Office or no office

One of my goals this year was to get an office and as it stands now I'm still weighing the pros and cons.

Would it just be added expenses for the same amount of business? There are around 5 agency owners in my chamber of commerce - two are "franchise" owners; Nationwide and State Farm but the other 3 are just independent mainly writing P&C.

I'm the only one without an office. They all have retail, not office locations. What I mean is all have offices in plaza's - not on the 8th story of some office building.

That crap's expensive - just to rent an office in a complex is from $1,000 to $1,500 - easily. And that's a small office.

Store-front locations run $2,000 to $4,000 a month depending on size and location. Do they all know something I don't? I do a pretty decent job motivating myself to work so having an office just for the sake of having an office would be added expenses.

For me, going for an office would have to increase my business and that's where I'm stuck. If I had a store-front location would I actually get a bit of traffic? When I did local advertising would it pull better since people also notice my office?

One part of me can't see people coming in to sit down and buy health insurance. Yet these other agencies don't seem to have a problem with people coming in and sitting down.

I think it's unfortunately one of those things where it's impossible to predict the results until I simply do it. But for obvious reasons it would tough to pull the trigger one a one or two year lease and have the added expense if it didn't work.

Also, I have a love/hate relationship with working from home. Same days I'd really like to go to an office and being at home is depressive. Other days I'm happy as hell that I work from home and couldn't see going into an office that day.

If this is something I'm gonna do I'd want it done in the spring when I plan on being at a lot of local events.