is looking at a one of the short term places and we works would have been great in New York.

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You could have done it month to month and yeah, or something to that, you know, one or two that yes, this is small, you know, and once once you know, they get to 567 people, you know, the cost, it's pretty obvious the value at a certain point where you're going to pay a premium to have flexibility around term. And it's, it's kind of weighing that option once you once the business is stabilized, and you can kind of start to see the light, so to speak, and you're going to know kind of when that when that balance takes place. So, you know, for us, we say, you know, eight to 10 people is probably a starting point for businesses that really want to now

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look at look at an option or they look at they're going to scale their headcount over several years. Right. They can justify it and you know, at that point, it makes sense. Yeah. And then the other the other facet to it is you also help people in the reverse, right? People that have been Yes, good and bad, I guess. But yeah, I mean, that's a great thing to bring up. I mean, you know, what we call like an efficiency play,

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where you know, they're in a lease or they're trying to wind down

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The business or but they still need space. They're trying to maybe retool the business, their scope, you know, scaling it down and they're going to scale back up. So the business don't always go up. Right. Sometimes they go down and we get involved in both sides that process and we think add value. Yeah. And I miss I don't necessarily think scaling down is a bad thing, because a lot of people working from home. Sure, you know, I know a couple companies and they were in Chicago, by the way, that were like downtown Chicago had beautiful office space real nice. Yeah, like they they scaled back because they moved all their people remote. So that he he told me was like it save us 7000 a month. Sure. Yeah, it might have been more than that. But yeah, it's been you know, but so they were so happy and they said, you know what we did? We gave that money back to our people and bonuses and I was like, that is cool. That's awesome. Yeah, let's not get carried away cat because you know, we do have a business here. Let's not have everybody doing that. No, I'm kidding. No, there's there's value and I think to your point

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The, you know, the analysis and upfront consulting, we provide, you know, talking to headcount. And now the dynamics of businesses where you do have,

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you know, you might have remote points, you might have a really a national company, but it's you just need a remote satellite to your at your point, how can we be efficient with the space? I'm not trying to remove

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your position? Because at the end of the day, here's the thing. I'm in an office space, I'm going to go up for renewal that you still come to play with that right. I hope Yeah, and thanks, cat. Oh, I hope I'm convincing you today that, you know, of course, you're part of that too. Yeah. I mean, once we like say, once we start working with a client, you know, it's a long term relationship, so we're not in it, just to place them in some space and move on. You know, we're there. We hope to be kind of that consultant to them and, you know, grow absolutely, by their own building. Absolutely. Whatever the case may be. I mean, your position your the what you do is not going to go away. I can promise you that. Yeah. But so let's talk

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about some questions that I have in that I that I encountered and I think a lot of people don't realize that they need to think about because you know, when I talked to my insurance company because I had to get insurance Oh, this is a great one you bring it up by the way. I just went through this with a client so yeah, I've seen some fantastic so I had to get insurance and I already got insurance okay. And I went online and look but the insurance company when they gave me a analysis of question beer, you know, one of those questions are like, I don't know, I don't know you know me. And so walk me through that because I think he talked about like square foot, is it square foot ti or something else where, you know, being like all these analogies like and how ton and there's Yeah, and I got caught throwing a few acronyms out today myself, but

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yeah, there's a lot of verbiage

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to go through more than more reason to have somebody

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You through it right. And even from a pricing standpoint, how different different owners will price there's nuances within that. So like part of our process is really, we say we'd like to create leverage. We look at multiple, you know, options for a client, we try to find a few to kind of play off each other, right and create that leverage. And then we'll put together a financial analysis that kind of gives it apples to apples. Like what's going on there. Right. Yeah. You mentioned the insurance. Yeah, yeah. So for a new business, that can be daunting. Yeah, I'm not going to claim to be the insurance expert. But you know, we there's a I'll give another accurate COI, which is certificate Certificate of insurance. So you might have had to provide that as you got in there was fine print in that lease that talked about you needed all this policies, you know, mounts, a lot of times owners just put cookie cutter policy information in and they don't care, they'll have you sign that. And it's really for a company three, four, or 510 times the size of your company, right. And so you can imagine companies getting through at least that really kind of didn't find

