The following excerpt is taken from a training transcript that features business coach Clay Clark (Thrive15.com Founder & US Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year) & Braxton Fears (Co-Founder of Fears & Clark Realty Group) talking about finding your business home on Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in Florida!
Clay: My name is Clay Clark. I’m the COO and lead business coach of thrive15.com. Today I am joined with the semi-retired commercial real estate guru Braxton Fears. At the age of 35 this guy had been able to achieve that most Americans never do. He’s a semi-retired guy with no house payment.
He has achieved financial freedom, and today Braxton is going to be teaching us about how to find the right home for our business. I know when I first started my DJ company, or when you start your company, or maybe if you have a company. We all have to eventually find an office space.
We have to find a place for our business coach to call home. It’s really hard to know what the right space is. Should we do retail, should we do industrial, should we do a strip center, should we do it on a floating Island? It’s really hard to know, if we don’t know all the options that are out there.
In today’s lesson, we’re going to deal with some of the fact, some of the fiction, we’re going to be dealing with the ins and the outs, and all the things you need to know about finding the right home for your business. Remember at thrive15.com, we are here to help you move from where you are, to where you want to be.
Braxton Fears, how are you doing sir?
Braxton: Great. How are you sir business coach?
Clay: Doing great, I want to say real quick, before we get into this before we dive right in here. You are a commercial real-estate broker is that right?
Braxton: Yes.
Clay: You started doing this how long ago?
Braxton: I started doing this in 2005, it’s about 9 years ago.
Clay: Okay, you’ve had almost a decade of experience in this industry. You’ve actually … The biggest transaction I believe that we’ve ever been a part over the year, that we’re part of would be a basically a former mall, like turning that into a call center.
You’ve represented at one point, I think almost 20% of the listings in downtown Tulsa?
Braxton: Yeah 30. I had a great business coach, which was you Clay.
Clay: 30% of those. 30% of downtown Tulsa represented there. I’ve done some big transactions for big companies, small companies. You know a little bit about it. We’re going to learn a little bit here about how to find a home for my business, if I’m a business owner out there, and I have a business. Really the different types of properties that are out there. We’re going to get into it.
Braxton we have 13% of United States people … The American population is self-employed. Which means really over 1 out of 10 people in our country at any given time, are going to find themselves, owning a business and looking for a place to put that business. Yet, there’s lot of misinformation out there, lot of confusion about how you lease space.
I see business owners all the time that are in crazy upside down laces situation where it’s a really bad deal for the tenant. We’re going to get in to some of these. Just kind of understanding the different kinds of properties that are out there.
Here we go, property number 1. It’s industrial property, this is the type of property where basically it’s like the main office of an organization that specializes and maybe something related to warehousing, production, manufacturing, distribution.
Can you give me a little more, or can you get to clarify what an industrial office space looks like?
Braxton: I mean industrial offices, the office is going to be fairly small compared to the warehouse, it’s going to be anywhere from like you said, from manufacturing, in the cranes, or just to warehousing, where you’re storing stuff.
It could be as small as 2000 square feet, where you’ve got a little 200 square foot office space, with a garage door in the back to really large multi-tenant, or single tenant properties that are 100 of thousands of square feet with dock doors, and trucking room, and all that.
Even if you’re not in the industrial business, you’ve seen these on the highway, they’re sometimes they’re metal building, sometimes they’re big, nice, stone structures in the front. We got the party on the front and the business and the back it’s the industrial properties.
Your gearing more towards that warehousing types of business.
Clay: Just a question for you. This building that we’re in right now, would you consider this to be an industrial building?
Braxton: I would not consider this to be an industrial building. You do have some storage space but this is … It’s in an office environment, it’s in an office area. There’s even a little retail down the street. This is not an industrial area, this is not zoned industrial. You’re not really dealing with trucking.
You’ve got office space, mostly office space with a little bit of storage, but it’s not an industrial building.
Clay: When trucking gets involved, and dock doors, and bay doors, that’s what becomes industrial?
Braxton: Really when you’re dealing with consistently more than 50% is a warehouse. Really early even that is can sometimes be a mixed use type of building. When the majority of it is warehousing, you would consider that industrial building.
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Clay: Would your wife be open to the idea of living in an industrial building, if you got a good deal?
Braxton: Man, if we decked it out like a loft, New York loft she might get behind it, I might be able to convince her that.
Clay: I’ll try to convince my wife too. I’ll talk with that later. What kinds of business is am I allowed to put inside of industrial business. Can I put like a pet party business in there? Can I put like a, ice cream shop in there. Can I put iguana …
Braxton: I mean an industrial building is going to be much more flexible than say a retail or office. You’re going to be able to do more, because an industrial building, they care less about noise, and care less about what’s inside, a retail property. A retail or office property is going to be much picky on what they allowed …
Clay: Can I put a bakery inside an industrial space?
Braxton: You could put one inside of industrial space?
Clay: Should I put a cheerleading gym, or coach cheerleading?
Braxton: Yes you can.
Clay: Can I put a place where dogs that I’m wanting to put up for adoption, I’m collecting dogs that I put up for adoption.
Braxton: In some cases, when you’re dealing with animals, there’s going to be a little bit, case by case. You can do a lot more, in an industrial building. Many times it’s your best bet, unless you need that frontage industrial buildings are obviously going to be a cheaper per square foot per year environment for you.
Clay: Would you recommend any business coach that do not need to have walking traffic might consider industrial building?
Braxton: I would say they should consider it. Yes.