How Abandoning My Office Grew My Business

by Drew Holmes, published as “A Case for Going Mobile” in the December 2022 issue of Music Inc Magazine

“Drew, we have a problem,” said Brad, my string shop manager. “We need more benches and more pairs of hands to keep up with the volume of repairs.”

He was not wrong. Since we began offering in-house string repairs, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Brad had been working solo and as the volume of work increased, we added another technician. Expanding to meet customer demand was a problem too big to ignore but solving it would require a hard choice.

Over a decade ago my store relocated to a new building. The 3500 square feet of strip mall we had occupied was barely adequate for our volume of business, and I knew we eventually needed to offer lessons and on-site repairs. This was impossible without more room, so we found a location where we could grow: a freestanding, two-story, former pawn shop.

Our square footage quadrupled overnight. My office at the previous location overlooked the bathroom, so when the architect drew two oversized offices on the second floor, I gratefully chose the one overlooking the mountains. The room next door at first was storage, then a lesson room, and finally our string repair shop.

When Brad approached me about expansion the problem was obvious but the solution less clear. Beset by my office on one side and immovable walls on the other three our list of options was thin.

Then I had a radical idea. What if I no longer had an on-site office and instead made my job mobile? Could I still effectively run my store?

Early in my career I spent much of my time anchored to my desk, working only when seated behind it. Now with a growing family my long days at the store were disrupting what delicate work/life balance I had managed to achieve. Could abandoning my office solve the crowded string shop and diminished family time problems in one fell swoop?

As I considered the space, I realized the main feature of my office was two metal filing cabinets in which old invoices went to die. Too much time was spent filing and even more locating filed documents. Going paperless could improve recordkeeping while making my work location independent.

In December of 2019 I decided to do it. I invested in a good laptop, scanned all paper invoices and receipts, and stored them on the server. Our IT professional set up a remote desktop connection, allowing access to everything from anywhere in the world. My job was now mobile.

In January I emptied the room and the wall adjoining the string shop came down. I set up a small, undedicated space in the general manager’s office so I would have somewhere to work while on site. There was no going back now.

A couple of months later these serendipitous choices really paid off. When COVID hit, we faced state mandated shutdowns and stay at home orders, but I could still work. My workflow changed to smaller bursts of productivity throughout the day and night, rather than one long block of time. At first this was to accommodate the new normal of remote schoolwork but is a practice I still use to this day.

Untethering work from the office has paid tremendous dividends at home. Every weekday I walk my son to school in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon. We have been able to take longer and more frequent family trips since everything I need is accessible from anywhere.

And the string shop? Doubling the square footage has allowed us to double the staff. Revenues have steadily increase and we now offer instrument refinishing and bow repairs, two services that were out of reach in the smaller space.

Adapting to our customers’ demands while adjusting to my family’s needs has been successful beyond anything I could have imagined. All it took was being open to one radical idea.