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A fine tooth you know that that lease getting caught with that now they they have to give a certificate of insurance COI. And

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they go oh, you don't have I mean, that's like not even close to what we thought we needed. And that's a huge could be a huge cost and a big hidden Oh yeah. You know risk or cost that they didn't think about her or account for Right, right. Okay, so the answer I totally Yes. Because I don't think a lot of people understand that when you are leasing that is an incumbent on you. You have to get it. You have to show it you have to prove it. Yeah. And then the other thing that I ran into this business building and I'm in a warehouse building in case anybody listening and doesn't understand or see what, where I'm at and in my warehouse building, I had to call the elect electrical Inspector, all the inspectors I had to pay for that. I had to give them all here. Well, the building doesn't do that. Well, so I had to get the whole you know, I think it was for four inspectors. Wow. So that was pretty

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least I was public, and I had to pay for it. schedule it. I had to do it all before I moved in. Well, and I don't think people understand that because that was that's what the city right. That's it the city? Sure and so on that was for them to say the electrical was okay. I was building a home with your knees. Yeah, that's not something Yeah, we would hopefully we would have seen that that's Yeah, that can be definitely owner a Sunday he would have he would have interpreted to me definitely hope we would have Yeah, flush that out earlier than later. Yeah, those surprises aren't fun. Right. But then someone like me not knowing and then coming into this thinking, is this what everybody does? Yeah. You know, and you know, that brings up a good point. I should preference we are real estate brokers. We're not attorneys, right. So we're not when I say that we're, you know, a lot of times we're really helping negotiate business terms up front. We're not negotiating lease or changing language and actually we're really good referral sources to attorneys because

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You know, for attendance don't have one will at the the acronym I use the yellow wire Letter of Intent that's a lot of times when an attorney gets involved for a tenant will work with them as they find, you know, kind of do their due diligence on the release and and the other thing that came up in my building and this is my second one was if I put any fixtures in here they stay so is that typical or you know what I mean? Like I had to hardware network but my network in that stays if I by heating it had it's a heated buildings not AC. So if I put AC in, I would have had Leave it. Wow. So anything I built in, I leave its property now the building interesting answer question. I'm not going to come if it's common. It's a you know, that's one of the things every business owner or I should say building owner rather might have their own nuances.

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Rather their lease agreements so none of them are cookie cutter. Yeah.

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And they all have different

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little quirks to them so to speak, right? I didn't learn about it though. Yeah, after everything lease, unfortunately. Because what happened was we so we have a really good heater. Oh my god, it's like generators. Well, let's pump it's like yeah, like for industrial but then there's no air. There's no air. So we have lots of windows. So I had to buy. I was originally going to buy a central air unit. And then when I weighed out the cost, and then I found out when I told him I said, Hey, I'm gonna put an air unit. Is that cool? You know? And then what happens when I leave? You know, do you guys pay me Can we take it off the brand? Oh, no, it's ours. Off Wow. So I was like, Hell no, not good.

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So I'm like, yeah, I'm a portables because I can take them with me. I can resell them. I can do whatever I want. Yeah, yeah, that's, you know, the surprises are

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Never fun for anybody, especially when you when it comes to anything including leasing space or your current space, right? But these are things that you can you will pull out for a business owner when you're working with them. And if they had their eye on this building definitely, definitely we obviously try to make sure there's no surprises. I think it just gets back to my point of preaching start the process early right, what does that mean? I don't think I specific but you know, we say at least six to 12 months out to really sit down have a strategic discussion around kind of the needs before you go forward. You know, for larger clients it can be 12 to 24 months really and why not? Why not because you know, make time your friend and not your enemy so to speak. And you know, the earlier start that process, you know, either your current landlord knows that you might have other options when you wait too late. In the game, it really just reduce your options. Things get sloppy, you miss things in the process, and

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To your point, you know, you then you might have some surprises. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz the other one is and even though I thought I would have learned from the first time, the whole internet crap, you know, with the first building on this one, we had a tier one. So I did know that. Yeah, but it was not wired for my network. So Oh, yeah, I had to hire someone to come in and wire so that everybody had a safe secure network commitment. cheap. That's the only Yeah.

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No. So yes, usually when we go through the process, we obviously bed out. You'd be mentioned parking again, things like what internet What do they have in the building? Right? That brings up another thing, just even on that just understanding the whole picture of what you're negotiating and buildings, you know, things like what's going on with that building? Is it is it for sale?

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As that landlord owned it a long time, you know, what were the other 10

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It's in that building, you know, there's a lot of dynamics to who and where you're going into. And,

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you know, we hope to provide a little value and look into that a little bit as well in the process. So you, you want to have the more you information, as you know, the better parent and maybe the more leverage you can have. Absolutely. Oh my god. And so, you know, the other thing I for my situation is, when I got into my first building, it was a year to year, like one year, your year, you got into this building, it was a two year escalating. Right. So my lease was started here, and then it escalated the next year. Yes. Okay. And yeah, I don't know what's typical. I mean, because both of them are different. You know, me like, Yeah, well, yeah. And again, there's a lot of nuances and different buildings, hence why we try to

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so either or is a typical thing. Yeah. And you could have all kinds of nuances into how that's negotiated and you could have had a lower

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base rate. And then, you know, there was larger percent increases over multi years been sort of common to have, you know, the first base years the base here and and yet and several percent increase per year on that lease as you go forward, everything's negotiable again and just it's you know, it's what and then what is the market and we hope to, you know, add value through the process, which is, here's what we see in the market. And then we add a little bit of I think, on top of that being in multi markets where we're here in Milwaukee, obviously, and in Chicago. So we work in both markets. And there's nuances to both markets, as you can imagine. So let's talk about that. Because I think it would be interesting for people to know and understand and I think it would relate to our client that was in New York, and maybe she could have did better Brooklyn, you know, Major, or in another area of New York instead of downtown Manhattan, you know, or she does. And so let's talk about them reference to like Milwaukee and Chicago like because you see all of this, you know, definitely

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You know, we were started in Schaumburg,

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suburb of Chicago. But

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you know, I'm here in Milwaukee, I grew up in Milwaukee.

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In so obviously being in this market, but Milwaukee is changed. I mean, you've seen a lot of change here. And in the reason we're here is because we see it as a lot more dynamic market, you have a lot of, you know, with the startup world, and just in general, you know, there's a lot of growth, a lot of building growth as well, and there hasn't been a good, you know, we think just the need to have our service here and that value. So yes, so seeing kind of what what happens here in Milwaukee versus Chicago. There's definitely quirks obviously, from a cost standpoint, downtown Chicago to downtown Milwaukee, you can see 40 50% increase, you know,

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even double you know, I had a retail client that we were looking at Michigan Avenue, and I think it was $200 a square foot. That's pretty expensive, right? For sure. What in Milwaukee.

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You know, it could be 30 plus and the premiere here. I don't know what the exact premiere. But yeah, you can see the difference. I mean, in average, you know, you're seeing downtown rents in the, in the 20s. Here to 30. In Chicago could be 40 to 50. Or plus. Yeah. So that gives you for your average office client. So huge difference in cost. And, you know, we've seen

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businesses take a long look at Milwaukee and getting across the border and building a business here versus down there because of that. So yeah, and I can see the benefit there. Because I think, for this area, Milwaukee is trying really hard to bring businesses here. It's progressive, it's growing. It's really trying to support you know, new opportunities, new businesses, and like he said, startups, you know, and it's really making a serious effort. Okay, so let's talk about security deposit. Boy, yeah. Because that is a big deal, because you're talking about big leases now. Right. So what is the typical

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Boy, you can narrow me in on that one. You know, it's there's a let me I guess I can explain this best case scenario and worse. Sure. So it's very tough for an entrepreneur. I'll be honest. I mean, you know, when, when a new company is started,

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there's not a lot of business to go on. I mean, so obviously, typically, to go through the process, part of the final process is Yes. How do we secure that? Yeah, that piece and if you don't have multi years of financials behind you, yeah. A lot of times they're wanting entrepreneurs or business owners to sign some kind of a personal guarantee potentially. How do we do that or multi multi month security deposit up front? Okay. So how do we get around that? Right, is the question so I think part of the process is

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you know, letting our clients know up front that having good you know, financial sector can provide at a certain point in the process is going to be needed. Yeah. And really, it's in their best interest.

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Because the cleaner that is usually the easier it is to get through the right, the security piece, so,

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you know, multi month security. So if somebody was looking at starting a business, you know, two, three months security deposit isn't crazy. Obviously, we try to negotiate, you know what we can right and depending and there's so many variables, depending on the business and size and things, but

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just making sure you have financials, I think, is a big thing that you're that you can share. Because at the end of the day, you know, what I do know is, everything is negotiable, right? It's just having the right person negotiating or having the right parameters in place. Absolutely. Right. And timing I said, again, is a big, big part of that if you get stuck, you know, then you don't have much leverage.

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And you know, we said I don't know if I you know, really said this yet, but

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you know, we'd like to say that hiring a tenant Rep. doesn't cost you more money, but if you didn't have somebody it probably will. Yeah.

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Because actually, you know, we don't necessarily directly charge for our services, right. So, you know, as one of our clients is placed in the building, we get a fee off of that from the owner, even even though we represent the best interest in the tenant. Yeah, there's a fee that's on any of those commercial buildings that are for at least just thought I'd let that no, that's good. I was gonna ask you how that works so that people have some kind of peace of mind that you know that what they're paying, it's not like they're your ad that you have to get a percentage like, with the real estate market? Yes. Yeah. Because, you know, if you think about my business model and advertising, yeah, when I buy major media, okay, so like, if you can me you got TV. Yeah. Okay. TV has to pay me a percentage of that the client does it. Also, it works. Very similar. Yeah, it works the same way. And so whenever I'm negotiating rates for a client, it's major media.

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TV radio print Billboard. It's already that's like a normal, they have to pay me. The client. Yeah. I personally get that. Yeah. And we can all then relate to you know, your startup to midsize companies how important that can be. They already have enough. Yep. on their shoulder. Yes. Yeah. They don't need another expense added to the mix. Okay, so let's talk about utilities because I knew some places like this isn't mine. It's included. I've never had to pay a utility. So I'll tell you. Oh, yeah. So that's another whole piece of the puzzle, right? And you'll see things like, you know, your triple net lease rate, that's the word.

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These acronyms like so you have your triple net and you have gross then you have modified gross. I know and we won't have time to go through every single one of these here probably but the point is, yeah, all the more reason to have somebody help you through the process and provide an apples to apples and and understand what you're really gonna enjoy it.

34:00

Because, you know, besides that your base rent or you know, you have something called cam and tax, here's another acronym for common area maintenance is what you would see in taxes, right? Okay. So then another fee on top of it is on top of the base rent and then so you have that which also can have a variable component to it because taxes can change every year, the maintenance of a building can change. So there there's a veil of variable component that people don't really understand how that works, and they can have pass throughs and changes every year to what they thought was well, I thought I was only going to pay x right. And you mentioned before the increases on rent, so there's things that they you know, unless they really understand some of these things, they can have some surprises as they go on in their space. You mentioned utilities, which I I'm trying to get to sorry.

34:46

You know, sometimes you'll see where the utilities are included in that price and obviously sometimes not and so what's included I've seen, well electrics included. HVC is not sometimes hva sees on the tenant, honor percent and

35:00

Maintenance can be on the, you know, you could have

35:02

hbic maintenance unit they try to put on the tenant.

35:08

You know, so those are some of the things that just utilities and you know, utilities can be, depending on the size of the business, you know, a significant

35:17

additional expenses, as you know. And again, it goes back to what you're talking about. No surprises me, and,

35:27

and it talks about at the end of the day is you want to be very tuned into what you're getting into, because once you signed this lease, once you get in the building, no turning back. No, that's right. And once Yeah, once you sign the lease, you really you're negotiating is over until that lease is up. You can make a point do you advise? I mean, I'm sure you do people between buying and leasing, like what you know, that's a great question. Yeah, in you know, there's no rule of thumb. I would say that

36:00

We do that due diligence with clients. And you know, for everyone that looks at it, you know, there might be, you know, be one out of 20 that purchase, or maybe it's one out of 10 or 15. But great point is it, you know, companies have to be at a certain point in their life cycle, if you say, if you would call it that, where they understand maybe the headcount said certain point and they, they're not either not, they're stable, they're not going to decline, they're not going to grow too much. And they can, this space will work, and they're going to do it for the long term, because you're talking about 1020 year commitment, probably not a lot of businesses can put that time horizon to work for them. Right. So you can imagine, yeah, so it is a certain niche that ultimately purchases and at that point, it's you know, it definitely is a, you know, very advantageous thing to do for many reasons, as you can imagine. Yeah. So is there an industry you're not helping with? Are you pretty much helping with all industries? Like, good question. Yeah, I mean, we're primarily any, any office space. So any any you know,

37:00

Corporate client could be tech to professional services to anything, I won't leave anybody out, we'll do some crossover into what we would call flex or light industrial. And even there's a lot of crossover into retail space that might also be sort of business needs as well. So, if that answers your question, so I think I think for us, I think the value is, you know, helping clients that might have some unique needs in that, sure. And sometimes they have multiple locations to fit their needs overall, you could have a warehouse or office or flex space and a retail downtown and you could a multi-office location, all things you know, we think, adding value, you know, a company that might have a space in Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago. Yeah.

37:47

How do they work through that? So I think, you know, there's definitely value there for us to help somebody like that. And at the end of the day, if someone I mean, if someone talks to you and let's say you go through analysis and stuff

38:00

It's there's no risk, right? There's no loss. There's no risk talking to you and getting your perspective and working with you. But then, you know, I don't know something happens. And, you know, they walk away. I mean, oh, yeah, that's part of the business. I mean, yeah, we, you know, obviously, we hope people are respectful of everybody's time. But, you know, there's this, there's a time to go through the due diligence. And yeah, sometimes it's not gonna work. But once companies are at a certain point, having this discussion is something they're going to really need. Right? And, you know, we hope to add value there. And a lot of times, we've had clients that we went through the discussion and hey, they, I said, we will refer him to another place and then two, three years later, they call us we hope they remember that we tried to help them and when they got to the right point, you know, we think we were the logical next call. And so yeah, yeah, but that's my point is I'm trying to eliminate any objection for someone to like pick up the phone and call because it's like, again, there's no risk as far as money out

39:00

To them, you know, there's there's nothing really that they're going to lose to pick up the phone and utilize a service like yours. Oh, definitely not. Yeah, I mean, I think time on their own if they don't probably have someone helping them a lot of times, as you said, a lot of surprises and money on the back end, as well, as a big deal for me. Yeah. I had a partner at the time, and we look for six months. And yeah, and it disrupted my work because I had to take time every day and he scheduled the walkthroughs. And I was like, I don't have time for this domain or can eat up a lot of time as you find out right. Yeah. So you know, because we went through a lot of space and we looked and let them let them work so I can understand the time part and I can understand how removing any of the surprises because once I get in I just want to get back to work. Sure. Don't worry about all the other crap you know. And for me to hotwire the my team was a disruption it was it was a disruption from I think two weeks, you know

40:00

They had to come in and wire everything. Oh, sure. And yeah, that's it that brings up something disruption if

40:06

a tenant or client is wanting to move into a new space, I think allocating for that process and then the move in and potential build out. And making it seamless and really helping them through that. It's a big deal. And you said something, and we need to really not another acronym. No build out. People understand what build out is be sure. Yeah, yeah.

40:29

Well, there's, you know, there's a lot of great space in Milwaukee for for tenants, but doesn't mean it all fits your needs, right? It's not all it's not all perfect. It might be close. And then there's potentially some construction work that needs to be done to get it to where you want or it's really outdated from 1982 and maybe that's your style, maybe it's not or whatever. That's not 1980s

40:55

but,

40:56

so, yes, so potential build out around

41:00

structured into the lease. And that's part of kind of the process we put you through and see if we can structure that into a deal that makes sense for a client. And maybe you do get a nice, you know, build out and new, fresh space and an old, old building, but it's a, you know, it fits exactly what your business needs, right. And that can be very important operationally, as you, as you know, right. And so, designing something and thinking through operationally,

41:27

you know, what's efficient? And yeah, and then functionally, what, you know, what makes sense as you grow, right? And so that all kind of fits into that puzzle. And I love that this accidentally came up because I had some clients where the build out was included.

41:43

The pert the tenant, is it the tenant or the

41:48

owner owner, to get rid of the space? Oh, so he bailed out? Absolutely. And then I've had clients that had to pay themselves, yes, because there was a demand for the space

42:00

I mean, I've seen them all. You're right. And it can go both ways we typically try to early on, depending on the client, of course. But yes, the build up piece is one part. But you know, in the equation of time

42:13

you signed a lease and now there's build up, that's another 12 to 14 weeks before you can move in. So accounting for that kind of time, you can see where six months is not. Oh, yeah, no, you have, and that would account for half of that time. And so not only that six months, but making sure you mentioned wiring, make sure it's set up. So when you do move your business in, you're ready to go and the phones aren't down and there's no you know, no disruption to your business. Right, exactly.

42:42

Okay, Rocky, I love this. This is good information. Is there? Is there one nugget is there one thing that you can leave in people's mind that if they're looking at space, and let's say that they're stubborn, and they don't want to call you and they're doing it like is it

43:00

One tip or a thing that you want to leave with people you don't mean like to just for them to think about. Yeah, I mean, I mentioned again, start the process early earlier than you thought and, you know, make making owners compete for your business is important. Understand the whole picture of the buildings and the market.

43:19

Be willing to walk away, don't be too emotional. This is also something a lot of owners often so. So getting your emotions also having an intermediary or somebody to help you with this getting your emotions out of it.

43:32

And yeah, I mean, I could go on but, you know, that's

43:36

another helps. It's great. Okay, so if somebody wanted to get ahold of you, how do they get ahold of you? I mean, I have your contact info in our notes for this podcast, but you know, if they want to, if they're excited to get started, how do they get ahold of you? So www, tenured advisors. Calm is our website. Okay. We also have a portal on there where you can fill out the information

44:00

So if you go, Hey, I need I have

44:02

1520 people and I have this amount, it gives you a kind of a quick on a space analysis and we would get that inquiry and

44:11

and we'd be happy to go from there. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Okay. I'm also on LinkedIn, of course. And I think it can be contacted on LinkedIn. And yeah. And how are you listed on LinkedIn? Rocky? How am I listed just by my name? Rocky Hofstetter. Okay. Um, and I think that's, I think that's it. Yeah. Okay. Great. Well, I appreciate it. And thank you so much for coming in today. And I love the information, I think awesome. And I think we could probably have a conversation about this, like on and on. And our detail just because there's so much that has to do definitely with this. Yeah. And I think at the end of the day, if business was looking at moving or getting into new space, they should look up. You know, someone either you or someone like

45:00

You are definitely Yeah, selfishly me but you know, at least get help. I mean, we always say have good representation. The old the joke we'd like to use is you know, if you were being sued would you use the other side's attorney and probably not want to get your own and get somebody that's gonna fight for you and and help you so yeah, that's a good that's a good ending.

45:20

Thank you so much and thanks everybody for listening. I appreciate it and have a great day and you got this.

45:28

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46:01

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of stand out and grow. Check out all the notes and links at WWW dot stand out in grow.com. I am so thankful to you for helping this show continue to grow. I want to keep producing content that you want to hear. So please leave me some feedback. I look forward to bringing you more resources and information to help your business stand out and grow. Please follow us on social media. And make sure you follow this podcast so you can learn more about helping your business stand out, survive, succeed and grow. Until next time, you got this